Chapter 9
Marcy looked at all of us.
“The invoices weren’t created from his uncle’s office.”
“Then where?” I asked.
“The gym.”
Silence.
Dustin shook his head.
“That’s impossible.”
“No,” she said. “I traced the document metadata. Whoever created those invoices was using a computer registered to the gym’s internal network.”
Eddie’s office flashed into my mind.
The locked drawer.
The business computer.
The people who came and went every day.
Dustin stared at Marcy.
“Who has access?”
“That’s what I was trying to find out.”
“Did you?”
She hesitated.
“Maybe.”
Every person in the room became still.
“Before I slipped,” she said, “I printed the access records.”
“Where are they?”
“I thought they were in my bag.”
Linda pointed toward the chair.
“Your bag’s right there.”
Marcy shook her head.
“Not that one. My work bag.”
I remembered what Linda had said.
The paramedics had brought Marcy in with only her purse.
“Where did you last have it?” I asked.
Marcy’s face changed as memory returned.
“At the office.”
Then she looked directly at Dustin.
“No.”
“What?” he asked.
“I took it downstairs with me.”
“So it was at the steps?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed.
“When the ambulance came, it was beside me.”
Linda frowned.
“There was no work bag when I got here.”
None of us spoke.
A missing bag was not proof of anything.
It could have been left with building security.
Picked up by a coworker.
Moved out of the rain.
There were a dozen innocent explanations.
But then Marcy said something that made the room feel smaller.
“There’s one more thing.”
I leaned closer.
“What?”
“The access log showed someone entering Eddie’s office after midnight six times in the last two months.”
Dustin stared at her.
“Who?”
“I didn’t get the full name.”
“What did you get?”
Marcy looked toward the hospital window, as though the answer might somehow be waiting in the darkness beyond the glass.
“Just the employee initials.”
She turned back to us.
“D.R.”
Dustin went pale.
May you like
His name was Dustin Reed.
And for the first time since I had walked into the gym convinced I understood the danger facing my daughter, I realized we had only just begun asking the right questions.
