Chapter 8: The Witness Nobody Expected
Daniel Marsh walked into the Chicago Police Department's 18th District station at 7:14 on a Friday morning and asked to speak with Detective Warren.
I didn't know this until Warren called me at nine.
"He came in voluntarily," Warren said.
"His attorney was with him.
He gave a full statement."
I was standing in my kitchen.
Sophie was at the table behind me eating toast, her bandage smaller now, the bruising along her temple fading from purple to yellow at the edges.
"What did he say?"
"He confirmed the planning timeline.
He confirmed his role in keeping you at the reception past seven.
He confirmed that Preston told him the phone would be planted and that the goal was to publicly discredit your daughter in front of specific witnesses." A pause.
"He also gave us something we didn't have."
"What?"
"A recording."
I turned away from Sophie so she couldn't see my face.
"Daniel recorded a phone call with Preston in October," Warren said.
"Preston is explicit about the purpose of the plan.
He names your father's will.
He names Sophie specifically.
He uses language that — I'll be direct with you, Ms.
Hargrove — that a prosecutor is going to want to play in a courtroom."
"Why did Daniel record it?"
"He says he started to feel uneasy in October and wanted protection in case things went wrong." A pause.
"Whether that's the complete truth, I can't say.
But the recording exists, it's authenticated, and it significantly strengthens the case."
I looked out the kitchen window.
The backyard was bare and grey.
Sophie had left her bicycle against the fence and the rear tire was flat, something I had been meaning to fix for two weeks.
"What happens now?" I said.
"The DA's office is reviewing everything today.
I expect charges to be filed by end of next week.
The affidavit your father submitted last night, combined with the recording and the footage, gives them a strong package." Another pause.
"Ms.
Hargrove.
Your daughter — is she doing all right?"
Sophie was humming something behind me.
I recognized it after a moment.
It was the song the violinists had been playing at the wedding, just before everything stopped.
"She's eating toast," I said.
Warren made a sound that might have been the closest a detective gets to a laugh.
"Good," he said.
"That's good."
I ended the call and stood at the window for another moment.
Then I turned around.
"Mom?" Sophie had her chin in her hand, looking at me.
"Is it going to be okay?"
I crossed the kitchen and sat down across from her.
"Yes," I said.
"It's going to be okay."
She studied me the way she had studied my father in the hallway — measuring whether the answer was true.
"Promise?"
I looked at my daughter.
Her yellow-fading bruise.
Her toast with the crusts pulled off.
Her eyes, which were her father's eyes, which I had once thought was a painful thing to look at and had somewhere along the way stopped being painful.
"Promise," I said.
She nodded.
Picked up her toast.
Went back to humming.
I got up and went to the back door and found the bicycle pump in the cabinet beside it and carried it out to the yard, and I crouched down in the cold November air and fixed the flat tire.
It took four minutes.
May you like
I didn't know why that felt important.
It just did.
