Chapter 10: The Warrant
The financial forensics report came in on Thursday.
Patricia called me at seven in the morning.
"It's done," she said.
"The report documents eleven separate fraudulent transactions totaling just over one point two million dollars drawn from your father's estate accounts over a period of four years.
It also documents the forged signature on the estate transfer letter, cross-referenced against known samples of Ryan's handwriting and the handwriting of Robert Greer."
"They match."
"Conclusively.
The DA filed for the arrest warrant this morning.
Judge Carver signed it forty minutes ago."
I was sitting at the kitchen table.
The same table where I had read my father's letter four days earlier.
The cereal bowl was back in the cabinet.
Lily's drawing was still on the refrigerator.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"He checked into a hotel in Frisco two days ago under a third name — we believe a name he created more recently, without a full identity structure behind it.
The card he used was declined twice before one went through.
The account it drew from had forty dollars left in it." Patricia paused.
"Detective Solis executed the warrant at six-fifteen this morning."
I set my coffee cup down.
"Is he in custody?"
"He is."
I looked at the drawing on the refrigerator.
The four stick figures.
The yellow sun.
"Did he say anything?"
"According to Solis, he asked for his attorney immediately.
Then, when they were putting him in the vehicle, he said one thing."
"What?"
"He said, 'Tell Emily I wasn't going to go through with it.'"
I sat with that for a moment.
"He wants me to believe that," I said.
"Yes."
"Do you believe it?"
Patricia was quiet for two seconds.
"No," she said.
"The searches on his device were specific and recent.
People who aren't going to go through with something don't research methods." A pause.
"But it doesn't matter what either of us believes.
It matters what the evidence shows.
And the evidence is substantial."
After I hung up, I called Margaret.
"They arrested him this morning."
A long silence.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay.
Are you at the house?"
"Yes."
"I'm bringing Lily home."
"Not yet.
Give me an hour."
I needed the hour.
Not to fall apart — I had done most of that in the four nights since this began, alone in the dark, in pieces I hadn't let anyone see.
I needed the hour to put myself back together in a way that would hold when my daughter walked through the door.
I went upstairs.
I took Lily's drawing off the refrigerator first and set it on the table.
Then I went to the bedroom I had shared with Ryan for nine years and I opened the closet and I took down the box on the top shelf where he kept things he thought I didn't notice.
Inside was a burner phone.
Turned off.
I photographed it and called Patricia.
"There's a burner phone in his closet.
Top shelf."
"Don't turn it on.
Don't touch it beyond what you already have.
I'll send Mr.
Crawford's associate to collect it within the hour."
"Okay."
I put the box back.
I went back downstairs and made a fresh pot of coffee and sat at the table and looked at the drawing.
Mommy.
Daddy.
Me.
Dog.
She would need new words for some of those figures.
We both would.
But that was a conversation for another day, when she was ready, in language she could hold.
The front door opened at the top of the hour exactly.
Lily came in first, her purple bag over one shoulder, a small plastic bag in her other hand.
"Mommy." She held up the plastic bag.
"I got a fish.
His name is Gerald."
I looked at the bag.
A single goldfish, orange and unbothered, moving in slow circles.
"Gerald," I said.
"He looked like a Gerald."
I pulled her close and held her for a long moment, my chin on top of her head.
Margaret stood in the doorway and watched us.
When I looked up, her eyes were bright.
May you like
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
