Chapter 4: Someone Gave Her My Name
I didn't sleep.
Emma fell asleep on the couch with Bunny tucked under her chin and one of the female officers sitting nearby.
I sat at the kitchen table with a cold cup of coffee and thought about every person who had known I was a widower with a young daughter.
The list was longer than I wanted it to be.
My brother.
My sister-in-law.
My neighbors.
My colleagues at work.
The grief support group I had attended for three months after Claire died.
The counselor who had run it.
Ramirez called at seven in the morning.
"We identified her," she said.
"Her legal name is Monica Hale.
She has two prior identities we've confirmed so far — Vanessa Cole is the most recent.
Before Whitfield, she used the name Dana Reeves in a case in Ohio four years ago.
That one didn't go as far.
The man she targeted remarried someone else before she could complete the approach."
"Complete the approach." I repeated the words slowly.
"What does that mean?
What was she trying to do?"
"We're still building the picture.
But the pattern is consistent.
Widowed father.
Young daughter.
Financially stable.
Isolated by grief." A pause.
"She gets close.
She gets inside the house.
She stays long enough to establish legal standing."
"Legal standing for what?"
"That's what we're still working out.
In the Whitfield case, he d*ed before we could ask him."
I set the phone down on the table for a moment.
Picked it up again.
"You said someone gave her my name.
Do you have a lead?"
"We pulled her phone records from the past eighteen months.
There's a number that appears repeatedly — before the Whitfield approach, before yours.
Prepaid.
We're tracing it."
"How long will that take?"
"Days.
Maybe longer." Another pause.
"Mr.
Mercer, I want to ask you something directly.
In the months before you met Vanessa — Monica — did anyone suggest you try dating again?
Push you toward it?"
I thought about it.
"My brother," I said.
"He kept saying Emma needed a mother figure.
That I was isolating myself."
"Did he introduce you to anyone?"
"No.
I met her at a coffee shop.
She was sitting alone.
She had a book I recognized — one Claire used to love.
We started talking." I stopped.
"It felt like a coincidence."
"It wasn't," Ramirez said.
The coffee shop.
The book.
The title Claire had kept on her nightstand for years.
I had mentioned that book in the grief group.
I had mentioned it by name, said it was the last thing Claire had been reading when she got sick.
My stomach turned over.
"The grief group," I said.
Ramirez was quiet.
"Someone from the grief group gave her that detail," I said.
"The book.
She used it as an opening.
Someone told her exactly what to use."
"That's our working theory," Ramirez said.
"We'd like a list of everyone who attended those sessions with you."
I wrote down every name I could remember.
Seven people.
The counselor who ran it, a man named Dr.
Gerald Foss, who had been warm and patient and had checked in on me by email for months after I stopped attending.
I gave Ramirez all of it.
After I hung up, I sat very still.
Then Emma appeared in the kitchen doorway, Bunny hanging from one hand, her hair flattened on one side from sleep.
"Is the lady gone?" she asked.
"Yes, sweetheart.
She's gone."
Emma climbed into the chair beside me.
She set Bunny on the table between us.
"Is she coming back?"
I looked at my daughter's face.
Four years old.
She had known before I did.
"No," I said.
"She's not coming back."
Emma nodded once, as if that settled something she had been waiting a long time to hear.
Then she looked up at me.
"Daddy.
She used to talk on the phone at night.
In your office.
With the door closed."
I went still.
"Did you hear what she said?"
Emma thought about it.
"She said a name," Emma said.
May you like
"She said it a lot.
She said — Gerald."
