A chill shimmies its way down my spine.
Evan takes a long pull from his glass, then crunches on a chunk of ice. “Okay, so we’ve got a couple of things going on here. If his boss is able to prove Will’s the one behind the embezzlement, he can come after you now but only if Will used any of that money to pay for things you own together. Georgia is an equitable property state, which means if any of those funds benefited you in any way, AppSec can and will hold you accountable for restitution, maybe even fines. They’re going to come after the ring, for sure.”
I roll the Cartier as far as it will go up my finger, squeeze my hand into a fist. “Will gave it to me the day he died. They’ll have to chop off my finger to get it.”
“I’ll make sure they don’t have to, though more than likely, you’ll have to fork up the cash to cover the cost. And if they find out about the two and a half million insurance payout, they’ll come after that, too.”
“They can do that?”
“I didn’t say they’d get it, only that they’d try. And I know it doesn’t feel like it, but in terms of your liability in the embezzlement charges, this hidden-past angle is a good thing. We can use it to demonstrate there were a lot of secrets in your marriage, parts of your husband you weren’t privy to. His past life in Seattle, the father-in-law you never knew about, all these things are going to work in our favor.” He gives me a few moments to digest this news, filling the silence by refilling both of our waters. “Okay. Let’s move on to the texts. Did you report them to the police?”
“Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“As much as I applaud your waiting—you wouldn’t believe how many convictions I’ve nailed because some idiot didn’t think to consult his attorney first—you’ve been physically threatened now, twice.”
“From someone who wants money I didn’t steal and don’t have access to. Won’t the police have lots of questions?”
“Oh, you can count on it, especially if Will’s boss has started up an investigation already. But, Iris, as your lawyer, I do have to ask. Have you told me everything I need to know? I can’t help you unless I know all the facts, and I hate walking into anywhere blind.”
“Yes, of course. I don’t have anything to lie about. Honestly. I’ve told you everything I can remember.”
A niggle of guilt pings me between the ribs, and I look away before he sees. There is one thing I haven’t told him, one thing I don’t dare to say out loud. It’s too far-fetched, and it will make me sound too crazy.
“In that case...” He slaps both palms to the table, pushes to a stand and flicks his head at the door. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To the police station. To file a report.”
“What, now?”
He gives me a crooked grin. It’s tight and it’s forced, but I catch a whiff of the old, playful Evan, before plane crashes and empty cribs sucked the joy out of life. “I won’t charge you extra, I promise.”
*
Evan drives us to the station closest to my home, a gray stone building on Hosea Williams Drive, one that seems much too small to be serving a city of more than six million. The inside is like a public bathroom, crowded and dingy and reeking of industrial-strength cleaner mixed with body odor and the stench of fear. Men in rumpled clothes line the lobby’s right wall bench, their wrists cuffed to a metal bar. Their oily gazes slide over me, and I shuffle a little closer to Evan.
The desk sergeant, a grizzly-haired man easily in his sixties, greets Evan by name. The acknowledgment is courteous but not the least bit friendly, despite Evan’s easygoing manner. He leans an elbow on the desk like it’s a bar, explaining the situation and requesting an aggravated harassment form in a tone that makes it sound like the sergeant is an old drinking buddy. The man passes Evan the form without comment.
“He doesn’t seem very nice,” I whisper behind the paper as Evan and I are sinking into a row of empty chairs by the far wall.
“That’s because he hates my guts.” Evan doesn’t bother lowering his voice. He leans back in the chair, crossing an ankle over his knee, and bounces a so what shoulder. “I’m a defense attorney. I make my living defending the same person his buddies just went to a great deal of trouble to arrest. From where he’s sitting, I’m batting for the wrong team.”
The sergeant purses his lips and nods, but he doesn’t look over.
“How am I the wrong team?” I say, stung. “I didn’t do anything.”
“It’ll be fine. Just fill that thing in so we can go make our statement.”
I return to the form, and ten minutes later, we’re stepping back up to the front desk.
“Detective Dreesch in?” Evan says.
The sergeant doesn’t look up from his papers. “Nope.”
“What about Detective Willoughby?”
His pen stills against the paper, and after a great sigh, he leans back in his chair, cranes his neck around the corner. “Detective Johnson’s available.”
Evan frowns. “Is he new?”
“He’s a she, and yup. Fresh from patrol.”
“Excellent,” Evan says, but in a tone that makes it obvious it’s not.
“Wait over there.” The desk sergeant aims his pen over our heads, at the row of chairs we just came from, and Evan and I return to our seats.
It’s a full forty minutes later by the time he shows us to Detective Johnson, a petite officer with a freshly scrubbed face and pretty features pulled high and tight in a ponytail. Her posture is rigid, and her expression overly serious, a young woman with something to prove and a glass ceiling to bust through. She gestures for us to sit at the edge of her immaculate desk, an anomaly in this cluttered, crowded room, where most horizontal surfaces seem to be hidden under piles of paper files and dirty coffee mugs. She studies my form, looking up with a knitted brow. “Who’s the perpetrator?”
“We’re hoping you could tell us that from the cell phone number,” Evan says before I can draw a breath to answer. Not for the first time, I think how glad I am he didn’t send me here alone. I’ve never done this before, never even had a reason to walk into a police building until Seattle, and now here I am for the second time in a week. I feel completely unequipped for this task.
“Assuming it’s not a dump phone,” Detective Johnson says. She flips through the copies of the screenshots Evan’s assistant printed out, the ones detailing my text conversation with the 678 number. When she gets to the one with the first threat, Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him, she looks up. “What money?”
“Four and a half million in missing funds, allegedly stolen by Mrs. Griffith’s husband from his place of employment.”
She glances at me but directs her question at Evan. “Where is the husband now?”
“He was a passenger on Liberty Airlines Flight 23. Mrs. Griffith is a widow.”