Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
The unmarked SUV comes up the drive at eleven, and I know before it stops that this is the day the ground gives way.
Rodriguez gets out alone. A second car follows him up the drive, a marked one. It stops across the gate and idles there. Nobody gets out. He doesn't hurry. He never hurries. He stands for a moment, taking in the house, then comes to the door.
They're here for David.
That’s the first thing in my head when I see the detective on my step. David left after breakfast saying he had to meet with a lawyer. I didn't ask anything else. I have spent the morning not looking at the app, because I am afraid of what the dot will tell me.
I let Rodriguez in. Luna lifts her head off the floor, considers him, then lies back down.
I offer him coffee, but he declines. Instead, he sets a tablet on the island and stands over it. We aren't going to sit. It isn't that kind of visit.
"I need you to look at something, Mrs. Grant," he says.
The footage is gray, taken from a camera high in the corner of a corridor. A timestamp sits in the bottom corner. People cross it in the hurry of a public building. Then a woman comes in from the left, and my stomach drops before my mind can name her.
It's Julia.
She is wearing the jacket I have seen her in countless times. Her hair is loose. She appears to know where she is going. She stops at a desk, says something to the clerk behind it, then waits. The timestamp is from three days before she disappeared. It reads 2:14 in the afternoon.
She is here on this screen, upright and breathing, moving through the world like someone with somewhere to be.
My voice comes out thin. "That's her. That's Julia."
Rodriguez watches me instead of the screen. "Keep going," he says, and taps forward.
“This was taken at UW Medical Center,” he says before I can ask. “Your husband's hospital. She spoke to someone at the main desk about a former patient. An older admission. They directed her to records.”
He lets that sit.
“We’ve spoken to the person at the front desk. The clerk remembers her, but not the name she asked for. We’re still waiting to speak with someone from records.”
I watch Julia take the slip of paper from the clerk and move out of frame.
“Then here.” Rodriguez taps forward. The picture jumps to another corridor, another high corner. Julia appears again, unhurried, reading the slip in her hand. “This is the last camera that catches her inside the hospital. She goes into the older wing after this. Records is down there.”
He freezes the image on her face, turned half toward a camera she doesn't know is there.
“She left the hospital later that afternoon. We know that. What we don't know yet is what she found while she was there.”
The room tips very slowly around me. I put my hand on the cold stone to keep it still.
“Why would she be looking at an old patient?”
“That's what I came to ask you.” Rodriguez turns the tablet face down. “You were close to her. Did she ever mention looking into somebody who'd been treated there?”
And then I know.
“Eleanor Langford.”
Rodriguez’s expression changes, just slightly.
“The woman who owns the house Henry Westburn was staying in.”
I remind him of what Diane told us. Eleanor had a stroke in March. She was taken to the hospital and eventually transferred to a care home. Diane said someone called her because they were suspicious about a man living in her mother's house.
I feel the pieces coming together even as I say them.
“Julia didn't trust Henry. Not after the Ericksons. She kept telling me there was something wrong with him. If she found out Eleanor had been hospitalized, she might have gone there trying to find out what happened to her.”
Rodriguez is quiet for a moment.
“You think Julia was the woman who called Diane Langford?”
“I do.”
“Did Julia ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“Did she ever mention Eleanor?”
“Not directly.” I stop. “But the day before she disappeared, she sent me a video. She wanted me to come over the next morning. She said she had something she needed to tell me.”
Rodriguez watches me.
“And you think this was it.”
“I think it could have been. Or that Chris had hurt her again.”
He nods once, but it isn't agreement. He's filing it away.
“That helps. It gives us somewhere else to look.”
“So you think this is about Henry?” I ask.
“I didn't say that.”
“But if she was looking into Eleanor because of him—”
“Then we’ll look at Westburn.” His voice stays even. “And if she was looking into something else, we’ll look at that. Right now we don't know.”
“Then why bring up David?”
Rodriguez puts one hand on the tablet.
“Because she was inside the hospital where your husband works three days before she disappeared.
Because Christopher Brockwell publicly accused your husband of having a relationship with her.
Because Brockwell is now dead. And because your husband's name is already attached to another investigation involving that hospital.”
I stare at him.
“You think David had something to do with Julia disappearing.”
“I think we have loose ends, Mrs. Grant. This is one of them.”
“What about Chris?”
“For almost a week, Chris Brockwell was the obvious answer. He had a history of violence toward her. He made a scene at your party. He disappeared when she did, then turned up dead in a motel.” He pauses. “That gave us a very tidy story.”
“And now?”
“Now I'm less interested in tidy.”
He turns the tablet slightly beneath his hand.
“Julia walked into that hospital three days before she disappeared because she was trying to learn something. Until we know what that was, I'm not assuming it has anything to do with your husband. I'm also not assuming it doesn't.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“Anything she told you. Anything she was worried about. Anyone she was looking into. You were her closest friend.”
“I've told you what I know.”
“Then I need to speak to David.” He looks at me. “Where’s your husband, Mrs. Grant?”
"Out," I say. "He had to meet with a lawyer." It sounds like a lie even though it might be true. That is what David has made of me. I can't say anything about him anymore without hearing how it would play to a jury.
Rodriguez lets the answer sit there, weighing what it's worth, which is nothing.
"Have him call me when he's back," he says.
"Today." He sets a card on the island. I glance out the window. The marked car is still idling at my gate. Rodriguez doesn’t tell me if this is a routine visit. He doesn’t tell me anything that would let me breathe.
The machine has started moving toward this house.
I can feel it, like a tide coming in, slow and then all at once.
Rodriguez picks up his tablet and heads out.
I stand in the open doorway as he gets into his SUV. A moment later, both vehicles turn around in the driveway and pull away.
I don’t check the app. I already know the dot can’t tell me the one thing I need to know. Where my husband was on Tuesday, when Julia disappeared.