Chapter 2 - Don't Accuse Anyone of Murder
Marcus Reed arrived ninety minutes later.
He was a commercial-litigation attorney recommended by a procurement director I trusted at work. Forty-nine, gray at the temples, painfully calm.
He stopped in the bedroom doorway.
“Have you moved anything since taking the pictures?”
“Some packages.”
“Stop.”
“There’s blood on that blouse.”
“Maybe.”
“There are medications from women I don’t know.”
“I see them.”
“My husband was married to somebody else.”
“I see that too.”
“My dead mother knew his mother.”
Marcus looked at me.
“Everything you just said matters.”
“But?”
“None of it proves the story your fear is currently writing.”
“What story?”
“That your husband murdered women and hid trophies in your mattress.”
I hated hearing it out loud because it was exactly where my mind had gone.
Marcus continued.
“We preserve evidence first. Conclusions later.”
Police came.
The mattress went with them.
Detective Sarah Mendoza took the initial report.
She studied the deed bearing my forged signature longest.
“That’s concrete,” she said.
“The rest isn’t?”
“The rest is disturbing. This is potentially a forged instrument involving your property.”
“My husband has another marriage certificate.”
“We’ll verify his marital history.”
“And the blouse?”
“We test what can be tested.”
“What about Isabel Morales?”
“We identify her.”
She looked directly at me.
“I am not telling you nothing happened.”
“Then what are you telling me?”
“That suspicion is why we investigate. It is not what we put in an affidavit when we don’t have evidence.”
I trusted her more for refusing to agree with me.
Marcus asked the question that shifted the entire investigation.
“Who owns this house?”
“I do.”
“Jointly?”
“No. My mother left it to me.”
“Has Alejandro asked you to add him to title?”
“Dozens of times.”
“What reason?”
“He said married people shouldn’t keep separate property.”
“And Carmen?”
I almost laughed.
“She says women who protect assets from their husbands don’t understand marriage.”
Marcus wrote that down.
“What else has Alejandro asked you to sign?”
Estate papers.
Refinancing documents.
A broad power of attorney I refused because it made no sense.
Then I remembered the “insurance forms” he brought home two weeks earlier.
“Where are they?”
“My office.”
They were gone.
But my home printer had cloud backup enabled.
The draft deed was there.
So were two earlier versions.
One listed Alejandro as a witness.
Another listed a notary I had never met.
Marcus looked at me.
“Do not return here alone until we understand whether he knows you found this.”
I moved into a hotel under a reservation made through my employer’s travel desk.
Alejandro was supposed to return Sunday.
He came home Saturday night.
At 9:13, my phone rang.
I did not answer.
Again.
Again.
Then messages.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE BEDROOM?
Then:
WHERE IS THE MATTRESS?
Then:
LUCÍA, CALL ME NOW.
And finally:
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’VE TOUCHED.
Detective Mendoza read that one several times.
“He didn’t ask why you destroyed a mattress.”
“No.”
“He didn’t ask what you found.”
“No.”
“He already knew there was something to find.”
Forty minutes after Alejandro arrived home, security footage showed Carmen entering my house.
She went directly upstairs.
Three minutes later she came down shouting.
“What did she take?”
Alejandro answered:
“Everything.”
Carmen stopped.
Then asked:
“The key too?”
Alejandro stared at her.
“I don’t know.”
May you like
When Mendoza showed me that clip the next morning, one question replaced all the others.
What key?
