Chapter 4 - THEY WENT AFTER MY NAME
At 7:06 Friday morning, my supervisor called me before I called him.
“Daniel, are you home?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t log in.”
I stood in the kitchen with a mug of coffee I hadn’t touched.
“What happened?”
“We received an ethics complaint overnight.”
“From who?”
“Outside counsel representing your wife.”
I closed my eyes.
“What does it allege?”
“That you used Attorney General systems to conduct unauthorized surveillance of a private citizen.”
“Claire.”
“Yes.”
“I used my residential security system.”
“I figured.”
“No state databases. No state equipment. No agency account.”
“I figured that too.”
“Then why are you telling me not to log in?”
“Because procedure doesn’t care what I figure.”
That was why I respected him.
Patrick Donnelly had supervised me for six years.
He did not confuse trust with exemption.
“We’re putting you on administrative leave while internal review verifies access logs.”
“Paid?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I send you anything?”
“Not yet. Keep your personal evidence personal. Do not examine your wife’s devices. Do not use our forensic software. Do not call anybody here asking them to run something as a favor.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I know.”
He paused.
“And Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“If your children are involved, get a lawyer before you try to be an investigator.”
The line disconnected.
At 7:40, DCFS called.
By 8:15, an investigator named Maya Thompson was sitting at my kitchen table.
Lily was upstairs with Vanessa.
Noah slept in a bassinet beside me.
Maya asked me to describe the night from the beginning.
I did.
When I reached the cameras, she held up one hand.
“Were these cameras hidden?”
“No. Claire helped choose them.”
“Did she know they recorded?”
“She knew they were capable of recording. She believed I disabled recording when I removed mobile access.”
“Did you tell her recording had stopped?”
“I told her I would turn off monitoring from our phones. I did.”
Maya wrote that down.
“In Illinois, audio-recording issues can get complicated. Preserve everything, but don’t start distributing clips.”
“My attorney will handle it.”
“You have one?”
“Appointment at ten.”
“Good.”
She glanced toward the stairs.
“I need to talk to Lily privately.”
“I know.”
That interview lasted forty-one minutes.
When Maya came back down, she looked less neutral than when she arrived.
Not angry.
More careful.
“Mr. Mercer, has Lily ever been disciplined for waking Noah?”
“What?”
“She says her grandmother gets angry if the baby wakes during what they call ‘quiet time.’”
“I’ve never heard that phrase.”
“She described being told to walk him around the family room until he fell asleep.”
“For how long?”
“She doesn’t know.”
Maya looked at her notes.
“She says sometimes her arms went numb.”
My coffee cup cracked against the saucer.
I had set it down too hard.
Maya waited.
I loosened my grip.
“Sorry.”
“Has Claire ever told you Lily was caring for Noah?”
“No.”
“Has Lily?”
“No.”
“Why do you think she didn’t?”
I looked up the stairs.
“Because she thought it was her job.”
Maya closed the notebook.
“Until we complete our initial assessment, I strongly recommend no unsupervised contact between the children and your mother-in-law.”
“And Claire?”
“I can’t give you a custody order. That comes from court.”
“I understand.”
“But based on what I’ve heard, I would not voluntarily place these children back in a situation where they could be left without an appropriate adult.”
At ten, I met family-law attorney Rebecca Sloan in her office near downtown Naperville.
She was in her late forties, wore red reading glasses, and interrupted me whenever I drifted into speculation.
“Stop.”
I looked at her.
“You know Marcus and Claire are having an affair?”
“I know he put his arm around her waist.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“Fine.”
“You know they are stealing money?”
“I know there were unauthorized transfer attempts.”
“Better.”
I almost disliked her immediately.
By the end of the hour, I had hired her.
She filed for temporary parenting orders and emergency restrictions on Diane’s access, but warned me not to expect a judge to dissolve my marriage or hand me permanent custody because of one terrible night.
“Courts are slow because facts are usually messier than spouses want them to be.”
“I don’t need revenge.”
“Everybody says that on day one.”
“I need my kids safe.”
“Then keep saying that.”
Claire texted at 11:17.
I’m coming home for my things.
Rebecca told me to respond:
Please coordinate through counsel. The children are safe.
Claire answered within thirty seconds.
You don’t get to steal my children because Lily has sore muscles.
Then:
You’ve been spying on me for months. You’re going to lose your job over this.
I showed Rebecca.
She handed the phone back.
“Don’t reply.”
At noon, the bank confirmed the HELOC advance was frozen pending fraud review.
The brokerage froze the external-account request after receiving my affidavit that the signature was disputed.
For the first time since Lily’s call, I felt something loosen.
Not relief.
Space.
Then Patrick called again.
“Daniel, internal review found something.”
“I didn’t access anything.”
“We know.”
My shoulders dropped.
“But the complaint included an attachment.”
“What attachment?”
“A screenshot of a confidential case memo with your name on it.”
I stood.
“That’s impossible.”
“Do you recognize the case?”
He gave me the title.
I did.
It was an elder-fraud matter from the previous year.
“Claire has never seen that.”
“That’s what I assumed.”
“I don’t bring case files home.”
“We know.”
“Then where did the screenshot come from?”
“We’re checking.”
I thought about the blue folder.
The old iPhone.
Diane walking through my office.
“Patrick, is the screenshot real?”
He paused.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Can you tell me anything about it?”
“One thing.”
“What?”
“The complaint claims the screenshot came from a file stored on your home computer.”
I looked at the desktop beneath my desk.
I had never stored state case files on it.
Ever.
Patrick continued.
“If that attachment is authentic, somebody accessed material you were never supposed to possess at home.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“Then somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it look like you did.”
I stared at the empty safe.
The blue folder was gone.
My old phone was gone.
And now somebody was trying to plant a professional scandal beneath a financial one.
Patrick lowered his voice.
“Daniel, there’s something else in the file metadata.”
“What?”
“The screenshot was created three weeks ago.”
I waited.
“It was created while you were in Washington for training.”
Claire had been home.
Diane had been staying with us.
May you like
And the file name contained a word I had never used professionally.
REDWOOD.
