Chapter 9 - HANNAH MERCER
Hannah was thirty-two.
A middle-school librarian in Oregon.
Married.
One child.
No criminal history.
No history of asking David for money that investigators could find.
She answered Detective Bishop’s call immediately.
Then asked:
“Is Evelyn alive?”
That question unsettled me.
Bishop said yes.
Hannah cried.
Not relief for a stranger.
Relief like someone had been waiting for a pattern to break.
She flew to Los Angeles two days later.
I met her at the hospital.
David’s eyes.
Rebecca’s smile, according to an old photograph.
She stood beside my bed gripping a canvas bag.
“I tried to warn you.”
“I know.”
“I should’ve tried harder.”
“No.”
That word.
I was learning to use it with guilt too.
“What happened to your mother?”
Hannah took a long breath.
Rebecca Mercer had not died of cancer.
David lied to me.
She died fourteen years earlier after a prolonged, poorly explained illness.
Weakness.
Vomiting.
Neurological symptoms.
Periods of improvement.
Then decline.
Doctors disagreed about the diagnosis.
Hannah was eighteen.
David controlled most communication because Rebecca became too weak to manage appointments herself.
My skin went cold.
“Was your father investigated?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody thought there was anything to investigate.”
Cause of death had been attributed to complications of a chronic medical condition.
No autopsy because Rebecca’s treating physician and family saw no obvious reason for one.
Hannah had doubts later.
Not then.
Years after her mother died, she discovered journals inside a storage box.
Rebecca wrote about food tasting strange.
Feeling worse when David was home.
Being afraid to tell doctors because David insisted illness had made her paranoid.
The similarities made everyone in the room very still.
But journals were not proof David killed Rebecca.
Detective Bishop repeated that.
Hannah nodded.
“I know.”
“What did you bring?”
The canvas bag.
Inside were copies of journals, old emails, photographs, and something else.
A cassette recorder.
Rebecca had dictated notes near the end because writing became difficult.
Hannah digitized them years later.
One recording:
David insists he prepare everything because he says nurses upset me.
Another:
He keeps telling doctors I’m confused. I don’t think I’m confused.
Another:
If I get better when he travels again, I need to tell someone.
My body turned cold despite the blanket.
Still not proof.
But pattern evidence.
Then Hannah told us why David hated her.
Six years earlier, she confronted him.
Not accused him of murder.
Asked whether he had withheld information from her mother’s physicians.
David exploded.
Called her unstable.
Threatened legal action if she contacted me.
“How did you know about me?”
“Your engagement announcement.”
She researched me.
Learned I was wealthy.
Then panicked.
“I thought maybe he chose you for the same reason.”
I closed my eyes.
She sent one letter shortly after our wedding.
David intercepted it.
Another three years later.
Returned.
The envelope she brought six months ago was the third.
“What was in it?”
“A copy of Mom’s journal.”
David burned it.
Jessica saw.
Hannah continued:
“I didn’t know you were sick until I saw a photograph online.”
A charity article had mentioned my health.
She recognized the description.
That was why she came to the house.
David told security she was prohibited from contacting us.
Then he updated the gate list.
Investigators checked.
True.
The day after Hannah’s visit, David sent Samuel an email.
My estranged daughter may attempt to contact Evelyn. Hannah has longstanding mental-health issues and fixates on my first wife’s death. Please do not respond to claims without speaking to me.
Samuel stared at the record.
“I remember this.”
“Did you tell me?”
“You were already severely ill. I asked David whether there was a safety issue.”
“And he said?”
“That she had threatened the family.”
Hannah had not.
Again:
David became the translator.
He described the person before anyone heard her.
But the major twist was still not that Rebecca had suffered a similar illness.
Investigators could not simply convert resemblance into a murder case.
The decisive revelation came from a completely different folder in David’s cloud account.
It was labeled:
AFTER EVELYN.
Inside were plans for Jessica.
May you like
Not a wedding.
A prosecution.
