If Vivian wanted to destroy something in the water, she had chosen a terrible method.
If she wanted me to keep opening the filter housing and cleaning debris, she had succeeded.
I checked my notes from each cleanup.
The first four incidents had happened while Lucy was home.
The last three occurred while she was at school.
Every incident generated a reason for me to be outside, distracted, or speaking to an inspector.
And almost every time, somebody in Vivian’s household watched through the upstairs glass.
I could not determine whether that was an accident.
Then I found a photograph I had forgotten to examine.
It showed a bag hitting the shallow end on the morning Vivian arrived with the fencing contractor.
Behind the bag, on Vivian’s porch, stood a second woman.
She wore an old green bathrobe.
Her face was blurred, but she held a folded sheet of paper against her chest.
Vivian had insisted she lived with relatives.
The woman in the photograph looked as though she was afraid to let Vivian see what she carried.
I sent the original image to Morse with a note identifying only what was visible.
He acknowledged receipt without offering an interpretation.
That restraint was beginning to feel less like indifference and more like a form of discipline.
I learned the woman’s name on a Wednesday when an ambulance arrived at Vivian’s house just after dawn.
The vehicle parked inside the driveway, away from the street, and two paramedics entered through the front door.
They emerged fourteen minutes later without a patient.
Vivian followed them carrying a clipboard.
She stopped them near the ambulance and spoke with the forceful gestures I recognized from our arguments.
One paramedic shook his head.
The other wrote something on a form and handed it to her.
The ambulance left without its lights activated.
I did not try to listen from across the street.
I recorded the time and continued making breakfast.
At ten, Miles Keene knocked on my door.
His face looked exhausted, and his hair was damp from a shower taken in a hurry.
He stood on the porch until I invited him into the kitchen.
“I reported what I knew,” he said.
“Good.”
“They wanted names.”
“Did you give them?”
He nodded.
He told me Vivian had contracted him for transportation because he previously worked as a driver for a rehabilitation center.
He had been promised hourly wages and mileage reimbursement.
