Alice hesitated.
“Can I ask you something about Maya?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Does she hate me?”
I considered the question carefully.
“She’s angry that nobody stopped after Lena was hit,” I said.
“She also knows you came forward.”
Alice let out a breath.
“That’s fair.”
She had started seeing a counselor through her employer’s assistance program.
It was the first time, she said, that anyone had asked what she wanted without immediately telling her the answer.
The conversation made me think about the way Gwen had built her family life around gratitude and obedience.
Every favor came with a ledger.
Every disagreement became betrayal.
If you lived inside that system long enough, telling the truth might feel like abandoning everyone you loved.
I did not excuse Alice’s silence, but I began to understand its weight.
The following morning Brooks visited to ask about a row of marks on the garage floor.
Her team had noticed them in the photographs taken after the break-in.
They looked like parallel scratches left by a wheeled tool chest or a heavy cabinet.
I told her the cabinet had been moved several times during the renovations, but not since the accident.
She asked whether I could find the contractor’s installation invoice.
I located it in an email archive and forwarded it to her.
She also asked whether I had replaced the silver recorder before or after Gwen’s confrontation.
I gave her the exact date and the text message I had sent Ian when I moved it.
Brooks thanked me and left without explaining what she hoped to establish.
That afternoon a reporter called my office asking whether I had captured footage of the crash.
I told him I would not discuss an active investigation.
He asked whether someone had pressured me to stay quiet.
I repeated my answer.
When I hung up, I wondered who had told him about the recording.
Only a handful of people knew it existed.
Someone inside Gwen’s circle was trying to move the story into public view before investigators had finished.
The answer came unexpectedly from a surveillance video outside the grocery store.
Ramon had recognized the man in red gloves as a small contractor named Patrick Lyle.
Patrick did occasional repairs for Gwen, including fence work and gutter cleaning.
Investigators obtained footage showing him purchasing a pry bar and disposable gloves on the afternoon before my garage break-in.
The video alone did not prove anything, but it gave detectives a specific person to question.
