Chapter 10 - The Checkbook in the Office Drawer
The sheriff didn't want to do it at the house while Lily was there. I understood that. We met at his office first, a low brick building off the county road with the air conditioning running too hard. He had Ray's phone in a clear evidence bag on his desk, and he didn't touch it with his bare hands.
"He left it charging in the kitchen," he said. "His wife brought it in. She thought we wanted it for the prescription check."
I stared at the phone through the plastic. The screen was dark.
"We got a warrant for the images and the cloud backup based on the video," he said. "We can look at the photos together before we go to your office."
He put on gloves and woke the screen with a cable. The photo gallery opened. There were the usual things first — pictures of a job site, a dog, receipts. Then a set of photos that made my stomach drop. My office desk, taken from above. My house deed laid flat. My checkbook open. The brass handles of the double doors visible blurred in the background of one shot, which meant it had been taken inside the house at night.
He tapped the info icon. Time stamps lined up in a neat column.
October 12, 2:14 a.m.
October 18, 2:37 a.m.
October 24, 2:09 a.m.
I knew those dates. Lily had woken up crying the next mornings. I'd told myself it was nightmares.
"Those are the nights she mentioned," I said. My voice was quieter than I meant it to be.
The sheriff nodded. "We pulled her notes from the deputy who talked to her. She said 'he comes when you're sleeping.' She pointed at the water. These are the nights after."
We drove back to the house in his cruiser. Lily was at my sister's apartment for the afternoon. The house was empty and too still. In my office, the desk looked untouched. The checkbook was in the top drawer where I always kept it, under a stack of envelopes.
The sheriff pulled the drawer all the way out and set it on the desk.
"Go ahead," he said.
I lifted the checkbook. It felt normal. Then I flipped past the blank checks to the carbons underneath. Three carbons I hadn't written. The pressed blue ink was fresh enough that it still smelled.
Pay to the order of: Raymond Cole. $4,500. October 13.
Pay to the order of: Raymond Cole. $4,800. October 19.
Pay to the order of: Raymond Cole. $4,500. October 25.
My signature was on each one. It looked like my signature, but the loop on the M was wrong. I always pulled it tight. This one was loose, practiced but not perfect.
"I didn't write these," I said.
"I know," the sheriff said. He photographed each carbon without touching it. "He took photos first, then practiced. Look."
He showed me the zoomed photos from the phone again. One photo was a close-up of an old canceled check of mine, pinned under a desk lamp. He'd been studying how I signed.
The last photo in that night's sequence was the deed. He'd laid it on the office rug to get it flat, and in the corner of the frame I could see the edge of my navy satin pajama pants where I must have been lying on the bedroom floor, out cold. I hadn't even known anyone had been in the office.
I sat down in the desk chair and the leather made a sound. For months I'd been waking up with a heavy head and a dry mouth and telling myself it was grief. That I wasn't sleeping well since my wife died, that I was dehydrated, that I needed more water. I'd been drinking the water he'd been putting something in.
"I thought I was just losing it," I said. "The mornings where I couldn't remember if I'd locked up. I thought it was me."
The sheriff closed the drawer. "It wasn't you," he said.
May you like
He bagged the checkbook and the deed and left the evidence tags on my desk to dry. Through the office doorway I could see the dark double doors at the end of the hall, closed now in the daylight. For the first time since Lily had whispered to me on that bed, they didn't feel like a threat I couldn't name.
They felt like a place where someone had walked in while I was drugged and taken pictures of my life to steal it on paper. And now we had the timestamps to prove it matched exactly what my daughter had tried to tell me.
