Chapter 12: The Witness Who Smiled
“Without Adrian present” was the part of Reyes’s sentence I kept hearing.
I stood on the landing above the bakery, one hand on the rail. Downstairs, someone laughed while the front door chimed. For a moment, the ordinary sound made it harder to speak.
“Does she have a lawyer?” I asked.
“Yes. Her attorney contacted us. We’ve agreed to meet tomorrow.”
“Her statement says I attacked her.”
“I know,” Reyes said. “We’ll ask her about it.”
He didn’t promise she would tell the truth. I was grateful for that.
Inside the apartment, I set Lauren Ortiz’s divorce document list on the kitchen table. I had been ready to look for account statements and the records of payments I’d made while Adrian and I were married. Instead, I stared at the line that asked for our date of separation. There were several dates I could have chosen. Only one marked the night I stopped believing he would let me leave if I asked.
Luca called after Maya told him Vanessa had come forward. He asked whether I wanted him with me at the station the next day.
“No,” I said. “I don’t have to go to her interview.”
“I can still wait outside.”
“I know. I’ll call if I need you.”
“All right, Anna.”
He had once been the brother most likely to treat silence as a problem he could solve. Now he let it be an answer.
The next morning, I went to Maya’s office rather than the station. She had offered to review the evidence already shared with us while Reyes spoke to Vanessa. I wanted something to do besides imagine that conversation.
Maya played Elise Warren’s hall video without sound. Vanessa in white. Me with a glass of red wine. Her step into the narrow space ahead of me.
Seven seconds could show what a body did. They could not show why.
“Suppose she says she tripped,” I said.
“Then Reyes will compare that with whatever else she gives him.”
“And if she says I threatened her after Elise stopped filming?”
“He’ll ask for the basis of that, too.”
I watched the clip again. My hand lifted as the wine left the glass. I remembered trying to keep it from splashing onto anyone. Vanessa’s face turned toward the stain, and the recording ended.
“I used to think,” I said, “that if someone had filmed the whole hall, Adrian would have listened.”
Maya closed the video.
“You asked him to check the cameras.”
“I did.”
He had ordered the doors locked instead.
We waited through the morning. Maya answered other calls and gave me the smaller conference room when I needed quiet. I worked through Lauren’s list there, marking documents I had and ones I would need to request. My hand shook when I wrote the name of an account Adrian and I had shared. I finished the line anyway.
Just after noon, Reyes called Maya. She asked if I wanted to hear his update with her. I pulled my chair alongside hers, and she put him on speaker.
“Vanessa’s attorney was present throughout,” Reyes said. “Vanessa says she wants to correct her signed statement.”
I pressed my palm against my knee.
“What is she correcting?” Maya asked.
“The claim that Anna struck her. She says Anna didn’t hit or grab her in the hall. She says she stepped into Anna’s path deliberately while Anna was carrying the wine.”
There was a faint rustle of paper on his end.
“Why?” I asked.
“Vanessa said she wanted Adrian to see Anna embarrass her in front of the guests. We’re documenting her answers in detail. She’s also offered messages from her phone that she says she sent before the encounter.”
Offered was not the same as proved. I had learned how much distance could fit between those words.
Reyes said Vanessa and her attorney had agreed to let him describe the messages to us. He had seen them on her phone and arranged for an examination of the device. The recipient and the message records still needed checking.
“The first message says Anna is carrying red wine,” he told us. “The next says Vanessa is going to step in front of her. She tells the recipient to watch what Adrian does.”
I looked at the still image on Maya’s screen. Vanessa’s white sleeve had not yet touched my glass.
“Can you place the messages before Elise’s video?” Maya asked.
“The times displayed on the phone put them before it. We’re checking the device records and comparing clocks before we make more of that.”
“Who did she send them to?”
“We have a name. We haven’t spoken to the person yet.”
I was glad he stopped there. The message mattered, but an unchecked name did not make it stronger.
“Did she say why she signed the statement accusing me?” I asked.
“She says Adrian’s side asked her for an account and she gave them one that protected herself. She acknowledges it was false.”
For a second I could hear Vanessa’s voice from the ballroom: Next time, remember your place.
She had crouched beside me when I could not stand. She had known what Adrian had done and chosen to warn me that it could happen again.
Reyes let the silence pass before he continued.
“She also showed us messages from Graham Vale sent after the party. He told her to delete any recordings she had of the ballroom and to tell other people close to her to do the same.”
“Does he mention the camera system?” Maya asked.
“No. These messages don’t establish who made the deletion request from his office console. They do show him asking Vanessa to get rid of party recordings.”
I thought of Graham pouring another drink while Marcus held up his phone. I had spent weeks wondering whether Graham remembered what happened in that room as clearly as I did. Now there was a message he would have to explain.
“Did she delete anything?” I asked.
“Vanessa says she hadn’t recorded inside the ballroom. We’re checking what we can. We’ll also seek the message records from the service provider.”
Reyes said Vanessa had agreed to sign a corrected statement once she and her attorney reviewed the interview record. She had not yet signed it. Graham had not been confronted with the messages, and Reyes would not guess what he might say.
When the call ended, Maya wrote the follow-up items in a neat column. I kept looking at the blank wall beyond her desk.
“Is this good for the case?” I asked.
“It could be important. Her account has to withstand scrutiny. The messages and Elise’s video give investigators ways to test it.”
“She lied when it was easy. She’s telling the truth now that it might help her.”
“Both can be true.”
I hated how much I wanted to know what had changed Vanessa’s mind. I hated more that I wanted the answer to mean something kind about her.
By midafternoon, Vanessa’s attorney contacted Maya. Vanessa wanted to apologize to me. Her lawyer offered to pass along a written message, but I chose a brief call with both attorneys present. Maya asked twice whether I was sure. I was.
I did not need to forgive Vanessa. I wanted to tell her so in my own voice.
We used the conference room. Maya sat beside me, pen in hand. When Vanessa came on the line, neither of us spoke at first.
“I know I don’t deserve this call,” she said.
“You asked for it.”
“Yes.” Her breath caught. “I’m sorry about the wine. About my statement. About what I said when they cut you down.”
“You forgot the part where you asked for thirty.”
“I didn’t forget.”
The words landed harder than an excuse would have.
Vanessa said she had been angry with me before the party. Adrian had told her our marriage was over, that I refused to accept it. She had wanted him to choose her openly. When I came into the hall carrying wine, she saw a way to force a scene.
“I thought he’d make you apologize,” she said.
“You watched what happened after that.”
“I did.”
“And you smiled.”
Another silence. Her attorney did not fill it for her.
“I was afraid to contradict him,” Vanessa said at last. “That doesn’t explain the way I acted toward you. I know it doesn’t.”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
She told me she had spent days telling herself someone else would speak first. Then she saw her signed statement cited against me at the protective-order hearing. She had given Adrian a second way to hurt me.
I believed she regretted that. I could not tell whether she would have called Reyes if she hadn’t seen what her lie could do. I did not have to decide.
“I’ll cooperate with the investigators,” she said. “I’ll correct what I signed.”
“You should.”
“I was hoping that one day you might forgive me.”
I looked down at the faint marks still visible above my wrist. They were smaller than they had been at the hospital. Some days I barely noticed them. Other days a sleeve brushing my skin brought the ballroom back whole.
“I’m glad you’re telling them what happened,” I said. “That helps me. It may help other people tell the truth, too. But it doesn’t repair what you did, Vanessa. I’m not offering you forgiveness.”
“All right,” she whispered.
I ended the call. Maya stayed with me while I drank a glass of water. She did not call me brave or ask whether I felt better.
Before I left, she showed me a message from Lauren reminding me of our next appointment. I put my document list back in my bag. Tomorrow I could return to it. Tonight I could go home, unlock Nico’s apartment with the key he had given me, and choose who, if anyone, came through the door.
Maya’s phone rang as I reached for my coat. It was Ruth, Marcus’s attorney. Maya answered, listened, and glanced up at me.
“Reyes and the investigators just spoke with Marcus,” Ruth said. “They told him they intend to seek the recording he sent his father.”
May you like
Maya asked whether Marcus had said anything in response.
“He asked if Graham still has it,” Ruth said. “I couldn’t answer him.”
