Chapter 10 - THE PERSON AT HANNAH’S DOOR
Hannah checked the camera.
Then she frowned.
“It’s a woman.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked over her shoulder.
The woman appeared to be in her late forties.
Short dark hair.
Gray T-shirt.
Jeans.
She held both hands where the camera could see them.
Then she looked directly into the lens.
“Please tell Zayden I know what Carmen was planning.”
My stomach tightened.
“Don’t open it.”
Hannah nodded.
I called Detective Bell.
Police arrived before we spoke to the woman.
Her name was Evelyn Price.
I didn’t know her.
Carmen did.
Evelyn had worked with my mother almost twenty years earlier at a medical billing office in Baltimore.
Why she was in Phoenix was the first question.
Her answer was simple.
“I moved here last year.”
“Did you reconnect with Carmen?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Facebook.”
Of course.
Detective Bell questioned her on Hannah’s porch while we listened from inside.
Evelyn had participated in one of Carmen’s savings groups.
But she stopped after becoming suspicious.
“She always had an explanation for everything,” Evelyn said.
“Then why come here?”
“Because Victor called me.”
“When?”
“Yesterday morning.”
Everyone went still.
“What did he say?”
“He wanted money.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand.”
“Why?”
“He said things had gone wrong.”
“What things?”
Evelyn looked toward the window.
“He said Carmen’s son came home early.”
My pulse jumped.
“So the plan involved my trip.”
“Yes.”
“What was supposed to happen?”
Evelyn looked ashamed.
“I only know pieces.”
“Tell us.”
She took a breath.
“Carmen planned to create a scene.”
“What kind of scene?”
“She wanted Jessica to look dangerous.”
Jessica’s hand tightened around mine.
“How?”
“Carmen told me there would be witnesses.”
The party.
Twenty guests.
My stomach turned.
“She invited those women as witnesses?”
“Some of them. Most probably had no idea.”
“What would they witness?”
Evelyn shook her head.
“I don’t know exactly. Carmen said Jessica would ‘finally show her true face.’”
Jessica whispered, “She was provoking me all day.”
I remembered the broken serving dish.
The hot water.
Withholding food.
Everything designed to push Jessica.
“What if Jessica didn’t react?”
Evelyn looked at the floor.
“Then Victor had another idea.”
My voice dropped.
“What idea?”
“He said something about medication.”
Jessica went pale.
“I take anxiety medication.”
I knew.
A low-dose prescription after her father died.
“What about it?”
Evelyn continued.
“I heard him say a higher dose could make someone confused.”
My blood ran cold.
Detective Bell stopped her.
“Are you saying they discussed altering medication?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s important. I need you to be precise.”
Evelyn nodded quickly.
“I heard Victor ask if she still took the pills. Carmen said yes. Then Victor said, ‘Enough of those and nobody believes what she remembers.’”
Jessica stood abruptly.
Hannah caught her arm.
“Oh my God.”
I wanted to kill Victor.
That emotion scared me.
So I stepped backward.
Detective Bell continued the interview.
“Did you personally see anyone tamper with medication?”
“No.”
“Did Carmen ask you to participate?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you report what you heard?”
Evelyn’s face crumpled.
“Because Carmen said they were talking about sleeping pills for herself. I wanted to believe that.”
Everyone always wanted to believe the easier explanation.
I knew that weakness well.
Police retrieved Jessica’s medication from our apartment as evidence.
The bottle was nearly empty.
Jessica stared at it.
“That’s impossible.”
“How many should be left?” Bell asked.
“At least twenty.”
There were four.
“Could you have taken more than prescribed?”
“No.”
“Could Carmen have taken them?”
“I don’t know.”
Bell sealed the bottle.
Lab testing would determine whether anything else had been added.
The possibility alone made Jessica shake.
That evening, I sat with Olivia while Jessica rested.
My daughter drew another family picture.
This time she added Hannah.
Then she drew a small black square near Grandma.
“What’s that?”
“The phone.”
I swallowed.
“Do you want to talk about Grandma?”
Olivia shook her head.
“That’s okay.”
She kept coloring.
Then asked, “Is she bad?”
I thought carefully.
“She made dangerous choices.”
“Does she love me?”
That question hurt more than any financial loss.
“I think she believes she does.”
Olivia looked confused.
“That’s not yes.”
Five-year-olds can destroy adult excuses with one sentence.
I nodded.
“No, it’s not.”
I didn’t know how to explain that love without safety becomes something else.
Possession.
Control.
Need.
Olivia eventually returned to her drawing.
After she slept, Jessica joined me outside on Hannah’s patio.
“Evelyn called me unstable.”
“She repeated what Carmen said.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I know.”
Jessica looked at the desert sky.
“I started wondering if I was.”
I turned toward her.
“What?”
“Unstable.”
“You’re not.”
“You don’t know what a year of being told you’re wrong does.”
I stayed quiet.
“She moved things and denied it. Told me conversations happened differently. Told me you said things you didn’t say. Then when I reacted, she called me emotional.”
“Gaslighting.”
Jessica nodded.
“At first I hated that word because everybody uses it for everything.”
She gave a sad smile.
“Then I lived it.”
I reached for her hand.
This time she let me.
“My mother did some version of that my whole childhood.”
Jessica looked at me.
“What do you mean?”
“If she spent money we couldn’t afford and I asked why, she’d say I was selfish. If I wanted to stay with friends, she’d say I was abandoning her. If she yelled and I got upset, she’d say I was too sensitive.”
Jessica squeezed my hand.
“That doesn’t excuse what happened here.”
“I know.”
“But it explains why you normalized it.”
“Yes.”
For the first time, understanding my mother didn’t feel like defending her.
It felt like dismantling the system she built inside me.
Two days later, lab results came back on Jessica’s medication.
No foreign substances.
But several pills were missing.
Investigators found something else.
Fingerprints on the inside of the medication cabinet.
Carmen’s.
That alone didn’t prove theft.
She lived with us.
But the timing mattered.
Then Victor started talking.
His attorney negotiated a proffer session.
He admitted helping Carmen create accounts.
He admitted setting up cameras.
He admitted forging documents from templates Carmen supplied.
He blamed almost everything on her.
Carmen’s attorney blamed everything on Victor.
Predictable.
But one detail stood out.
Victor claimed Carmen wanted Jessica “out of the picture” by Sunday evening.
“What did that mean?” Detective Cho asked him.
According to the summary we later received, Victor said Carmen planned to provoke Jessica during the party.
If Jessica yelled or threw anything, guests would record it.
Then Carmen would call police and claim Jessica had attacked her.
If that failed, Carmen planned to tell me Jessica had taken Olivia and disappeared.
“But she wouldn’t have,” I said.
Cho looked at me.
“No.”
I understood before she said more.
“My mother was going to take Olivia.”
“We believe that possibility existed.”
Jessica stopped breathing.
“Where?”
Victor had given them a location.
A motel outside Flagstaff.
A room had been reserved under another woman’s name.
For Sunday night.
The day I was originally supposed to return.
Carmen planned to make my wife look violent.
Take my daughter.
Then tell me Jessica had fled.
The thought made me physically ill.
“How close were they?”
May you like
Cho’s answer was quiet.
“Closer than you probably want to know.”
