Chapter 6 - Patrick’s Version of the Crash
Patrick agreed to speak only after Bell showed him the note.
He sat behind reinforced glass in an interview room, wearing the same white shirt from dinner. Without the tailored jacket and practiced smile, he looked younger and meaner, like a boy caught breaking something valuable.
Jenna entered with Bell and an attorney appointed to advise her as a victim. Richard waited outside.
Patrick looked at Jenna’s empty ring finger. “You work fast.”
“I learned from you.”
His mouth twitched.
Bell placed the note on the table. “Tell us what happened the night Caroline Doyle died.”
Patrick leaned back. “I was sixteen.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“My father woke me after midnight. He had been drinking. He said we needed to help a friend whose car had gone off the road.” Patrick looked at Jenna. “When we arrived, your mother’s car was already below the embankment.”
Jenna forced herself not to react.
“Was she alive?”
“I don’t know. My father wouldn’t let me go down. Another vehicle was parked nearby, a black sedan. Lydia stood beside it with Mr. Soren. She wasn’t old then. She was angry.”
Bell asked, “What did you do?”
“Arthur told me to collect a metal case from the road. It had opened in the crash. Papers were everywhere. We gathered what we could.”
“Did you see Richard?” Jenna asked.
“No.”
“Did anyone call an ambulance?”
Patrick stared at the table. “Eventually.”
The word nearly broke her.
Patrick claimed he found a letter inside the metal case referring to an account tied to Caroline’s daughter. Arthur later explained that Richard had stolen money from Halden and hidden it under Jenna’s name. Before Arthur died, he gave Patrick a sealed packet containing authorization codes and instructions to wait until Richard turned seventy.
“Why that date?” Bell asked.
“Arthur believed a trust restriction expired then.”
“And when you learned the Honda was connected?”
“I married Jenna before I learned about the car.”
Jenna held his gaze. “But after you learned, you stayed because of it.”
Patrick did not answer.
Their courtship replayed in her mind with altered meaning. His sudden interest in her clinic work. His insistence on meeting Richard. His questions about Caroline’s belongings. The way he laughed whenever Jenna described herself as ordinary.
“Did you ever love me?” she asked.
Patrick’s face changed, and for a moment she saw genuine pain. “I wanted to.”
It was worse than no.
Patrick had always been skilled at presenting partial truth as vulnerability. He confessed the detail that earned sympathy and concealed the fact that assigned responsibility. Jenna listened differently now. She no longer measured honesty by how painful it sounded to the speaker. She measured it by whether it restored power to the person harmed.
He said Lydia contacted him six months earlier, claiming the account could be opened if he created a transaction using both inherited authorization and Jenna’s signature. Patrick forged the transfer, borrowed against the vehicle, and intended to repay the loan once the account released funds.
“Why give the car to Evelyn?” Bell asked.
“Lydia said the vehicle had to leave Jenna’s possession voluntarily.”
“It didn’t,” Jenna replied.
Patrick shrugged. “Marriage makes ownership complicated.”
“No,” her attorney said. “Forgery makes it simple.”
Bell pressed him about Evelyn’s location. Patrick insisted he did not know. He believed his mother had gone willingly to meet Lydia, then discovered she was expendable.
“What is in the fifth ledger?” Bell asked.
“A list of original clients. Arthur said the last page identified the person who financed Halden.”
“Name?”
“I never saw it.”
Jenna studied him. “You’re still protecting someone.”
“I’m protecting myself.”
“From Lydia?”
Patrick looked toward the mirrored wall. “Lydia is a gatekeeper. She did not build the gate.”
Bell slid a photograph of the swan brooch across the table. “Who is above her?”
Patrick’s face lost color. He whispered, “The Benefactor.”
The title sounded theatrical, but his fear did not.
Arthur had used it in private conversations. The Benefactor allegedly funded clinics, judges’ campaigns, housing projects, and debt purchases. No one met the person directly. Instructions passed through Lydia. Signatures appeared as initials: E.R.
“Caroline knew the identity,” Patrick said. “That is why she died.”
Jenna thought of the tape. The identity is stored elsewhere.
“Where?”
Patrick looked at her. “Inside something Richard gave you before your wedding.”
Jenna remembered gifts: earrings, a family Bible, Caroline’s veil, a wooden music box that no longer played.
“The music box,” she said.
Patrick nodded.
Bell immediately called the team stationed at Patrick’s house. The music box was not there.
Jenna’s apartment was searched next. The sewing machine, boxes, and desk remained. The music box had vanished.
Only one person outside Jenna’s family knew she had moved it there after the wedding.
Her closest friend and clinic director, Dr. Amelia Cross.
May you like
Before Jenna could call, Bell’s phone rang.
The community health clinic was on fire.
