Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

“I... don’t know. Maybe.”

“What Miles is alleging, why, that’s just criminal. Why didn’t Miles call the police?”

“Well, for one, you’re his sister-in-law.”

“Oh, please. You really think that would have stopped him? You know he’s never cared much for me. But seriously, how would I think I could get away with something like that?”

But there was something going on there, behind those eyes. Gilbert could tell.

The thing was, Caroline had plenty of insight into people who got on the wrong side of the law. She worked in the court system, as a court reporter, or stenographer, as the job was also called. Sitting through trials and depositions, listening to thousands of hours of testimony, getting it all down for future reference.

She never failed to come home with a story. People who’d committed murder, tax fraud, kidnapping. A favorite was the story of the hit man on trial for killing some guy’s wife, but he got off when the star witness failed to show up. And not just for his court appearance. He failed to show up anywhere, ever again.

The accused, he actually looked over at me and winked, Caroline had said. Like he was putting the moves on me right in the middle of the trial. When she told that story, she’d actually shiver, although Gilbert could never quite tell whether it was with fear or excitement.

But most of Caroline’s stories were about people who did not get away with it. You know why so many criminals get caught? she would ask. Because they’re stupid.

She would often cite some of her favorite examples. The guy who bragged on Facebook about the goods he’d stolen. The man who’d fatally stabbed his girlfriend, then used a dry paper towel to get the blood off the knife, missing much of it, and not bothering to wipe his fingerprints off the handle. The bank robber who went on a spending spree. The woman who said she couldn’t have killed her husband because she was visiting an aunt in Cleveland, but turned out not to have an aunt in Cleveland.

Gilbert sometimes thought his wife was a classic example of someone who could see in others the faults she could not see in herself. Case in point: that time she backed her car into another at JCPenney, left the scene, and denied ever having been there. She even persuaded Samantha to back her story, to say the two of them had been together at a different mall on the other side of town. When the other car owner managed to obtain, from mall security cameras, video that showed crystal clear images of Caroline causing the damage, she had still continued to deny it.

Which was why Gilbert didn’t believe her denials about the Google encounter for a second.

But he had raised it with her for a reason. It might help her better appreciate Miles’s decision about his estate and his decision to start divvying up his fortune among his biological children, once he had been in touch with them.

The discussions surrounding that had happened earlier, after Gilbert had come home behind the wheel of the Porsche.

Once he’d filled her in on why he had the car, as well as the news about the nine children who had come into the world because Miles had visited a fertility clinic more than two decades ago — he had shown her the picture of the list of names he had taken with his phone — she had not responded well.

“This car is supposed to make things right? You could buy a thousand of these with what he should be leaving to you when he’s gone. After all you’ve done for him?”

Gilbert was conflicted. On some level, he agreed with his wife. But at the same time, he wanted to defend his brother, which led him to relate the Google story. There was a look on Caroline’s face, if only for a second, that persuaded him Miles had not lied. That glimmer of I’ve been caught in her eyes, but she had recovered quickly.

The thing was, he’d found Miles’s story convincing, and Caroline’s denials much less so, because it fit a pattern. How many times over the years had Caroline lamented her husband’s lack of success, at least when compared to his brother? Oh sure, he had a good job in the accounting division and was paid well enough, but it wasn’t like he owned the company. It wasn’t like he was in charge . Gilbert could imagine a scenario in which Caroline might try to dip into her brother-in-law’s pocket, a way of evening the score, if only a little.

It was a case of the old you-reap-what-you-sow, Gilbert figured. You tried to cash in on my brother’s reputation, and now it’s bitten you in the ass.

Maybe this would be a lesson to her. Gilbert was hopeful that her subdued response to all these developments was evidence of some introspection.

Not that he was foolish enough to get his hopes up too high.

There were times when Gilbert thought about finding a way out of this marriage. He knew, in his heart, that while he could pretend to be, he was not a happy man. He tried to love this woman, even though he was not at all certain she loved him. And besides, there was Samantha to think about. True, she was closing in on the end of her teen years. It wouldn’t be like splitting up when she was still in diapers.

But Gilbert didn’t believe he could face the trauma of a divorce. The acrimony, the ugly scenes. Selling the house, finding a new place to live. And he knew Caroline would find a way to persuade Samantha it was his fault. She’d drive a wedge between them. Samantha, desperate for her mother’s respect, was always looking for ways to please her, and if that meant shutting her father out of her life, she might just do it.

Maybe this was what marriage was, Gilbert mused. Unrelenting unhappiness, but at least you had someone to talk to.

He was thinking all these things as he and Caroline got into bed and turned out the light. She reached under the covers and gave his hand a squeeze and whispered, “I’m sorry about your brother. I truly am.”

He was nearly asleep when three words suddenly came to him.

Excel Point Enterprises.

Those invoices from a firm he wasn’t familiar with.

No, he thought. She wouldn’t.

And very quickly dismissed the thought, and drifted off.

When Caroline heard his breathing deepen and she was sure he was asleep, she quietly got up, went to his side of the bed, and picked up the phone that was charging on his nightstand.

She knew his four-digit password, and within seconds was into his photo app. She pulled up the shot of the list of names, emailed it to herself, put the phone back down, and exited the bedroom.

Caroline went down to the kitchen, where they kept a desktop and a printer on a small desk off to one side. She sat down, opened up her mail program, and printed off the picture, confident that the grinding noise of the printer would not wake her husband upstairs.

But Samantha did happen to stroll into the kitchen. She was more of a night owl, often going to bed two or more hours after her parents. She opened the refrigerator and took out a can of diet cola, and spotted her mother.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Samantha asked.

Caroline said, “Come sit.”

New Haven, CT

Sure, I may be dying, Miles thought, but I still have a company to run .

But his next thought was often, Yeah, but for how long?

While the progression of his disease would not disable him overnight, he needed to think about the future of Cookson Tech. There were times, since his diagnosis, when he wondered if he even wanted to run it anymore. He’d made his millions, made his mark in the tech world. Apps designed by Cookson Tech were on as many as a billion phones. What was left to prove?