Chapter 13 - What Vivian Was Really Doing
Vivian Ashcroft looked smaller than I remembered when I saw her through the interview room's one-way glass — hollow-eyed, exhausted, still in the same clothes from the night before, her hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee she wasn't drinking.
"She turned herself in at the front desk with a lawyer already retained," Ibarra told me. "Started talking before we even asked a question. I want you to hear this yourself, because some of it involves you directly, and I'd rather you hear it from her than a transcript."
He let me into the observation room. Vivian's lawyer had negotiated limited immunity in exchange for full cooperation on the Halloway-Ferris conspiracy, and she was, by all appearances, holding up her end of the bargain.
"I found out about the financial arrangement between Halloway-Ferris and someone inside Reeves Capital four days ago," she was saying, her voice steady despite everything. "I didn't know it was the resident at first. I thought — because of the timing of Derek's private investigator hire, because of some documents I stumbled across that I misread completely — I thought it was Derek. I panicked, and instead of coming to Adam directly like I should have, I decided to go to the hospital myself that night to see if I could catch whoever it was in the act. That's why I was outside Emily's door. I was watching for anyone who looked like they didn't belong, and I completely missed the person who actually did it, because I was watching the wrong hallway for the wrong reason."
"Why didn't you come to Adam with your suspicions immediately?" Ibarra asked.
A long pause. "Because I knew that once I told him I suspected Derek, I'd also have to explain why I'd been paying such close attention to internal financial records in the first place — records outside my normal legal work. And that would have led to questions about why I'd been so involved in Adam's personal calendar and schedule for months, which would have led to a conversation I'd been avoiding for a long time, about feelings I should have dealt with honestly a year ago instead of letting them turn into — into whatever this became."
"You had feelings for Adam Reeves."
"Yes." Her voice cracked slightly. "And I let those feelings make me reckless and secretive in ways that put me at the center of a murder investigation, and I will regret that for the rest of my life, but I need it on record clearly: I never wanted Emily hurt. I never wanted anyone hurt. I wanted, God help me, for Adam to notice me the way he never was going to, and instead of accepting that and moving on like an adult, I made myself indispensable to his calendar and his crisis and his company, and that made me look exactly like someone with motive when the worst thing imaginable happened."
"The disconnected phone call," I said quietly, though she couldn't hear me through the glass. "She hung up because she couldn't say all of that to my face."
Ibarra, beside me, nodded slowly. "For what it's worth, everything checks out so far. Her financial records, her communications, her movements — messy, reckless, professionally disastrous for her, but not murder. The digoxin came from Caleb Winthrop, acting under Thomas Halloway's direct instruction, confirmed by the recording and now by Winthrop's own signed statement. Vivian's biggest crime tonight was bad judgment and worse timing."
"What happens to her?"
"Professionally, I imagine her legal career at Reeves Capital is over, and probably her legal career generally, once this becomes public. Criminally, if her cooperation holds up, likely nothing beyond obstruction charges for not coming forward sooner. That's not my call, though. That's the DA's."
I sat with that for a long moment — the particular, complicated grief of realizing someone I'd trusted for years had let unexamined feelings warp her judgment badly enough to nearly destroy her own life, without ever intending real harm to anyone.
"And Derek?" I asked.
"Clean," Ibarra said. "Genuinely clean. The investigator he hired independently identified Winthrop's unusual placement three days ago and was in the process of compiling a report for you when all of this happened last night. If anything, Derek was closer to solving this than any of us."
Relief hit me harder than I expected — not just because my company was safe, but because the man who'd stood beside me at my wedding hadn't betrayed me after all.
"There's one more thing," Ibarra said, his expression shifting. "Thomas Halloway's lawyers are already trying to argue diminished culpability, claiming Winthrop acted alone based on vague pressure rather than explicit instruction. The recording helps enormously, but the DA wants a stronger case before trial. Which means, unfortunately, you and Emily may need to be more involved in the coming weeks than either of you would probably like."
May you like
I thought of Emily upstairs, three babies down the hall, an entire family that deserved to start their life together without a courtroom hanging over it.
"Whatever it takes," I said. "I'm not letting him get away with this because building an airtight case was inconvenient."
