Chapter 2 - MY SISTER HAD BEEN TRAINING ME
Elsie locked the apartment door behind her at 6:17 that evening and immediately called Roman.
He answered on the second ring.
“Bellamy.”
“It was Marissa.”
Silence.
Then his voice became quieter.
“What was?”
“The questions.”
Another pause.
“Tell me what happened.”
Elsie did.
She repeated Marissa’s message exactly.
Did she ask about the notebook?
Roman did not interrupt once.
When she finished, he asked, “Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there.”
“I’m not in danger.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
Twenty minutes later, the black Suburban stopped outside.
Roman came upstairs alone.
He had never entered Elsie’s apartment before.
He noticed everything without appearing to.
The deadbolt.
The windows.
The fire escape.
The coffee cup still holding sixty-eight wedding pins.
His eyes rested on it for half a second.
Then he sat at her small kitchen table.
“What did Marissa know about your work?”
“Almost nothing.”
“That answer is probably wrong.”
Elsie hated that he was right.
She began remembering.
Eleven months.
Sunday dinners.
Coffee with Marissa.
Adrien asking harmless questions while they drove somewhere.
Marissa saying things like, Roman must trust you a lot.
Or, I could never work around men like that.
Or, how does anybody know which container belongs to who?
Questions that invited Elsie to explain.
Not secrets.
Just details.
Details that formed patterns.
Roman placed a legal pad between them.
“Start with the first conversation you remember.”
For three hours, Elsie reconstructed eleven months.
By 10:40, they had thirty-seven incidents.
Not twenty-two.
Thirty-seven.
Roman stared at the pages.
“They used repetition.”
“What?”
“One asks. The other confirms. Then they wait two weeks and ask another piece.”
Elsie looked sick.
“I gave them everything.”
“No.”
“I did.”
“You gave people you trusted ordinary information. They assembled it into something else.”
It was the closest Roman had come to comforting her.
She looked at him.
“Why didn’t you fire me?”
“Because someone went to considerable trouble to make you useful.”
“That is not an answer.”
Roman leaned back.
“I wanted to know why.”
“And now?”
“Now I want to know who designed it.”
Elsie almost said Adrien.
Then Roman’s phone vibrated.
Norah.
He answered.
Listened.
His expression changed.
“Send it.”
A photograph arrived.
Roman turned the phone toward Elsie.
It showed a storage locker outside Quincy.
Inside were photocopies of Elsie’s notebooks.
Dozens of pages.
Schedules.
Names.
Truck numbers.
Some documents she had never taken home.
At the center sat an old red file marked:
DIANE PARKER - TESTIMONY / 2019.
Elsie stopped breathing.
“My mother?”
Roman’s gaze hardened.
Norah sent a second image.
A handwritten note was clipped to Diane’s file.
Three words.
ELIMINATE BEFORE TRIAL.
May you like
And underneath them was a signature Elsie recognized immediately.
Adrien Manuso.
