Chapter 17 - The Last Witness
Amina stood so quickly her chair struck the wall.
"Get out."
Samuel didn't move.
"Amina—"
"Get out before I forget how long I've known you."
Jules stepped between them.
Samuel raised both hands.
"There is one thing you still need."
Amina laughed without humor.
"You think you're still useful?"
"Lucien Ferrand kept a recording."
Silence.
"Of what?"
"The crash. Or what happened before it. I never heard it. Bernard spent years trying to get it back."
"Where is Ferrand?"
Samuel gave them the address.
Two hours later, Amina sat across from an eighty-one-year-old man in a small house near Rouen.
Ferrand's hands shook before Amina even spoke.
"I know who you are."
"Then save us both time."
He looked at Jules.
Then at the investigator by the door.
"Bernard told me to follow Mariam. Get the papers. Scare her if I had to."
"Did you hit her car?"
"No."
Amina stared at him.
Ferrand swallowed.
"Étienne did."
Charlotte's father.
The supposedly frightened accomplice in the medical estate.
Amina felt sick.
Ferrand opened a drawer and removed an old microcassette.
"I recorded Bernard afterward because I knew he'd blame me."
They found a player in the investigator's car.
The tape hissed.
Then Bernard's younger voice filled the room.
"Étienne wasn't supposed to touch her car. He was supposed to block the road."
Another voice answered.
Étienne.
"She wouldn't stop."
Bernard cursed.
May you like
Then said the sentence Amina had waited twenty-seven years to hear.
"Get the trust papers before the police find them.
