Chapter 11 - WHAT HAPPENED ON THE WATER
Garrick stared down at his hands while Detective Quinn turned on the interview recorder.
"Start with the boat," she said.
"It never sank," he replied. "Julian was going to meet a shipping auditor in the harbor. Mercer said there was a threat and ordered me to bring him aboard a different vessel."
"And?"
"Two men were waiting. They hit him. I helped hold him down."
His voice broke on the last sentence.
"You could have stopped," I said.
"I know."
"Why are you telling us now?"
He pulled a battered photograph from his pocket. It showed a little girl on a playground, her hand in a man's much larger one.
"My daughter. She's five. When I heard Maya crying at the gala, I saw her instead. It took me too long to remember I'm somebody's father."
Remorse didn't erase what he'd done. But it might save Julian.
Garrick described a private clinic near the coast, a place with boarded-up windows and guards who called themselves nurses. He knew the route but had never entered the building after the first transfer.
Quinn had already been investigating the property. His account supplied details she could check against the records.
"There's more," he said. "Julian wasn't drugged all the time. Once he escaped his room. Mercer caught him near the service gate. Julian was shouting about a ledger and a children's foundation."
"Did you hurt him again?" I asked.
Garrick flinched. "I turned away while someone else did."
I hated him in that moment. I hated the luxury that allowed people to purchase another person's silence. I hated that my own company's name was involved.
Quinn's phone buzzed. She stepped into the hall, listened, and returned with her coat in her hand.
"The judge signed the warrant," she said. "We're moving on the clinic."
I rose to follow.
"You won't be going inside," she told me.
"Then I'll be waiting outside."
Her expression softened only slightly. "Evelyn, they may already know we're coming."
May you like
At that instant, Theo called from the coast.
"Two vans just pulled up to the clinic," he said. "They're moving somebody on a stretcher."
