Chapter 4 - A Different Version of Me
At the hospital, a nurse asked me to describe the date, my address, and why I had come in. I answered every question. She documented that I was alert, frightened, and capable of making my own decisions.
It sounds like an ordinary sentence. That night, it felt like armor.
My phone had been in Brandon's study. The deputy helped me retrieve it while another officer remained in the house. On its screen I found eleven messages from Gertrude, all sent to relatives in the past hour.
Abigail is having another episode. Please don't respond if she contacts you.
Another episode. As if she'd been collecting them.
My oldest friend, Marisol Bennett, arrived at the hospital after midnight. We'd met during our first year at law school. She took one look at the messages and said, "He started writing the story before the police arrived."
"He's been writing it for months," I told her.
Marisol drove me to her apartment and put fresh sheets on the guest bed. I spent the night awake, listening for locks.
At seven the next morning, my attorney colleague Daniel Reyes called. I'd asked him to review a draft trust complaint two days earlier. He had found a problem I hadn't noticed.
"Abigail, the Bellwether payments weren't ordinary vendor invoices. They were classified as distributions under an advisory authorization."
"Who signed the authorization?"
"A consultant named Brandon Holt."
"He shouldn't have power to authorize distributions."
"He doesn't. Not by himself." Daniel paused. "But somebody on the trust administration side treated his instruction like it came from you."
I sat up. "Who?"
"That's what we're trying to determine. The trustee is cooperating now. There's one other thing."
He sent me a scanned document with my initials on every page. At the bottom was a signature that looked close enough to fool someone who had never watched me write.
May you like
I was in Seattle on the date printed beside it.
And the witness line carried the name of the woman who had locked me in the kitchen.
