Chapter 4

The police asked the property management to pull the garage entry logs.

The manager quickly found that the Walkers had once held a spare key.

I'd handed it to them myself, two years back, when they were remodeling their place.

Their house was too small, and there was nowhere to put the new furniture.

Frieda had cried when she begged me.

“Louise, your garage is so big. Couldn't you let us store things there for just half a month?”

I turned to the police.

“The Walkers had access to the garage.”

Frieda's face froze for an instant, then she broke into loud sobs.

“My father is dead! And you still want to frame us?”

“I gave that key back to you ages ago!”

“Louise Gilbert, how can you be this vicious?”

In front of the garage door.

The breach team already had their tools ready.

I said,:

“My brother's personal belongings are in there.”

“You can search, but the whole thing has to be filmed.”

“No one is to damage anything.”

Casey rushed forward at once.

“You're still protecting that murder car?”

“My husband's blood is all over it!”

“Anyone who tries to stop me today, I'll smash them along with the car!”

Frieda came up to me and lowered her voice.

“You still won't budge, even now? You want to stand here and watch your brother's things get smashed to pieces?”

I stared her down.

“You really did tamper with it?”

The breach team pried open the electronic lock.

The garage lights came on by themselves.

The silver-gray car shell sat quietly in the very center.

The crowd erupted.

“That's it! Exactly like the one on the footage!”

“They found the murder car!”

Frieda clutched her father's portrait and dropped to her knees with a thud.

Crying so hard she nearly fainted.

“Dad! They finally found the car that killed you!”

The police strung up a cordon, and the forensics team went into the garage.

Soon they found a patch of dark-red blood on the left front.

A piece of the headlight was missing too.

The shape of the break matched the fragments from the accident scene almost exactly.

The preliminary results came back. The blood belonged to Max Walker.

The scene went completely wild.

“Human blood! The evidence is all there!”

“And she still dares say it isn't the car!”

Casey snatched up the iron bar from the ground and charged at the car like she'd lost her mind.

“I'm going to smash this murdering thing to pieces!”

I lunged over, the handcuffs cutting into my skin.

And still put my body in front of it.

“You can't smash it!”

The iron bar came down on my shoulder.

The whole right side of my body felt like it had shattered.

The pain went straight into the bone, and all at once I couldn't move at all.

The police stopped Casey, but no one felt sorry for me.

The forensics team kept examining the car.

Inside the silver-gray shell, they found still more.

A blood-stained scrap of cloth.

A fiber from a red jacket.

The same kind of dirt as at the accident scene.

And an old photo of Max Walker.

Every new find made the Walkers cry a little louder.

The curses from the crowd cut a little sharper.

“Rock-solid proof.”

“How could this ever be overturned?”

“Just sentence her already.”

“Every day someone like this stays alive is a waste of air.”

Frieda walked up to me.

“Kneel. Kowtow three times to my father.”

I lifted my head.

“In your dreams.”

She gave a small smile, turned, and walked to a corner of the garage.

That was where my brother's design drafts were kept.

Every one of them had his handwritten notes.

Frieda picked up the first page.

“So this is the junk your brother left behind?”

Her fingers slowly tightened, and the draft tore straight down the middle.

Something roared in my head.

“Frieda Walker!”

I fought to get to her.

Two officers pinned my shoulders at once.

Casey raised her foot and stamped down hard.

Grinding my brother's handwriting away, bit by bit.

“Stuff left behind by a dead man.”

“You actually treat it like treasure?”

“My husband's life was worth more than the two of you put together!”

Frieda looked toward the camera, tears coming on cue.

“These design drafts are all part of the murder weapon.”

People around her rushed to comfort her.

“Good, tear it up!”

“Trash like that should be burned!”

“Send it to the grave with Max!”

The tow truck had already pulled up to the garage door.

Frieda faced the live-stream camera, her voice catching.

“Today, I'm going to watch with my own eyes as the weapon that killed my father is hauled away.”

“She owes my father a life. No matter how rich she is, she has to pay it back.”

A worker stepped up, but couldn't find the tow hook on the silver sports car.

He frowned and crouched down to look underneath.

He switched on his flashlight, and his hands suddenly went still.

“Under here……”

He shifted to another angle and looked a while longer.

Then he slowly got to his feet.

“There's no chassis.”

“This isn't a car at all!”