Chapter 4 - The Sound of Tires on Marble
Daniel didn't look at the photographs of the women he had ruined.
He didn't look at his father's tears.
He looked at the front door.
His eyes were darting from the broken orchids to the high windows that looked out over the driveway. His mind was working with that frantic, rat-like cunning that rich boys develop when their fathers' checks stop clearing.
"It doesn't matter," Daniel hissed, his voice rising, regaining its sharp, defensive edge. "It doesn't matter what you have in that file, Dad. Those are old cases. The statute of limitations has run on Sarah. Caroline signed the release—she can't testify without forfeiting the house. And as for Claire..."
He turned on me, his teeth bared, his eyes wide with a desperate, venomous defiance.
"Her word against mine, old man! She was drunk! She fell down the front steps! I tried to help her up and she attacked me! I threw her out because she was violent! Who is a jury in this county going to believe? A Voss who pays half the county payroll, or a dirt farmer's girl who can't even keep her husband happy?"
He took three quick steps toward the library, reaching into his robe for his mobile phone.
"I'm calling Tatum myself. We'll see how long your little baseball bat lasts when the state patrol pulls up this drive."
He tapped the screen of his phone, held it to his ear, and waited.
Nothing happened.
He looked at the screen. He frowned, tapped it again, and held it back to his ear.
"What's wrong with this piece of shit?" he muttered.
Then, from the darkness outside the front portico, came the low, synchronized growl of four V8 engines climbing the grade in low gear.
Headlights—bright, blue-tinted halogen beams—swept across the high clerestory windows of the foyer, illuminating the dust motes and the white orchids scattered across the floor in sharp, blinding flashes.
Daniel froze.
Through the glass sidelights of the front entrance, we saw the convoy arrive.
Two marked Ford Explorers from the Hartwell County Sheriff's Department. Behind them, an unmarked black Dodge Charger with the low-profile light bar of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
And behind them, a battered blue Buick LeSabre with a rusted left quarter-panel.
Doc Ellis's car.
The cruisers didn't use their sirens. They came up the drive in total, tactical silence, their tires crunching over the crushed marble, their headlights forming a brilliant, overlapping semicircle of white light that pinned the front of the mansion in an interrogation beam.
Daniel spun on his father, his chest heaving, his hands clawing at the lapels of his silk robe.
"Dad! What did you do? Did you call the GBI? Are you insane? If they open the books on the aggregate plant, they'll find the county commission kickbacks! They'll take everything! The house, the plant, the bank shares—everything you spent forty years building!"
Warren Voss didn't look up from the mahogany table.
He reached out with a trembling hand, gathered the photographs of Sarah, Caroline, and Rebecca, and squared the edges against the wood like a deck of cards that had finally been dealt to the table.
"I didn't call them, Daniel," Warren said softly.
The driver's door of the Buick opened.
Doc Ellis stepped out first. He was still wearing his surgical scrub top over his flannel shirt, his stethoscope hanging around his neck like an iron collar. He walked to the passenger side, opened the door, and reached inside.
Claire stepped out into the halogen glare.
She was wearing my heavy fleece-lined chore coat over her gown, zipped all the way to her chin. Her left eye was covered in a fresh white pressure bandage; her lower lip was swollen, dark with iodine.
She walked slowly, each step deliberate, her right arm wrapped tightly around her broken ribs.
In her left hand, held high enough for the cruiser headlights to catch the silver aluminum casing, was Daniel's second phone—the encrypted company iPhone he kept in the charging cradle beside his bathroom sink.
Daniel reached into his robe pocket with frantic, clawing fingers.
His hand came out empty.
The color left his lips until they were the exact shade of the marble beneath his feet.
"No," Daniel whispered. The word was barely audible over the hum of the cruiser engines outside. "No, she couldn't have... the passcode was..."
Claire walked up the four stone steps of the portico.
She didn't look at the high columns. She didn't look at the silver Porsche in the garage. She didn't look at the four armed deputies who formed a flanking line behind her, their hands resting on their holstered sidearms.
She stepped through the shattered front entrance, her small, bare feet—now bandaged in clean white gauze from Doc's kit—stopping two feet from the threshold.
She looked at her husband.
For five years, I had watched my daughter lower her eyes whenever Daniel entered a room. I had watched her apologize when his steak was cold, apologize when his shirts were late from the cleaners, apologize for the very space her body occupied in the world.
Tonight, she did not lower her eyes.
Her single hazel eye—clear, cold, and bright as river ice—bored straight through Daniel's chest.
"You always told me I was stupid, Daniel," Claire said. Her voice was cracked from the breathing tube Doc had considered using, but it was steady. It didn't tremble. "You told me country girls don't understand technology."
She lifted the phone.
"You shouldn't have linked the cloud backup to the iPad in the pantry," she said. "And you really shouldn't have kept the videos you took of what you did to me in the wine cellar last Christmas."
Behind her, a tall man in a dark grey suit and a gold shield on his belt stepped into the foyer.
Special Agent Marcus Vance—no relation to Daniel's family, but a veteran of eighteen years with the state investigative bureau—walked past me with a flat, official folder in his left hand.
"Daniel Voss," Agent Vance said. His voice was completely devoid of inflection. "I have a warrant for your arrest issued by the Superior Court of the Northern Judicial Circuit. Charges are aggravated assault, false imprisonment, felony battery resulting in serious bodily injury, and three counts of terroristic threats."
Agent Vance looked at the table where Old Warren sat with his head down.
"And pursuant to a supplemental filing made sixty minutes ago by Dr. Ellis and Mrs. Voss," the agent added, "we are executing a search warrant on all digital storage devices, personal computers, and cloud servers associated with this address."
Two uniformed deputies stepped forward, their handcuffs unclipped from their duty belts with a sharp, double clink.
Daniel backed away toward the curved staircase, his hands up, his eyes wild, looking for a door that wasn't there.
"Wait! Listen to me! Agent Vance, my father knows the governor! We contributed two hundred thousand dollars to the judicial re-election committee! You can't do this based on her word! She's mentally unstable!"
"Turn around, Daniel," the lead deputy said.
"Dad!" Daniel screamed, his voice breaking into a high, girlish wail as the two deputies closed the distance. "Dad, tell them! Tell them she's lying! Dad!"
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Warren Voss didn't move.
He sat at the mahogany table, surrounded by the photographs of the women his money had failed to save, his silver head buried in his spotted hands, weeping silently into the shattered petals of the white orchids.
