Chapter 8: What the Records Showed
Detective Hargrove arrived at two o’clock with a younger officer named Chen.
She had a folder under her arm and the same unhurried manner as the first visit, but when she sat down at our kitchen table, something in her posture had shifted slightly.
She had news that mattered.
“The subpoena came through this morning,” she said.
“We’ve been through Derek’s phone records for the past four months.” She opened the folder.
“He contacted Audrey’s number 211 times during that period.”
Scott made a sound that wasn’t quite a word.
“Two hundred and eleven,” I said.
“Yes.
The contact began three weeks after he started driving her to the studio.
It started as short messages — casual, as your daughter described.
But by weeks four and five, the frequency and content had changed significantly.” She turned a page.
“Several messages asked her not to show them to you or Scott.
Several told her that you wouldn’t understand.
And several specifically referenced what he called *their arrangement*.”
“Their arrangement,” I repeated.
“His phrase, not hers.” Detective Hargrove looked at me steadily.
“We also found messages sent from his phone to a second number — not yours, not Scott’s.
We traced that number to another woman.
The messages there follow a nearly identical pattern.” She paused.
“She’s twenty-two now.
Her contact with Derek began when she was seventeen.”
The kitchen was very still.
“So Audrey isn’t the first,” Scott said.
“No.
This second woman — her name is Renata — has agreed to speak with us.
Her account is consistent with Audrey’s in several specific ways.” Detective Hargrove closed the folder.
“This changes the case considerably.”
I thought of Renata.
I didn’t know her.
But I could picture exactly who she’d been — a teenage girl in someone’s passenger seat, managing something she shouldn’t have had to manage alone.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Derek will be formally interviewed this week.
His attorney has already made contact with our office, which tells us he anticipated this.” She looked between Scott and me.
“It also tells us he’s preparing a defense.
You should expect things to get harder before they get easier.”
“He’s going to push back,” Scott said.
“Aggressively,” she said.
“In my experience, when someone has been doing this long enough to have an established pattern, they also have an established defense.
He will argue that the relationships were misinterpreted.
That the girls were troubled.
That he was mentoring them.” She paused.
“He’ll try to make Audrey seem unreliable.
Her age, her emotional state.
He may even argue that she had feelings for him that she’s now misrepresenting.”
My hands went flat on the table.
“Let him try,” I said.
Detective Hargrove looked at me for a moment.
Then she said, “There’s one more thing.
The unknown number that sent you the threatening message — we traced it.” She looked at her notes.
“It was registered to a prepaid phone purchased three days ago.
The purchase was made at a convenience store.
We pulled the security footage.” She turned the folder toward me.
A grainy still image, printed on plain paper.
It wasn’t Derek.
It was Cheryl.
I stared at the image for a long moment.
Then I looked up.
“She bought the phone to threaten me,” I said.
“It appears so.” Detective Hargrove picked up the folder.
“We’ll be speaking with her as well.”
After she left, Scott and I sat in silence for a while.
“Cheryl knew,” he said.
“Or she found out recently and decided to protect him anyway,” I said.
“Either way, she chose him.”
He was quiet.
“I keep thinking,” he said.
“I keep thinking about all the Sunday dinners.
All the times they were at our table.”
“I know.”
“He sat across from Audrey for years, Linda.”
“I know.”
He pressed a hand over his eyes.
I reached across the table and put my hand over his.
Not because I had forgiven him completely for what he hadn’t told me.
But because he was also a parent who had been used and deceived by someone he’d trusted since he was eighteen years old.
And that was its own kind of grief.
“We’re going to get through this,” I said.
He lowered his hand.
His eyes were dry now.
Something harder had replaced the grief.
“Yeah,” he said.
“We are.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered it.
“Linda.” Derek’s voice.
Smooth.
Controlled.
As if he were calling about Sunday dinner.
“You’re not supposed to contact me,” I said.
“I know.
I just need five minutes.
One conversation, and I think this all goes away in a way that’s better for everyone.
Especially Audrey.”
My finger was already on the button to add Detective Hargrove to the call.
“Go ahead,” I said.
