“So they can prove it was Reyes who charged the room to my mother’s card?” Nic asked.

“And not Daisy—that’s the point. Reyes acting alone.”

“And this second photo—the hole in the ground?” her mother asked.

Now a long pause as Watkins steadied himself. “Some workers found it and contacted the state troopers. It’s a hole near an abandoned building on Laguna Road. A hole big enough for a body. Daisy’s lawyers claim that Reyes dug it so he could kill her and bury her body. They found a shovel at Reyes’s house. The soil matched.”

No, Nic thought. That’s not what it was for, and the three of them in that room knew it. Daisy had been long gone. Reyes had dug that hole to bury her mother after he got his hands on Nic.

She heard her mother draw a long breath, but it stopped short and left her chest. She had just seen her own grave.

“And this one,” Watkins said, “this note was found in the house. In the basement where they found his research—papers and recordings and pictures. It looks like he was starting to forge a note—does this mean anything to you?”

Nic looked at the first two lines. “That’s my handwriting,” she said. She read the words out loud. “I’m so sorry, Daddy and Evan. I just can’t live knowing what I’ve done to Annie and now Mom. I have thought about the bridge for a long time.”

“Nic?” her mother stared at her now. “Did you write that?”

“No, but I said those things to him. I told him how I felt guilty about the day Annie died, and about the things I said to you that morning.”

“What about this bridge?” Watkins asked.

Nic hesitated. She didn’t want to say these things in front of her mother. She said them anyway. “I told him how I sometimes thought about jumping from the bridge downtown—he asked me if I had ever told anyone else, and I told him that I had. That I’d told the counselor!”

Watkins nodded, leaned forward. “He was planning to stage your suicide. Plant this note somewhere. Maybe leave your purse on the bridge.”

“And no one would wonder why my body wasn’t found because of the currents.”

“He was going to keep you there. In that house.”

Her mother took her hand and held it tight.

“I think we know enough. I think that’s enough. Thank you, Charles,” her mother said. She was smiling politely, even as a shiver ran through her body.

Nic shoved the pictures back into the folder and slid it toward Watkins.

“Is that everything?” Nic asked him.

Watkins nodded. “For now.” He took a breath, let it out. Placed his palms on the desk.

“Do you still want to go, Molly? To see her?”

* * *

They drove the short distance to the Hastings Inn.