Chapter 10 - Thirty Seconds
We listened to the recovered audio the next morning.
Cavanaugh did not send us the entire file.
He played the relevant section in Margaret’s office with an investigator present.
I heard Ava crying first.
Then Erica.
“This is too far.”
Mason’s voice.
“It only has to look bad for thirty seconds.”
“Mason.”
“Stand at the door.”
“What if she doesn’t come in?”
“She always comes in.”
Then footsteps.
My own voice from farther away.
“Sophie?”
A pause.
Erica whispered something too soft for the microphone.
Mason answered clearly.
“Now.”
The next sound was me telling Erica to move.
I gripped the table.
Sophie stared straight ahead.
Cavanaugh stopped playback before the violence.
“That establishes premeditation,” Margaret said.
“It establishes they planned a confrontation,” Cavanaugh corrected.
Margaret gave him an annoyed look.
He continued.
“The missing issue is motive.”
“The petition,” I said.
“Likely part of it.”
“Likely?”
“I don’t build cases on likely.”
I understood his caution.
I hated it anyway.
“What else was on the drive?” Sophie asked.
“Financial spreadsheets. Copies of trust-related documents. Photographs. Messages we’re still authenticating.”
“Between Mason and Erica?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see them?”
“Not yet.”
Sophie stood.
“Everyone keeps saying not yet while he’s out there.”
“He is currently prohibited from returning to your residence under the emergency order.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s gone.”
“No.”
“Has he been arrested?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
Cavanaugh’s face remained steady.
“Because the prosecutor is reviewing the evidence and determining the strongest charges.”
Sophie laughed without humor.
“My husband plans an incident involving my newborn, hits my mother, installs cameras, drafts a guardianship petition, hides a storage unit full of surveillance, takes forty-eight thousand dollars, and everybody needs more time.”
Cavanaugh did not become defensive.
“That frustration is reasonable.”
“I don’t want reasonable. I want safe.”
He nodded.
“So do I.”
Margaret slid a paper toward Sophie.
“This is how we make part of that happen.”
A petition for a temporary protective order.
Sophie signed.
I signed a separate one.
By afternoon, a judge issued restrictions preventing Mason from contacting Sophie except through counsel and ordering him to remain away from the house, Ava, and me pending a fuller hearing.
Erica received her own no-contact order regarding the home after evidence of her role emerged.
For the first time, I breathed slightly easier.
It did not last.
At four thirty, a package arrived.
No return address.
Inside was a flash drive.
Nothing else.
We did not plug it in.
Cavanaugh collected it.
At seven, he called.
The drive contained thirty-two video clips from our house.
Most were ordinary.
Sophie cooking.
Me visiting.
Linda speaking with Sophie by video call.
Mason and Sophie arguing.
One clip showed Sophie crying three weeks before Ava’s birth.
Mason’s voice came from off-camera.
“You’re not stable right now.”
“I’m pregnant and exhausted.”
“You scared me.”
“I raised my voice.”
“You threw something.”
“A pillow.”
“That’s not normal.”
Sophie covered her mouth.
“I remember that.”
Cavanaugh continued.
Another recording showed me arguing with Mason about the trust.
That had happened two months earlier.
I remembered every word.
“You are not getting four hundred thousand dollars for an investment I can’t verify.”
“It’s not your money.”
“That is exactly why I have to protect it.”
“You’re controlling Sophie.”
“I’m doing my job.”
On the recording, Mason sounded calm.
I sounded furious.
Out of context, I looked terrible.
“He was provoking us,” Sophie whispered.
“Yes.”
Cavanaugh had found several clips labeled H VOLATILE and S EPISODE.
My stomach turned.
Then he mentioned one more file.
A video of Mason alone in the kitchen.
Three nights before the soup incident.
He adjusted the camera.
Moved a chair.
Tested the angle near the stove.
Then he spoke into his phone.
“Too wide. You can see the pot.”
I looked at Sophie.
She looked at me.
Cavanaugh continued.
“The person on the call says, ‘Then make sure Helen blocks it when she comes through.’”
“Erica?”
“We believe so.”
“Why would they send us the drive?” Sophie asked.
“We don’t know who sent it.”
That mattered.
Someone had placed evidence against Mason directly into our hands.
“The key?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“What if the same person hid the key?”
Sophie stared at me.
Cavanaugh was silent.
I thought of Erica’s face when she watched my pocket.
Her fear.
Her message to Sophie.
Ask your mother what she really wants.
Maybe I had misread her.
Maybe she had not been frightened that we found Mason’s secret.
Maybe she had been frightened because she knew we were supposed to.
Later that night, Margaret called with another development.
Northstar Residential Partners had a bank account.
Old records connected one authorized signer to Mason through a mailing address.
But there was another signer.
A woman named Emily Voss.
Rachel’s “cousin.”
Erica.
Rachel had been right.
Erica had not merely watched Mason manipulate women.
She had been part of it for years.
So why would she send us evidence?
May you like
Unless she wasn’t helping us.
Unless she was trying to save herself.
