Chapter 9 - Maria Saw the Drawer
Maria Collins worked in our house twice a week.
Two years.
She knew where everything belonged.
Six months before Europe, she found three of my prescription bottles inside Jason’s locked office drawer.
“I thought maybe you asked him to keep them.”
“I didn’t.”
Maria put them back in the medicine cabinet.
The next week they returned to Jason’s office.
She asked me once:
“You should keep your own medicine, yes?”
Jason entered the kitchen before I could answer.
He smiled.
“What are we talking about?”
Maria changed the subject.
Two weeks later Jason accused her of stealing a silver watch.
She denied.
No police report.
No proof.
He fired her.
The watch appeared months later in a closet.
Jason claimed I misplaced it.
Maria had been removed because she saw the medication.
Could it have been coincidence?
Maybe.
Then Jason’s notebook:
M. notices too much.
Date:
Three days before firing.
That strengthened it.
Then Maria described Jason’s office.
One drawer contained envelopes with women’s names.
LAURA.
RACHEL.
CLAIRE.
She secretly photographed them because she thought it was strange.
Laura’s photo:
74 FAILED.
Rachel:
74 INCOMPLETE.
Claire:
No word at first.
Then months later:
74 READY.
Maria did not understand.
Now we did.
Then another photograph.
Not a wife.
Name:
MONICA.
No number.
Who was Monica?
Jason’s attorney refused to speculate.
Evelyn said she did not know.
Laura recognized the name.
“Monica Kane.”
Who?
Jason’s girlfriend after Laura.
Before Rachel.
They dated less than a year.
Not married.
Mara had never heard of her.
Public records located Monica.
Forty one.
Living in Oregon.
She declined to speak initially.
Then reconsidered after seeing my case in the news.
She had no chronic illness.
That mattered.
Maybe Jason’s pattern was broader than sick women.
Monica said he controlled her money.
Read messages.
Tracked mileage.
But medication was not part because she had none.
He still used the same language.
“You need structure.”
“You’re too emotional.”
“You make me responsible for everything.”
Then she left after finding a notebook.
Same columns.
CALM.
EMOTIONAL.
UNCOOPERATIVE.
She laughed when asked about seventy four.
“He tried.”
“What?”
Jason proposed a seventy four day separation.
Monica said:
“Fine.”
Then moved out.
He became furious because she did not beg.
“He wanted me to fail.”
Exactly.
Then Monica said:
“That was when he started dating sick women.”
The sentence was harsh.
Maybe unfair.
Laura had temporary medication needs.
Rachel chronic.
Claire chronic.
But Monica saw a progression.
“Did Jason ever say that?”
“No.”
So we did not treat it as fact.
Then she remembered one argument.
Jason:
“People reveal themselves when you take away what they rely on.”
Monica:
“That’s called sabotage.”
He slapped the wall beside her.
Never her.
Then she left.
Again.
He crossed further with each relationship.
Then Monica asked:
“Does he still have Patricia’s notebook?”
“Whose?”
“His mother’s.”
Evelyn went silent when detectives asked.
Patricia was not Jason’s mother.
Wait, current mother is Evelyn. We cannot introduce Patricia from previous. Need fix. In this story Jason's mother Evelyn is alive. So notebook should be Robert Mercer's notebook? Hmm. Let's avoid Patricia. Monica can ask: "Does he still have his father's notebook?" Yes, Jason’s father Robert. Let's use Robert.
Jason’s father, Robert Mercer, had kept a leather travel notebook.
Business schedules.
Seventy four day trips.
Family rules.
Jason inherited it.
Maria had seen a brown leather notebook in his office.
Police had not found it.
What was inside?
Monica remembered Jason reading one line aloud.
People respect absence more than availability.
Robert’s philosophy.
Maybe harmless business advice.
Jason transformed it.
Then one night Monica read another:
If someone cannot function without you, never let them forget who carries the weight.
That sounded worse.
Did Robert write it?
She thought so.
Then Evelyn admitted Robert was controlling too.
Financially.
Emotionally.
Never physically violent in front of her.
He used long absences to punish family after conflict.
Seventy four days.
The son inherited more than a number.
Then police searched storage again.
No brown notebook.
But Jason’s laptop had photographs of pages.
One:
74 DAYS.
No rescue.
No interference.
Let dependency reveal itself.
The handwriting was not Robert’s.
It was Jason’s.
He had converted his father’s travel notebook into his own doctrine.
Then the final photographed page:
CLAIRE WILL BE THE FIRST FULL TEST.
I felt cold.
Laura failed because she left.
Monica refused.
Rachel died before the planned absence.
May you like
I was the first woman he intended to actually isolate for all seventy four days.
Continue to the next part: Jason’s own notes call Claire the “first full test,” and a second page reveals he knew she could suffer a medical crisis long before day seventy four.
