Chapter 8 - The Needle
The first injector had been recovered from Evelyn’s car.
The second remained missing.
Until Michael found it.
He said he discovered it inside Victor’s desk drawer the morning after the luncheon.
The injector had been opened.
Not used.
Modified.
A thin strip of plastic had been taped beneath the label.
Inside it was a microSD card.
Detective Collins stared at him.
“You expect me to believe someone hid digital evidence inside an allergy injector?”
Michael shook his head.
“Anna did.”
My pulse jumped.
“What are you talking about?”
“Anna used to carry spare injectors everywhere because of Lily.”
“She knew Victor had started searching her office.”
“So she hid copies of financial records in places he wouldn’t think to inspect.”
I remembered Anna joking that motherhood turned every purse into an emergency kit.
Had she been hiding evidence in plain sight?
Michael continued.
“After she died, most of her things came to you.”
“Victor assumed the card was lost.”
“Then two weeks ago, Evelyn found an old email Anna had sent to herself.”
“It mentioned ‘Lily’s backup.’”
“They thought it meant the trust.”
Michael shook his head.
“Victor realized it meant the backup injector.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“So the luncheon…”
“Was partly about finding that injector.”
Michael nodded.
“Evelyn searched your jacket.”
“She took both.”
“One had the card.”
“The other didn’t.”
“Victor wanted the right one.”
“That’s why you called me.”
He looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
“I wanted to know whether police had found it before I tried to get it back.”
Detective Collins leaned forward.
“Where is the second injector now?”
Michael swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
“You just said you found it.”
“I did.”
“Then Victor walked in.”
“He took it.”
“Where is Victor?”
Michael looked toward me.
“He disappeared before Evelyn was arrested.”
Detective Collins immediately began making calls.
Victor’s apartment was empty.
His club membership had been used that morning.
His passport had not been scanned at any airport.
His phone last pinged near the river.
Then officers searched his office.
Inside the desk drawer, they found torn packaging from an emergency injector.
No device.
No card.
But they found something else.
A photograph of Anna’s crashed car.
Taken before police arrived.
I stared at the timestamp.
The image had been captured eleven minutes after the crash.
The photographer had been standing less than fifty feet away.
On the back of the printed photograph, someone had written:
SHE SHOULD HAVE LEFT IT ALONE.
May you like
The handwriting belonged to Victor Hart.
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