Chapter 1 - THE SECOND INJECTOR
Detective Sarah Collins raised one finger, warning me not to reveal what we knew.
I forced my voice to remain calm.
“No, Michael.”
“The doctors only found the injector I used before the ambulance arrived.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
Michael had asked about a second injector before asking whether Lily was conscious.
Before asking whether she could breathe.
Before asking whether his eight-year-old niece was going to survive.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Why would there be another one?”
“You always carry two.”
“I couldn’t find either of them at the luncheon.”
Michael exhaled quietly.
“Maybe one fell beneath the table.”
Detective Collins wrote a question on her notebook and held it in front of me.
ASK HIM WHERE HE IS.
“Where are you right now?” I asked.
“At home.”
The answer came too quickly.
“Why?”
“I was thinking about coming to the hospital.”
Lily tightened her fingers around mine.
She could hear every word through the speaker.
“You should stay there,” I said.
“Police are still questioning people from the luncheon.”
Another silence followed.
“Police?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
I looked toward Detective Collins.
She shook her head slightly.
“About the missing medication.”
Michael gave a nervous laugh.
“Daniel, this was an accident.”
“How do you know?”
“What?”
“How do you know it was an accident?”
“I just assumed.”
“Did Evelyn call you?”
“No.”
The detective wrote another instruction.
TELL HIM THE SECOND INJECTOR WAS FOUND.
I swallowed.
“Actually, Michael, one of the nurses may have found something in the emergency room.”
Michael’s breathing changed.
“What did she find?”
“A blue injector.”
“That isn’t yours.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
He stopped talking.
Detective Collins reached toward the phone and ended the call.
Within seconds, she was issuing orders to officers in the hallway.
Michael had not been at my house.
A patrol unit had already checked.
His car was gone.
His clothes were missing.
So was the locked metal box he kept beneath the guest-room bed.
Detective Collins turned back toward me.
“The second injector was not found in the emergency room.”
“You lied to him.”
“I needed to hear his reaction.”
Lily looked frightened.
“Why does Uncle Michael care about it?”
The detective opened the evidence bag containing the injector recovered from Evelyn’s car.
“This one is yours.”
She placed a photograph beside it.
The picture showed another device discovered beneath the charity luncheon table.
It looked almost identical.
The label had been copied.
The safety cap had been replaced.
“But it isn’t epinephrine,” Collins said.
“What is inside it?” I asked.
“We are still waiting for the laboratory.”
A doctor entered the room holding a preliminary report.
His expression told me the answer before he spoke.
“The device contains concentrated insulin.”
I stared at him.
Lily was not diabetic.
If I had injected her with that device during the allergic reaction, her blood sugar could have fallen rapidly.
She might have suffered seizures, brain damage, or death.
Detective Collins sealed the photograph inside a folder.
“The peanuts were not the entire plan.”
“Evelyn removed one real injector.”
“Michael replaced the other with something that could kill Lily.”
My daughter began to cry.
I pulled her gently against my chest.
Then Detective Collins’s phone rang.
An officer had located Michael’s car outside the city.
The driver’s door stood open.
There was blood on the steering wheel.
And inside the trunk, police had found a photograph of my late wife, Anna.
May you like
Someone had written three words across her face.
SHE KNEW FIRST.
