Digging
Chapter 05 - Digging
Emily began with the weather.
Not grief. Not suspicion. Rainfall.
She sat at her kitchen table before dawn with a hospital mug warming both hands and pulled archived weather data for the night Daniel died. Forty-one degrees. Steady rain after 10:00 p.m. Wind from the northeast.
Rosalind arrived carrying bagels and found three legal pads arranged by time.
“You've made the accident a chart.”
“I make everything a chart.”
“Good. Feelings have terrible handwriting.”
Emily pointed to the first page.
“Daniel left Hale Industries at 11:52. His badge log confirms it.”
Rosalind set down the bag.
“Police estimated the crash at 12:38.”
“His phone connected to the tower near Willow Road at 12:31. He was seven minutes from the curve.”
“And you?”
“Clocked out at St. Andrew's at 11:34. Parking garage exit at 11:42. Freight crossing delayed me twelve minutes.”
Rosalind opened the cream cheese.
“You really do think like a trauma nurse.”
“I think like someone who doesn't want a stranger deciding she's confused.”
Poppy babbled through the monitor. Emily went upstairs, returned with the baby in striped pajamas, and settled her in the high chair.
She spooned oatmeal into Poppy's mouth between timestamps.
“Barbara's phone records?” Rosalind asked.
“Not yet.”
“Marcus?”
“His attorney will fight.”
“Then we give him paperwork to fight.”
Poppy slapped oatmeal onto the tray.
Emily wiped it with the edge of a dish towel. The towel had a brown coffee stain shaped like Wisconsin.
“Start with the police report,” she said.
Rosalind reached into her tote.
“Already did.”
She placed a stapled packet beside the legal pads.
The report was thinner than Emily remembered. Single-vehicle collision. Wet roadway. Excessive speed suspected. Driver pronounced dead at scene.
No toxicology concerns.
No witnesses.
No second vehicle.
Emily read each line twice.
“Daniel didn't speed in rain.”
“People do things their spouses don't know.”
“He drove like an old man when roads were wet.”
Rosalind didn't challenge her again.
Emily turned to the vehicle inspection page. Front left impact. Side damage. Paint transfer, black metallic, source unknown.
Her finger stopped.
“What color was the guardrail?”
“Galvanized steel.”
“The utility pole?”
“Wood.”
“Daniel's car was blue.”
Rosalind leaned close.
“Black metallic transfer.”
“Why wasn't that followed up?”
A note beneath it read: likely roadway debris or prior contact. No evidence of second vehicle involvement.
Emily's pulse began beating in her fingertips.
Not panic. The focused rush she felt when a patient's normal complaint hid one wrong number.
She flipped to the photographs.
Daniel's Audi sat twisted against a tree, windshield starred, driver's side crushed. Rain glittered in the camera flash.
Along the left rear panel was a dark scrape, straight and horizontal.
Not road debris.
Contact.
“Could it be old?” Rosalind asked.
“No.”
“How can you tell?”
“Daniel washed that car every Saturday. He'd have complained for a week about a mark half that size.”
The quiet after that held an ordinary sound, Poppy chewing on the rubber end of her spoon.
Emily lifted her from the chair and carried her to the rocker near the window.
“You had your daddy's patience,” she whispered. “Which means none.”
Poppy grabbed Emily's lower lip.
Emily smiled against the tiny fingers.
For a few minutes, there was no court, no crash, no old house with a locked door. Only warm baby weight and the radiator clicking beneath the window.
Daniel used to rock Poppy too fast.
“She likes turbulence,” he'd say when Emily told him to slow down.
Now Poppy's eyes closed to the same uneven rhythm.
Emily rested her cheek against the baby's hair.
“I should've asked more questions,” she said.
Rosalind answered from the table.
“You were burying your husband and feeding a newborn every three hours.”
“I accepted the report.”
“You trusted the police to investigate a crash. That's not negligence.”
Emily looked at the dark scrape in the photograph.
“It might have been.”
---
They spent the afternoon requesting records.
Vehicle impound inventory. Towing invoice. Body shop photographs. Dispatch audio. Traffic-camera retention logs, though both knew ten months was probably too late.
At three, Emily called the detective whose name appeared on the report.
Retired.
At three-twenty, she reached the responding officer, now assigned to another district.
“I remember the Hale crash,” Officer Mendez said. “Bad weather. Bad curve.”
“Did you see black paint on the car?”
A pause.
“There was transfer noted.”
“Why wasn't a second car investigated?”
“The reconstruction didn't support it.”
“Did reconstruction test the paint?”
“Mrs. Hale, I don't have the file in front of me.”
“Which Mrs. Hale did you speak to that night?”
Another pause.
“His mother arrived at the scene.”
Emily stood from the table.
“What time?”
“I couldn't tell you now.”
“Was she called by police?”
“I don't remember.”
Emily turned her ring once.
“Was Marcus Voss there?”
The line went quiet except for office noise and a distant printer.
“I think you should direct further questions through records,” Mendez said.
“That wasn't my question.”
“I understand.”
He ended the call politely.
Rosalind watched Emily set the phone down.
“He remembered Marcus.”
“He remembered enough to stop talking.”
Emily opened the report again.
The witness section was blank.
No mention of Barbara at the scene.
No mention of anyone from Hale Industries.
Yet Barbara had arrived before Emily, who was notified at 1:16 and reached the hospital at 1:34.
“How did she know?” Rosalind asked.
Emily stared at the blank witness line.
“She either got a call before police called me, or she was close enough to see it happen.”
Her phone buzzed on the table.
A text from Barbara.
POPPY'S BLUE CARDIGAN IS STILL HERE. I CAN HAVE IT DELIVERED.
Emily read the message, then turned the phone facedown.
“She wants me thinking about sweaters,” she said.
Rosalind slid the crash photograph into a clear sleeve.
“Then let's give her paint.”
Emily looked at the straight black scrape across Daniel's car.
The police had called it debris.
Someone else had counted on that description staying buried in a closed file.
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Keep reading Part 6 — because Marcus Voss admits he was at Barbara's house on the night Daniel died.
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