…Victor Kane. My husband’s old business partner.
Not my son. Not my sister. Victor.
I watched the rest of the video with my hand over my mouth. My husband, Michael, standing in our garage at 11:40 p.m., shouting. Victor stepping into the frame, grabbing his arm. A shove. Michael falling backward. His head striking the corner of the workbench. Victor standing there for a long time. Then reaching up and pulling the plug on the camera’s power cord.
The camera had a backup battery. Michael had installed it himself. Victor didn’t know.
The police had ruled Michael’s death an accident. A fall in the garage, late at night. But when they’d questioned my son, Jake, who’d found him the next morning, they’d been suspicious. Jake and his father had argued loudly the week before. A neighbor heard it. For six months, my son had been living under a cloud. Detectives had come back three times.
I read the email again. Slowly, this time.
“I found out what your sister and our son were planning, and I tried to stop them.”
Then the next paragraph, which I’d been too shaken to read the first time.
“They found out Victor was stealing from the company. Millions. They were going to the police together. I tried to stop them, because I knew what Victor was capable of. Jake and I fought about it. I told him to stay out of it, that I’d handle it myself. If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t. I scheduled this to send in six months in case something happened to me. The video is on the cloud backup. Please give it to the police. And please tell Jake I’m sorry I yelled. He was right. He was always braver than me.”
I called the police that night. And then I called my son.
Jake came over within twenty minutes. I showed him the video. He watched his father fall. He watched Victor pull the plug. He sat on my kitchen floor and cried in a way I hadn’t seen since he was a little boy.
“They thought it was me,” he said. “For six months, they thought it was me.”
“I know, baby,” I said. “Not anymore.”
My sister, Laura, came over the next morning. She’d been helping Jake gather evidence on Victor’s embezzlement for almost a year. She’d blamed herself for Michael’s death every single day.
Victor was arrested two weeks later. The district attorney charged him with manslaughter and embezzlement. With the video, and the files Jake and Laura had put together, the case was airtight. He took a plea deal. Eighteen years.
The detective who’d questioned Jake three times came to my house after the plea and apologized to him in person. Jake shook his hand.
I still have the email. I’ve read it a hundred times. Especially the last line.
“He was always braver than me.”
I had it engraved on a small plaque and gave it to Jake for his birthday. It sits on his desk at the company, which he and Laura run together now. Honestly. The way his father always wanted.
