Carla De Sousa was not what I expected. I had imagined a villain, or a coward, or a woman in a suit who would not meet my eyes. The woman in the booth was smaller than I imagined, and tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep, and when she looked up at me, her eyes were wet, and she did not try to hide it.
"Emily," she said, and my name sounded strange in her mouth, like she had practiced it. "Thank you for coming."
Patricia sat down across from her. I sat beside Patricia. Marcus and Hector waited outside, per De Sousa's conditions, close enough to see the door, far enough to keep their word.
De Sousa pushed the thick file across the table toward Patricia. "This is everything," she said. "Fenn's original notes. The whole Walker file. His memos. Documents I should have filed years earlier. I have kept it in my car for three years."
"In your car?" Patricia asked, and her voice was neutral, but I could hear the disbelief underneath it.
"I didn't know where else to keep it," De Sousa said. "I didn't want it in my office. I didn't want it in my house. I kept it in my car, because a car can move, and an office can't, and I was afraid that if it stayed in one place, someone would come for it."
She told her story then, slowly, with long pauses, while the diner hummed around us and the waitress refilled our coffee without asking. Three months after taking the file, a man had come to her office. He had not threatened her professionally. He had not talked about bar complaints or lawsuits. He had said the Walker matter was "done," and that reopening it would cause harm β not professional harm β and he had said it in a way that made her understand he was not talking about her career.
Her daughter was seven at the time.
"I chose silence," she said, and she said it plainly, without excuses, which was the bravest thing she did in that whole conversation. "I chose my daughter over a file. I have lived with that choice for four years, and I have hated myself for it for four years, and when your letter came, I knew that someone had finally filed the motion, and that I could stop hiding, and that I could finally do what I should have done."
Patricia listened. I listened. After ninety minutes β Patricia timed it, because Patricia times everything β De Sousa had given a recorded statement, on Patricia's phone, with her permission, covering everything: the man in her office, the threat, the file in her car, the years of silence. It was not a confession in the legal sense. It was a witness, finally speaking, after four years of being afraid.
And then, at the end, when Patricia was packing up, De Sousa said something that changed everything.
"Fenn had a backup lawyer," she said, very quietly, like she was afraid the walls would hear. "Two days before the crash, he sent copies of everything to a man in Tucson, because he did not trust his own files to survive."
Patricia stopped packing. "A man in Tucson," she repeated. "Who?"
"Bernard Okafor," De Sousa said. "He's a lawyer. In Tucson. Fenn trusted him. He told me once, in a note, that if anything happened to him, Okafor would have the whole file, sealed, and that Okafor would know what to do with it."
I stared at her. A backup lawyer. A sealed file. In Tucson. Four years old. Waiting.
Patricia stood up. She thanked De Sousa, formally, and she told her that her statement would be protected, and that she had done the right thing by coming, and that it was not too late. De Sousa cried a little at that, and I put my hand on hers for a second, because I understood, suddenly, that she was not a villain. She was a mother who had been scared, and who had chosen her child, and who had carried a file in her car for three years because she could not bring herself to throw it away.
Outside, in the diner parking lot, Patricia called Bernard Okafor. She did it right there, standing beside the car, with Marcus and Hector listening, and I held my breath, because everything now depended on a man in Tucson answering his phone.
He answered at once. He listened to Patricia explain who she was, and who I was, and what had been filed, and then he said something I will never forget: "I have waited four years."
Then he asked one question. A verification question. "What did Ethan Walker tell his daughter to bring if she needed help?"
Patricia looked at me. I looked at her. She said, "The chain."
There was a pause. Then Okafor said, "Good. Come to Tucson. This afternoon. I'll be in my office."
Patricia hung up. She looked at Marcus, and at Hector, and at me, and she said, "We're going to Tucson."
And we did.