Chapter 17
Ortiz called me at breakfast. "Turn on the news," she said. "Channel four."
I found the remote. On the screen, a hotel ballroom in Charlotte was full of men in suits. A banner behind the stage read SOUTHEAST DEVELOPMENT SUMMIT. The camera kept cutting to the side of the room, where two federal marshals were walking a man out through the service doors.
"Federal agents arrested a prominent North Carolina developer this morning," the anchor said. "Victor Rhodes, owner of Summit Ridge Development, was taken into custody during a conference he was attending."
Ava was eating cereal. "Dad, is that the man?"
"That's him."
The camera caught Rhodes for maybe five seconds. He was taller than I expected. Gray hair, dark suit, no tie. He didn't look at the cameras. His hands were cuffed in front of him, and one of the marshals had a hand on his elbow, steering him past the buffet tables.
I had imagined this moment for months. I thought I would feel something big β relief, maybe, or satisfaction. What I felt was strange and flat. The man who decided my daughter was a scheduling problem walked out of a ballroom with scrambled eggs still on the tables, and it changed nothing that had already happened.
Ava went to school. I kept watching.
By noon, the coverage had grown. Summit Ridge's lawyer read a statement outside the courthouse. "Mr. Rhodes maintains his innocence and will fight these charges vigorously." The lawyer said it three times, word for word, to three different reporters.
A legal analyst on the broadcast explained the charges. Conspiracy. Wire fraud. Environmental crimes. Endangerment of a minor. She said the endangerment charge carried the most time, and that the prosecutors had built the case around it deliberately.
"They're making it about the children," she said. "That's the case that wins juries."
I thought about Ava eating her cereal, asking if that was the man. She'd said it so calmly. Like he was a character in a story, not the person who'd written emails about her illness.
Ortiz called again that afternoon. "Three of his executives are pleading guilty," she said. "The CFO, the operations director, and the environmental compliance officer."
"Guilty of what?"
"Conspiracy. Fraud. Environmental violations. They're cooperating."
"Against Rhodes?"
"Against everybody."
She told me the CFO had kept his own records β spreadsheets showing the payments to Greenline Landscaping, to the inspectors, to Ellen. "He documented everything," Ortiz said. "These people always document everything. It's like they can't help themselves."
"Will it be enough?"
"It's enough. The only question now is how much time."
I asked her if Rhodes knew the executives had turned. "He found out this morning," she said. "In the holding cell. One of the marshals told me he didn't say a word. Just sat there."
I tried to picture it. The ballroom. The banner. The scrambled eggs. And then a small gray room, and a man learning that the people he'd paid to protect him had sold him for their own shorter sentences.
"Good," I said.
Ortiz laughed, a short sound. "That's the spirit."
I sat on the couch and watched the same five seconds of footage loop on the local news. Rhodes walking out. Hands in front. Not looking up.
A neighbor from down the street, a man named Carl I barely knew, knocked on my door that evening. He held a newspaper.
"Did you see?" he asked.
"I saw."
"You think they'll all go down?"
I didn't know what to tell him. Carl's house was one of the ones with a tank under the yard. His kids swam in his pool every summer.
"I hope so," I said.
He nodded and left. I watched him walk back down Alder Court past the excavated yards, past the warning signs, past everything that had been normal a year ago.
That night I called my ex-wife. We hadn't spoken in months except about Ava's schedule. I told her about the arrest.
"Is she okay?" she asked. That was her first question, and it was the right one.
"She's getting better. The doctor said the numbers are going down."
"And you?"
I didn't have an answer. "I'm alright."
"David," she said, "when this is over, we're going to have a conversation about what you tell her. She's old enough to ask."
"I know."
I hung up and sat in the dark living room. On the television, the news had moved on to the weather. A storm was coming in from the west, and the radar showed green and yellow sweeping across the state.
I thought about Rhodes in a holding cell, eating whatever they served him. I thought about the emails where he wrote "we don't adjust for individuals." I hoped somebody was adjusting for him now.