Chapter 13 - THE SECOND PRINT
The partial fingerprint was too incomplete for an automatic database match.
It showed only the center pattern and one clear ridge scar.
Lena compared it with everyone known to have legitimate access to Amanda’s house.
Relatives.
Employees.
Housekeepers.
Emergency responders.
No match appeared.
The print may have been left before the night of the murder.
Yet its position mattered.
It lay on top of Amanda’s blood inside the cracked resin.
The person touched the ring after Amanda pulled it from Robert’s hand.
Amanda handled it first.
Katie never touched it.
Robert recovered it at the funeral home.
The unidentified person may have opened the purse during the six-minute entry.
But if so, why leave the ring?
Perhaps they were searching for the blue ledger.
Perhaps they did not recognize the importance of the band.
Perhaps Amanda spoke to them.
Lena returned to the home assistant audio.
Most data had been deleted, but the company retained diagnostic logs containing fragments too short for ordinary playback.
Technicians reconstructed a clip from 3:36 a.m.
A door opened.
Footsteps crossed the kitchen.
A woman’s voice whispered:
“Amanda?”
No answer was audible.
The voice continued:
“What did he do?”
The woman sounded frightened.
Then the file ended.
Robert’s story about another visitor gained credibility.
It still did not reduce his guilt.
The visitor arrived after he had poisoned Amanda, demanded a signature, disabled emergency calling, moved her body, and left her without aid.
However, the woman might have saved Amanda.
Why did she not?
Grace listened to the clip.
She did not recognize the voice.
Katie asked to hear it once.
The child advocate hesitated, but Lena allowed a carefully edited version.
Katie closed her eyes.
The whisper sounded familiar.
Not close enough for certainty.
“I heard her at the funeral.”
“Where?” Lena asked.
“Behind the flowers.”
The chapel had been full of grieving relatives.
Katie remembered a woman saying Amanda’s name near the front before the service. The woman moved away when Robert entered.
Katie had not seen her face clearly.
Mr. Jennings reviewed chapel footage.
At 8:21 a.m., a woman in a black coat approached Amanda’s coffin before most relatives arrived. She placed white lilies near the head.
Her face remained hidden beneath a small veil.
At 8:23, Robert entered the preparation room containing Amanda’s purse.
The woman watched him from the chapel doorway.
She left before the service began.
The funeral guest list contained one unsigned name card.
Only the initial M had been written on it.
Robert claimed not to recognize the woman.
Lena did not believe him.
His Unit A-17 archive included repeated payments to a consulting company called Meridian Records.
The company helped create false property histories and conceal ownership.
Its director was a woman named Marissa Cole.
Marissa’s driver’s license photograph resembled the figure in the chapel.
She had worked with Robert for eight years.
Her current address was empty.
Her phone had been disconnected the morning after Amanda died.
Bank records showed Robert transferred fifty thousand dollars to Meridian Records two days before the poisoning.
The payment reference read:
Document retrieval.
Marissa may have been instructed to enter the house during Robert’s absence and recover the blue ledger.
Robert wanted to burn the rug while creating distance from the search.
If Marissa found Amanda alive, she may have left rather than risk exposure.
Lena obtained a warrant for Meridian Records’ office.
The space had been cleared.
A shredder contained fragments of Amanda’s bank statements.
A small trash bin held a strip of white lily ribbon matching the flowers placed beside the coffin.
Marissa had attended the funeral.
She watched Robert retrieve the ring.
She left when Katie approached the coffin.
Detectives issued a warrant for her arrest on evidence tampering and obstruction while continuing to investigate her actions inside the house.
Robert’s attorney denied any connection between the payment and Amanda’s death.
The Unit A-17 contracts contradicted him.
Marissa had created several companies used to receive stolen funds.
Amanda’s audit threatened her too.
Katie looked at the chapel image.
The woman’s posture bothered her.
“She wasn’t sad.”
“What did she look like?” Grace asked.
“Like she was waiting to see whether he found something.”
Robert and Marissa may not have entered the murder plan together.
But after Amanda collapsed, Robert used Marissa to remove evidence.
The exact instructions remained unknown.
Then investigators recovered a deleted message from Robert’s tablet sent at 3:14 a.m.
Come through side door. Find blue ledger and purse recorder. Do not call anyone.
Marissa replied:
What if she wakes up?
May you like
Robert’s answer had been deleted too thoroughly to recover.
👉 Robert summoned Marissa while Amanda was still alive and explicitly ordered her not to call for help.
