Chapter 7 - THE CAMERA HE EXPECTED TO USE
I had never told Douglas where the camera was hidden.
But he knew it existed.
Two weeks before the attack, he noticed the app open on my phone. I told him I had installed a camera because someone had searched my room.
He laughed and said I had inherited my mother’s suspicion.
The night of the assault, the bookshelf camera recorded the room from a high angle. The image was clear enough to show Aaron dragging me, but the microphone was muffled.
A forensic technician enhanced parts of the audio.
Seven minutes before Aaron entered, Douglas came into my room alone.
He moved the nightstand lamp, looked toward the bookshelf, and spoke quietly.
The first words were unclear.
The last sentence was not.
“She needs to say Aaron made the transfers.”
That changed the purpose of the attack.
Dad had not simply wanted to frighten me into silence.
He wanted footage of me blaming Aaron.
The emails had been designed to make Aaron furious enough to force a confession. The camera was supposed to transform that coerced statement into evidence Douglas could use.
He expected Aaron to appear aggressive.
He expected me to appear frightened but dishonest.
What he did not expect was for me to mention his promise.
“Dad, tell Aaron what you promised me.”
That line made Aaron loosen his grip because it contradicted everything Dad had told him.
It also forced Douglas to retreat before the scene ended the way he had planned.
Diane reviewed earlier company records while police analyzed the devices.
She found that the transfers bearing Aaron’s approval occurred on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Those were the mornings Aaron drove the Cincinnati route and remained away from the office for at least eight hours.
Douglas stayed behind to handle sales calls.
My mother’s old calendar contained small red marks beside several of those dates.
At first, I assumed they were medical appointments.
Then Diane remembered Carol’s habit.
She marked any transaction she intended to question at Sunday dinner.
The red dates matched the unauthorized withdrawals.
The pattern reached back almost two years before my mother’s death.
Douglas had been preparing to place the blame on Aaron long before I began examining the accounts.
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The attack was not the beginning of his plan.
It was the moment his plan started failing.
