Page 25 of Dane

“So we’re filing something of our own,” Lana said with a grin that wasn’t at all pleasant. I got the feeling she enjoyed the fight.

“Yes,” Ethan agreed. “Brielle, you’re going to give a sworn statement that includes any communication where Sutton tied your compliance to your grandmother’s situation. If you have those, named and dated in a sworn statement, that’s the thing which is going to intrigue a prosecutor and make them want to dig deeper.”

I looked from Ethan to Lana. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do you have anything that shows he had your grandmother moved on purpose?”

“No. But someone on staff should know why she got moved.”

“I’ll find someone to lean on,” Ethan said without looking up from his phone. “I’ll figure out exactly what happened.”

“In the meantime,” Lana continued, “I’d like you to tell me exactly what happened before the trial.”

I spent the next two hours going over every detail about my interaction with Mr. Sutton from the moment I met him, ending with him making me sign the statement he’d prepared.

“Was anyone else in the room?”

“His deputy manager. I don’t know if that person is still at the bank.”

“Give me his name. I’ll track him down,” Ethan said. He still hadn’t looked up from his phone. I gave it, and he continued doing whatever it was he was doing.

Ethan opened a folder in front of him. “OK, the access logs. Knight already pulled the anomaly in the vault corridor logs from the data on the drive. The timestamp Sutton put in that statement doesn’t match the actual electronic entry record. The real log shows no badge swipe in that corridor during the relevant window.” He looked at me. “You knew this.”

“I figured it out a few years later when I got access to the archive system. The log he referenced in my statement had been amended after the fact. The original timestamp is still in the backup file he didn’t know I could reach.” I watched Ethan’s expression sharpen. “That’s the faked access log. He created a supporting document for my statement, and the creation metadata on that document post-dates the robbery by eleven days.”

“When was your grandmother removed from the skilled care nursing home where she resided?”

“Six or seven years after the trial, I think?” I winced, glancing at Dane. He reached for my hand under the table and squeezed it. “At first, after the trial, I was terrified to do or say anything out of line. I wasn’t naive enough to think I had a chance of winning any confrontation with Mr. Sutton. And starting even before the trial, he’d moved me where he could keep a close eye on me.”

“Hey,” Lana said, reaching over to take my hand across the table. “You were stuck in a terrifying situation. Any time money is involved, people won’t hesitate to seriously harm someone. You had no one to advocate for you, and you probably didn’t have money for a lawyer. If you did, you still needed a job to support yourself and help your grandmother. You were in a no-win situation. So, what triggered the eviction from the first home?”

“I gave Mr. Sutton my resignation letter with two weeks’ notice. I decided I couldn’t continue to work in the environment I found myself in. He talked me out of it in twenty minutes, never raised his voice once.” I found myself staring at the corner of the table, the grain pattern blurry. “On my lunch break, I drove to the public library and filed a complaint with the banking commission. I used the report form and put down every detail I had. Three pages worth of information.” I looked up. “I did it from the public terminal so he wouldn’t catch me. I didn’t even dare print a copy.”

“And three weeks later, your grandmother lost her bed.” Lana said it flat, pen already moving.

“Yeah. I can’t prove it, but I know the complaint’s what did it.”

“Did he ever indicate that he was aware of the complaint?”

“Nothing explicit. Just the timing.” I drew a line with my finger on the table. “I gave notice, then folded under pressure. Complaint goes in. Three weeks later, we get a notice the home can no longer care for my grandmother with no further explanation. He called me into his office the same afternoon and told me he’d heard about my grandmother’s troubles. He said he could help me find a new placement.” I took a breath. “Anyway, that’s when she got kicked out.”

“And after that, did he put anything in writing like in emails or text messages?”

“Not that first time. It just happened. But the emails from later years are on the drive. Several of them telling me he knew my secret and had taken steps to implicate me if I didn’t continue with business as usual.”

“He stopped thinking you’d ever act,” Dane said.

It was the first thing he’d said since we sat down. I gave him a grateful smile for the support before focusing back on Lana.

When we finished, Lana had four pages of clean, sequenced narrative in her hand. She read it back to me paragraph by paragraph. We made a couple of corrections, then she printed it out and handed it to me across the desk.

“Read every word,” she said. “If anything is wrong, now’s when you say so.”

Twelve years ago, a man handed me a pen and I signed my name to a lie in front of a notary. Today, I was going to sign my name to the truth in front of one. The irony wasn’t lost on me, nor was the fact that no one believed a liar, no matter the reason. But maybe I could cross that bridge when it came.

I initialed each page and signed the last one. Lana reached into her bag and produced a notary stamp. She verified my ID, filled in the form, and squeezed the stamp to emboss the page.

“We’ll take it from here,” she said, giving me another kind, encouraging smile.