They left in Vincent’s second car, which had been parked inside the unit for days.
That discovery changed the case.
Gregory had possessed Vincent’s vehicle before Vincent died.
The police issued alerts for the car while detectives began dismantling the story Gregory had written for me.
The offshore account bearing my name had been created with a scanned passport that expired nine years earlier.
The electronic transfers came from Gregory’s office computer.
The sedative receipt carried an employee identification number belonging to Mara’s assistant.
The photographs of me entering the office had been taken on evenings Gregory himself had asked me to retrieve files.
He had built a cage from real moments and false meanings.
But he had overlooked the garage.
I restored old cars as a hobby.
After tools disappeared the previous spring, I installed a security system with two cameras and a local memory drive.
Gregory knew about the camera facing the exterior door, so he entered through the laundry room.
He did not know about the second camera above my workbench.
Its lens covered the interior doorway and the staircase.
The recording showed Gregory coming downstairs at 7:12 that morning, fully dressed and carrying a large black bag.
Twenty minutes later, he returned with the silicone dummy folded inside a shipping crate.
He dressed it in our bedroom, placed his wedding ring on its hand, and set the recording device beneath the pillow.
At 8:03, Vincent entered through the garage.
He appeared unsteady.
Gregory supported him by one arm while Mara carried Vincent’s coat.
Vincent tried to pull away.
There was no audio, but the struggle was unmistakable.
Gregory forced him into the passenger seat of Gregory’s car.
Mara followed in Vincent’s vehicle.
The camera captured Gregory looking directly toward the workbench before he left.
He smiled.
He believed the camera was only a dead motion sensor.
For the first time that night, I felt something other than grief.
I felt the shape of the truth closing around him.
At 3:18 in the morning, state police spotted Vincent’s car near the Canadian border.
Gregory was driving.
Mara sat beside him.
They did not stop immediately.
For twelve miles, Gregory drove through heavy rain while patrol cars followed at a controlled distance.
He finally pulled onto the shoulder after officers deployed a tire-deflation device.
Mara exited with her hands raised.
Gregory remained behind the wheel until officers broke the passenger window and removed him.
In the trunk, police found $640,000 in cash, two false passports, Vincent’s laptop, and a second blue folder.
That folder contained the real company ledgers.
It also contained a document transferring my 51 percent ownership to Gregory.
My signature had been forged again.
During his first interview, Gregory denied everything.
He claimed Vincent had discovered my embezzlement and offered to help Gregory escape an abusive marriage.
He said the dummy had been my idea.
He said Mara was frightened of me.
He said the garage video had been altered.
Then detectives played the recording from the phone beneath the pillow.
“Caroline will be useful for once—the fraud is all in her name.”
Gregory stopped talking.
Mara began talking soon afterward.
She admitted helping Gregory create the false accounts and documents.
She claimed she had believed Vincent would only be frightened into silence, not killed.
According to her, Gregory had crushed sedatives into Vincent’s coffee before bringing him to our house.
At Millstone Bridge, Gregory moved the unconscious Vincent into the driver’s seat, placed his own identification on him, and sent the car down the rain-slicked embankment.
