Chapter 114 Impatience and Exhaustion

Noah’s POV:

I’m momentarily lost, not at all sure what she’s referring to. What would she possibly have to go to the police station about? I find myself looking for injuries, scared that something has happened to her and then it hits me.

“You asked them about your parents’ death?” I ask hesitantly.

I have about a million questions but I don’t want to overwhelm her. Walking her through to the kitchen, I pour us both a glass of wine as she begins to explain. Sitting down at the kitchen table, she places a brown envelope down on the table between us.

Biting inside of my cheek, I stare down at that envelope.

“Have you opened it?” I ask.

“I can’t do it…” She says it like she thinks I’m going to be disappointed in her. Silly fool. Why would I be? If our situations were reversed, I’m not sure I’d be handling any of this half as well as she is.

“You want me to?” I ask, my hand moving towards the envelope slowly as I wait for her confirmation.

“Please.”

The noise of the envelope opening and me pulling the pages from within it, are the only sounds that fill the little apartment. I’m pretty sure Eden isn’t even breathing as she waits to hear what the case file says about her parents’ deaths.

I skim through it, looking for anything that stands out before returning to the front page to give it a thorough looking over.

“Did you tell them about Martin?” I ask, hoping that I at least sound non-judgemental.

She shakes her head, not looking me in the eyes, her face downcast.

“Eden,” I say, trying to pull her attention back to me. She has nothing to feel ashamed about. It’s completely understandable that she wouldn’t want to believe that someone she has trusted her entire life would do something so truly heinous.

“Eden!” I say it again, a little firmer this time. “You’ve done nothing wrong. You hear me?”

Her eyes dart to mine and I see tears there. It’s pretty clear that she’s overwhelmed by everything. And I need to do something to ease some of her burden. I don’t know how much longer she’ll be able to carry on like this… Worrying about her grandma, the company, and her parents. It’s too much for one person to cope with.

“Do you want me to read this aloud?” I ask uncertainly.

She nods her head, causing me to grimace.

“I’m really not sure you need to hear it,” I try.

“If we want to resolve this quickly, the yes I do.”

I can’t really argue with her there. I know next to nothing about how her parents died. She’s the one that will be able to compare the police report to her own remembrance.

With a deep sigh, I begin, reeling off the case number and the date of the accident as robotically as I can. I hate that we’re having to read this, that every word I say brings her more pain. I read the first page without looking at her, too scared to see what sort of devastation I might find on her face.

It’s only when I finish the last line on the page, that I glance up, asking her if she wants to continue. She doesn’t say anything, simply nodding her head and so I turn the page and continue. We keep going like that, recounting every single detail of the car accident that took her parents’ lives.

The report says that the other driver was drunk and that he’d died during the crash. Reading what Eden already knows aloud feels cruel. I pause, looking down at the page, my eyes landing on a particular line.

“The coroner’s report proved inconclusive,” I read quietly, my interest caught, “as to whether he died on impact or…”

“What?” Eden demands.

“The driver had symptoms of hypothermia,” I say.

Her eyes blink several times as she tries to understand. “So?”

“It’s just weird, isn’t it?” I ask. “He’s drunk, driving a car and has hypothermia.”

“Maybe he was cold,” Eden replies with a shrug.

“Come on, love. It takes a lot to get hypothermia.”

“What’s your point?”

“How well do you think a person with hypothermia is going to be driving a car?”

“Well, obviously not well seeing as how he killed my parents.”

“It says here that the driver didn’t have any tissue trauma, no bruises or cuts that appeared to be related to the crash. He had a head on collision and wasn’t injured at all.”

“He died Noah!”

“Did he?” I ask uncertainly. “Not from the crash he didn’t.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I think someone staged it.”

Eden gets to her feet, her impatience and the exhaustion caused from trying to juggle so much alone getting the better of her as she begins pacing.

“I think the person who killed your parents,” I begin cautiously, “grabbed a homeless person and made it look like a drunk driving accident.”

“A homeless person? How do you know…”

“The hypothermia.”

“What?”

“Homeless people die more often during winter,” I explain. “They drink alcohol to keep them warm but instead of helping, it seems to make matters worse.”

“How do you know that?” she asks.

“I read the news,” I say with a shrug. “Anyway, the coroner’s report is inconclusive as to the cause of death, but it does suggest hypothermia.”

“So he died of hypothermia, so what? When did he die?”

“Around the time of the accident,” I say after double checking. “But Eden, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“If he died at the same time,” she argues, “he killed my parents.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. The killer could have killed your parents and then taken his corpse off the side of the road and staged the whole thing.”

“Why would a dead homeless person just be lying on the side of the road? Aren’t you fetching just a little bit?”

She’s right. It is a little bit too convenient.

“Well… either that or there was a drunk person walking past at the time, stumbling and the sort. The killer helped him into the car, thinking he’d wake up in the morning and think he’d killed your parents, but he died of hypothermia instead.”

“Noah, your imagination astounds me.” She’s almost laughing. She doesn’t believe what I’m suggesting. Maybe she’s right… It is a little farfetched.

Flipping through the pages, I find a memory stick stuck to one page.

“Do you have a laptop here?” I ask, pulling it from the page.

“Sure,” she replies, before making her way from the room in search of the device.

Maybe Eden’s right. The police would have noticed if something like that had happened. Perhaps we’ve been looking into all this corporate espionage stuff too long now and my mind is full of crazy spy film ideas.

When she returns, she places her laptop on the table in front of me. Standing beside me, she turns it on and enters a password before I put the memory stick into the USB port.

“I’m not sure I want to see whatever is on this thing,” she says and I instinctively reach up to wrap an arm around her waist before pulling her down so she’s sitting across my lap.

“Don’t look then,” I whisper, shielding her eyes and pulling her towards me so her face is hidden in the crook of my neck.

There’s a video file on the device and I click it open. It happens too quick and I’m relieved that Eden isn’t looking as I watch the cars slam into each other on the screen. It’s easy to see that Eden’s parents had no chance of surviving such a crash and even though she hasn’t watched it, Eden begins to sob gently into my shirt.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asks.

“It’s not something you need to see, that’s for sure,” I tell her, pulling her closer, desperately wanting to protect her.

It’s then that I see the man. There in a dark parker coat is a man who has clearly had one too many drinks. He appears to be completely oblivious to the fact that there has been a car crash mere metres away from him as he stumbles about on the pavement before abruptly falling down.

Pausing the video, I say, “Eden, I was right.”

“What?” she asks, her voice quivering.

“I was right about the drunk,” I say pointing at the screen.

“Is there anything more?” she asks, looking up. She reaches forward, resuming the video but it quickly ends.

“I guess whoever did it, erased the tape,” I suggest.

“My parents were murdered?” Eden asks, her eyes pleading with me to tell her it’s not true.

“I think so.”