Chapter 7

The grand jury met on Tuesday.

Camille gave her testimony from a private room at the hospital, via video link, with a prosecutor walking her through the events of that night. She answered questions for three hours with a calm voice and steady hands, while a nurse monitored the baby's heartbeat from a small machine in the corner.

By Wednesday morning, the grand jury had returned an indictment on all charges.

Eleanor was arrested at her apartment in the West Village as she tried to leave for a flight to her mother's house in New Hampshire. The police body-camera feed, which Richard obtained through a source at the department, showed her staring at the officers with something like disbelief, repeating "do you know who I am" and "I have a lawyer" and "this is a misunderstanding."

She was booked, photographed, and released on bail two hours later, her publicist releasing a statement that she was "confident she would be fully exonerated" and that "the video does not tell the whole story."

"What more could there be to the story?" Camille asked Richard as he showed her the statement on his phone. "The camera caught everything."

"She's going to try to argue provocation. That you said something off-camera, something that justified her reaction." Richard shrugged. "It's a weak defense. There's no evidence you said anything to provoke her—no witnesses, no audio from before the first shove. She'll need to invent a memory, and juries tend to smell that."

"And if she does invent something?"

"Then we'll bring in the people who knew you that night. The gala staff, the drivers, the security guards who saw you arrive. Every one of them will testify that you were calm, exhausted, and alone when you went up to your suite." Richard's eyes were flat. "She walked into a trap and she doesn't know it yet."

"Do you think she knows about the camera?" Camille asked. "The one that was filming before she came in?"

"The motion-activated cameras start recording when someone enters the room. They caught her arrival, her confession, everything. She saw the blinking light after you pointed it out, but she doesn't know how early the recording started." Richard's voice was quiet. "She thinks she has a window before the attack where she can claim you said something. She doesn't realize that window is already covered."

Camille looked at the statement on the phone one more time. "I want to see her."

Richard studied her for a long moment. "Is that wise?"