Seventy-one years old.
Gray hair.
Heavy shoulders.
The same navy blazer he had worn for twenty years whenever he wanted strangers to believe we were more respectable than we actually were.
Martin and I had worked together for thirty-two years.
He had been at my husband’s funeral.
He had held my hand when our first major construction company nearly collapsed during the recession.
He had spent Christmas Eve in a muddy trailer with me once because a bridge project had failed inspection and neither of us trusted the subcontractor to fix it alone.
He was not merely a colleague.
He was one of the few people I had trusted with almost every important financial detail of my life.
Detective Aaron Mills placed the photograph on the table.
“Mrs. Sutter, when did you last speak with Mr. Vale?”
“Yesterday morning.”
The detective paused.
“Before or after your son assaulted you?”
“Before.”
