I said it again in July, and in August, and he started to say “You’re welcome” with a smile.
I should tell you what I did for a living.
For fourteen years, I’d worked for the state of Nebraska.
I started as a caseworker with eighty-one vulnerable adults on my list.
I’d climbed to Regional Administrator of Adult Protective Services for the Omaha district, supervising twenty-three investigators.
My job was to catch the people who took money from those who couldn’t fight back.
Keith knew I “worked for the state.”
He’d stopped asking what I did years ago.
“Paperwork,” he’d say, at parties.
I never corrected him.
People who need to underestimate you will do it for free.
On the night of March 27th, Una Hendry had filed a report with the state hotline.
Mandatory reporter, she’d written.
The case landed on the desk of Sidney Vogel, an investigator I had trained myself.
Sidney called me the next morning.
“Jodie, I can’t believe this is you.”
“I’m not your supervisor on this,” I said. “I’m a v*ctim. Treat me like one. Do it by the book.”
“I’ll need the pattern. Money, motive, access.”
“Then don’t touch him yet.”
“He’s going to keep taking it.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the pattern.”
Week by week, the file grew.
The Friday memo lines, all twenty-six, with my own thumbprint on every one.
The 41-minute audio from the day room.
The medical alert log: 9:52 p.m.
Keith’s own text to Carly, which Sidney later pulled from the carrier: 9:48 p.m. She’s asleep. Ten min.
A Rolex Datejust, $9,150, bought July 3rd on our joint card at a jeweler in the Old Market.
A Cartier Love bracelet, $7,400, August 22nd.
A hotel in Papillion, every Thursday, 12:40 to 4:10.
Carly came by with casseroles on the Thursdays Keith “had to work.”
She’d sit on my sofa in her new gold bracelet and squeeze my hand.
“You’re so strong,” she’d whisper.
“I couldn’t do this without friends like you,” I’d say.
On the 22nd of September, Tonya brought me a small white box from a party store.
Inside, I’d put the things I wanted him to find.
That Friday, I tied a ribbon around it myself.
PART 3
The scream bounced off the bedroom walls and out into the hallway.
In the box, nested in white tissue, sat a small plastic trophy, the gold-painted kind you buy for eleven dollars at a party store.
The brass plate on the base read:
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