I couldn't move. Couldn't look away from that dying pothos.
Help me. Please. Someone help me.
The words looped over and over, getting weaker each time. The plant was dying, and soon the voice would fade completely. In a few more days, there would be nothing left but silence and brown leaves.
"Marcus?" Claire's voice seemed far away. "Are you okay?"
No. I wasn't okay. I was listening to her father's final moments, preserved in a plant that nobody had bothered to water.
"The plant," I managed to say. "On the windowsill."
She turned her flashlight toward it. "What about it?"
"It needs water."
"We're searching for evidence of who killed my father and you're worried about a plant?"
Yes. Because that plant held the truth. Because if it died completely, whatever it had absorbed would be gone forever.
I crossed the room and picked up the pot. The leaves were crispy, the soil completely dry. Three days without water. Most pothos could survive that, but this one was struggling.
"Is there a bathroom nearby?" I asked.
Claire stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "Down the hall. But—"
I was already moving. Found the bathroom, filled the pot with water, let it drain, filled it again. The plant drank desperately. I could feel its relief, like a person taking their first breath after nearly drowning.
Help me, it whispered, softer now. Please. Someone help.
"I'm trying," I said quietly.
When I came back to the office, Claire was at the desk, sorting through papers. She looked up. "Feel better?"
"Yeah. Sorry. I just—I can't stand seeing plants die."
It wasn't a lie. Just not the whole truth.
She went back to the papers. "Most of this is business stuff. Contracts, lawsuit filings, financial records. The police took anything recent." She held up a folder. "But I found something weird. Bank statements from twenty years ago. My father kept them separate, in a locked drawer."
"How'd you open it?"
"Crowbar. It's in the car if you need to borrow it." She spread the statements across the desk. "Look at this. March 1998. A withdrawal for fifty thousand dollars. Cash."
"Maybe he bought something?"
"In cash? Fifty grand?" She flipped through more pages. "Here's another one. June 1998. Thirty thousand. September, another forty. All cash withdrawals, all within six months."
"Six months of what?"
Claire was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was different. Smaller. "Six months before my mother got sick."
The pothos on the windowsill whispered: Truth, truth, she needs to know the truth.
I set the plant down carefully and moved closer to look at the statements. The numbers were there in black and white. Over a hundred thousand dollars withdrawn in cash during a six-month period, then nothing. Normal transactions after that.
"What was he paying for?" Claire asked. "Or who was he paying?"
I didn't have an answer. But the plants in this room were getting louder, overlapping voices creating a mess of whispers. I tried to focus, tried to separate the useful information from the noise.
The fern in the corner: Shouting, always shouting, throwing things, someone on the phone saying please, please, I'll get you the money.
The orchid on the filing cabinet: Crying, quiet crying, middle of the night, looking at photos, saying I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
The pothos in my hands: Help me, someone help me, he's here, he's in the house, please—
"He's in the house," I said out loud before I could stop myself.
Claire's head snapped up. "What?"
Damn it. I'd said that out loud.
"Nothing. I just meant—when your father died. He wasn't alone."
"The police said there was no sign of forced entry. No evidence anyone else was there." She paused. "How do you know he wasn't alone?"
I couldn't tell her. Couldn't explain. "Just a feeling."
She watched me carefully, and I could see the gears turning in her head. She knew I was hiding something. She just hadn't figured out what yet.
"Let's keep looking," she said finally.
We searched for another hour. Found more financial records, business contracts, letters from lawyers. Nothing that explained the cash withdrawals. Nothing about Claire's mother.
Then Claire pulled out a box from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. Inside were photographs. Old ones, from before digital cameras. She picked through them slowly, her flashlight illuminating faces from another time.
"That's my mom," she said softly, holding up a photo of a woman with dark hair and Claire's same tired eyes. "This was before she got sick. She looks happy here."
There were more photos. Family pictures, vacation shots, birthday parties. A whole life documented in snapshots.
Then Claire went still. "Marcus. Look at this."
She handed me a photograph. It showed Robert Hendricks standing next to another man, both of them in suits, shaking hands in front of a building. The photo was dated on the back: April 1998.
Right in the middle of those cash withdrawals.
"Do you recognize the other man?" I asked.
"No. But look at the building behind them."
I looked closer. It was a medical building. The sign was partially visible: Riverside Medical Research Facility.
"My mother was treated at Riverside Hospital," Claire said. "Same medical group."
The pothos whispered: Research, experiments, not cancer, not cancer, they lied.
My hands started shaking.
"What if she wasn't just a regular patient?" Claire's voice was tight. "What if my father paid them to do something? What if that's what those cash withdrawals were for?"
"You don't know that. It could be anything."
"Then why keep this photo locked in a drawer for twenty years?" She grabbed the box and started going through more pictures. "There has to be something else here. Something that explains—"
She stopped. Pulled out another photo.
This one showed a hospital room. A woman in a bed, unconscious or asleep. Claire's mother. And standing beside the bed, writing something on a clipboard, was the same man from the first photo.
On the back, written in Robert Hendricks's handwriting: Dr. Peter Voss. Final treatment. May 1998.
One month before Claire's mother died.
Claire's hands were shaking now. "Final treatment. Not final visit. Treatment."
"Claire—"
"They were experimenting on her. My father paid them to experiment on my mother and it killed her." Her voice broke. "That's what he wanted to tell me. That's the truth he couldn't live with anymore."
The plants in the room went quiet, like they were holding their breath.
Then the pothos whispered something new: He found out. Dr. Voss came back. Wanted more money. Threatened to tell. Had to stop him. But he brought someone. He brought—
The front door downstairs slammed open.
Both of us froze.
Footsteps on the marble floor. Heavy. Deliberate. Coming toward the stairs.
Claire grabbed my arm. "I locked that door," she whispered. "I know I locked it."
The footsteps started climbing the stairs.
We weren't alone in the house anymore.