now, with Nicholas in prison for the Albatross conspiracy, Rachel had a hard time believing Robles would have been willing to kill to hide simple financial impropriety on his brother-in-law’s part.
She thought back to the night he broke into their home. Robles had been muttering under his breath. She’d dismissed it before as the rantings of a drugged-out lunatic, but now . . .
Rachel booted up the Microsoft Surface Studio desktop, upgraded with an Intel Core i7 processor, thirty-two gigs of RAM, and two terabytes of built-in memory. She also had six wireless Seagate external hard drives with five terabytes of memory.
Each hard drive contained files from one calendar year. She opened the drive containing files from the previous month and selected the folder “SecCam.”
Inside the folder were hundreds of video data files, each marked with a date. She found the folder marked the day of Robles’s break-in and opened it. There were twelve files, each corresponding to one of the home’s security cameras. She opened seven of the files. Seven different videos popped up on the screen, each from a camera recording a different part of the house.
She enlarged the video from the kitchen feed and scrubbed it to 9:29 p.m. About two minutes before the gunshot. The feed showed Robles skulking around outside the property, looking for a way in.
Rachel opened the other six videos and brought them all to 9:29 p.m. Then she pressed play.
She watched Christopher Robles enter and exit every camera. He tried to open the sliding back door. Then each window around the house. And, of course, he checked the front door. While Robles was testing her security, Rachel was up in Eric’s room. Oblivious. It was fortunate Robles had not been of sound mind. A smarter man might have done real damage.
Finally, Robles seemed to get frustrated, pulled the gun from his jacket pocket, blasted out the back window, and climbed through. Just as Rachel thought. The break-in had been spur of the moment. Robles had not exactly been a planner.
Then Rachel watched each monitor as Robles wandered through the house, the SIG Sauer clear even on the grainy feed. She turned the volume all the way up. Robles was muttering. And now, for the first time, Rachel could hear what he was saying. Some of it, at least.
“Told Isabelle not to trust him,” Robles said. “Money talks and bullshit walks. He wants her money after he took his wife’s money? Bitch, please. He won’t protect Sis, then I will.”
Rachel listened. She took out a notepad and transcribed Robles’s words.
“I know it’s his. Has to be.”
Rachel paused the videos. What had to be his? Robles had clearly been referring to Nicholas Drummond. He was worried that Drummond would go after Isabelle’s money. Not an unreasonable concern, given his history of draining his wives’ bank accounts.
But what had to be his?
Then, it hit her.
The baby.
Constance Wright had been pregnant when she died. And Robles had thought Nicholas Drummond was the father.
She leaned back in her chair, thinking. Early on, she had pegged Drummond as the number one suspect in Wright’s murder. But surely Serrano and Tally had run Drummond’s DNA against the fetal tissue. And if it had come back a match, they would have had enough probable cause to charge him with Constance’s murder.
Even Robles had thought Drummond was the father. But he’d been wrong. But how had Robles known that Constance was pregnant?
Rachel recalled her conversation with Serrano and Tally at the Drummond house. Serrano had said Constance Wright had called Nicholas Drummond just prior to her murder. It was possible Robles eavesdropped on Nicholas and Isabelle or simply listened to Nicholas’s voice mails. If Constance told Nicholas she was pregnant and going after his money, Christopher may have assumed Nicholas was the father.
Rachel was convinced that Constance was making a play to get restitution for Nicholas’s $1.2 million fraud. That money was rightfully hers. And her baby’s.
Christopher knew something. His death at the hospital was beyond suspicious. Someone wanted him out of the picture. But Nicholas Drummond had neither the stomach nor the smarts to off his brother-in-law in a hospital. Especially since Robles, charged with breaking and entering and attempted murder, would have been heavily guarded by—
Rachel bolted upright.
Cops.
Robles would have been guarded by cops. There was only one way someone could have gotten to him.
Of course. How could she not have seen it?
Serrano.
CHAPTER 38
She cursed herself for being so blind. Serrano said it himself at Voss field: Wright singlehandedly