Chapter 3
Nurse Natalie Greer agreed to speak only with attorneys present.
Dario accepted the condition.
They met in Julia’s office.
Natalie was fifty-three now.
She looked nervous when she saw Dario.
“I don’t remember every patient from two years ago.”
“I understand.”
“But I remember your wife.”
“Why?”
“Because of the little girl.”
Elsie had been brought into the emergency department screaming for Elena.
That memory stayed with Natalie.
Elena herself was conscious intermittently.
In pain.
Frightened.
But oriented.
Natalie remembered removing jewelry before imaging.
Elena would not let hospital staff place the wedding ring into the property envelope.
“She asked for Camilla?”
“Yes.”
“You knew Camilla?”
“No. Mrs. Ravello identified her.”
“What happened?”
Natalie looked at Julia.
Then back at Dario.
“Elena put the ring into Camilla’s hand.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Yes.”
Dario felt his body tighten.
Natalie continued carefully.
“She said, ‘Give this to Dario if I can’t.’”
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing cryptic.
Just a dying woman making sure her husband received her ring.
Dario looked toward the window.
Camilla had kept it.
For two years.
“Anything else?”
Natalie hesitated.
“I remember them arguing.”
“About what?”
“I could not hear most of it.”
“Did you hear any words?”
“One.”
Dario waited.
“Car.”
Julia immediately interrupted.
“We should not build meaning around a single remembered word from two years ago.”
Dario looked at her.
She was right.
He hated that she was right.
Natalie had one more useful fact.
A man arrived shortly after Camilla.
She could not identify him confidently from memory.
Hospital security records could.
Preston Cross signed in at 10:04 p.m.
Thirty-three minutes before Dario arrived.
Dario’s expression changed.
Both siblings had been there.
Both later let him believe they arrived after he did.
Julia opened another folder.
“The hospital kept lobby-camera footage for only ninety days. It’s gone.”
“No miracle footage.”
“No.”
“Good.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Dario clarified.
“If we’re going to find this, I want something that survives a courtroom.”
Julia nodded.
The hospital records already established the first important clue.
Camilla possessed Elena’s ring because Elena personally entrusted it to her.
And Camilla had hidden that fact from Dario for two years.
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The question was no longer whether Camilla stole jewelry from a dead woman.
The question was what happened during the forty-four minutes Camilla and Preston spent around Elena before Dario arrived.
