My Three Daughters Were Silent for 14 Months—Then They Named the Killer Living Under My Roof 3093

The forensic interview took place the next morning at a child advocacy center in Mineola.

The building looked deliberately unimportant. Beige walls. Small parking lot. A painted wooden sun beside the entrance.

Olivia refused to get out of the car.

Sophie got out, then climbed back in.

Nora slept against Grace's shoulder.

I stood beside the open rear door and fought every instinct I had.

"We can go home," I said.

Olivia looked at me.

"Really?"

It was the fifth word she had spoken directly to me since the day before.

I wanted to grab it and hold it.

Instead I nodded.

"Really."

Grace crouched beside the door.

"Or we can go in and look at the fish tank, and if you hate it, we leave."

Olivia thought about that.

"Fish?"

"Huge ones," Grace said. "Possibly sharks."

Sophie gave her a suspicious look.

"Not sharks," Grace admitted. "But one orange fish has an attitude problem."

Sophie climbed out.

Olivia followed.

I stayed in the waiting room while a trained interviewer met with them one at a time. Reyes had warned me I would not be allowed to watch live. She did not want my reactions shaping what the girls said.

That was reasonable.

It also made the forty-eight minutes Olivia spent behind a closed door feel like forty-eight years.

Grace sat beside me reading a three-month-old parenting magazine.

"You can stop pretending to read," I said.

"You can stop pretending you're not counting ceiling tiles."

I looked up.

I was on thirty-two.

"How did you end up working for me?"

She lowered the magazine.

"This is the conversation you choose now?"

"I need something that isn't that door."

She considered me, then closed the magazine.

"My mother got sick last year. I left a hotel job in Boston and came back to Long Island to help her. She died in January. I didn't want to go back to hotels. Mrs. Donnelly knew my aunt from church."

"That's it?"

"You were hoping for a secret criminal past?"

"It would explain your attitude."

"Customer service explains my attitude."

Despite myself, I smiled.

Then Olivia's door opened.

The smile vanished.

The interviewer walked Olivia toward us. She was a woman in her fifties named Dr. Karen Patel, though she had asked the girls to call her Karen.

Olivia looked exhausted.

She climbed into my lap without asking.

I wrapped my arms around her carefully.

Karen did not tell me what Olivia had said.

"Detective Reyes will speak with you after all three," she said.

Sophie went next.

Nora's interview lasted less than ten minutes. At three, there was only so much anyone could responsibly ask, especially when most of her speech had returned less than forty-eight hours earlier.

At noon, Reyes took me into a conference room.

"Their accounts are consistent in the areas that matter," she said.

I gripped the back of a chair.

"Meaning?"

"Olivia and Sophie both placed Sebastian in the parking lot. Both described their mother arguing with him. Both said Isabelle told them to get down. Olivia remembered Sebastian coming to the rear passenger window afterward. Sophie remembered seeing him later in the garage washing his hands."

"Nora?"

"She identified Sebastian from photographs and said 'Uncle Seb boom Mommy.' We are not going to pretend a three-year-old's phrasing answers every legal question."

I sat.

"Is that enough?"

"It's enough to move. We also found something in the fleet archives."

She opened a folder.

"B-17 was a dark blue Cadillac sedan your company retired eleven months ago. It was assigned to Sebastian for executive use."

"Where is it now?"

"Sold at auction. We're locating the buyer."

"You think evidence is still in it after fourteen months?"

"Probably not. But vehicle history matters."

"And the parking stub?"

"The garage was in Mineola. Their payment records are archived. We have a subpoena out."

I stared at the table.

"You can arrest him."

"We can seek a warrant if the district attorney agrees probable cause is sufficient. That's being discussed now."

I stood.

"Where is he?"

"Still unknown."

"So while everybody discusses, he disappears."

Reyes's eyes hardened.

"This is exactly the point where you become dangerous to your own case."

"My children are afraid he'll come back."

"Then protect them. Don't hunt him."

I walked to the window.

Outside, Grace was pushing Nora on a plastic rocking horse. Sophie sat on the floor beside her. Olivia was watching me through the glass.

Protect them.

I had always translated those words into eliminate the threat.

Maybe protection could also mean staying where they could find me.

My phone rang.

It was Anthony Greco, one of my senior men.

"We found Seb's car," he said.

Reyes saw my face.

"Who is that?"

I did not answer her.

"Where?" I asked Anthony.

"Parking garage near JFK. Keys under the seat. Airport cameras show him going inside around six this morning. We got guys checking terminals."

Reyes stood.

"Dominic."

I looked at her.

Then I made a choice that would have been impossible for me forty-eight hours earlier.

"Anthony, pull everyone back."

Silence.

"What?"

"Do not touch Sebastian. Do not follow him. Send me the level and space number, then leave."

"Boss—"

"Now."

I ended the call and handed Reyes my phone.

She stared at it.

"Garage location is in the text."

She took the phone.

"That was smart."

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm a detective. Suspicion is part of the job."

Ten minutes later, officers were on their way to JFK.

They found Sebastian's car.

They found his suitcase in the trunk.

Inside were shirts, cash, toiletries, and three framed photographs wrapped in a sweater: our parents, the girls at the beach, and Isabelle holding Nora the day she came home from the hospital. Reyes told me about the photographs because she wanted to know whether they normally belonged in his room. They did.

That detail unsettled me more than a bag full of money would have. Sebastian was not trying to erase us. He was trying to carry the version of the family he believed he had protected.

They did not find Sebastian.

At three twenty, my front gate called.

"Mr. Romano," the guard said, his voice strained. "Your brother is here."

I looked through the conference-room glass at my daughters.