Trevor saw a way to pull money out of the company. A fake supplier. A fake contract. A credit line big enough to hide it.
Monica controlled the administrative side. She had my login information. She had access to my
phone. She had her own approval code, MH-17.
And I was gone. For three months. Sitting in hospital waiting rooms holding Trevor’s mother’s hand.
They didn’t even have to hide it from me. I just wasn’t there to see it.
And then, when the bank flagged it, the suspicious payments became the very evidence they used to
accuse me.
They’d built the crime, and then they’d built the case.
But there was still one question I couldn’t let go of.
How did the jury convict me? I’d said, over and over, It wasn’t me. I was at the hospital. Why didn’t
anyone check?
Helen found part of the answer in my original defense file.
My first attorney, a nice man named Mr. Briggs who I’d hired with what was left of my personal savings, had put up some evidence in my favor. Character witnesses. My history with the company. Loretta’s illness.
But he hadn’t gotten the technical records. The bank’s electronic logs that would have shown exactly which device approved each transaction, from which location, at what time. He hadn’t requested them before the deadlines passed. By the time he thought to ask for them, the court wouldn’t allow it.
“So the court only had what was in front of it,” Helen said. “Trevor’s testimony. Monica’s paperwork.
The approval records that looked like they came from you. And on that evidence, the court decided it was enough.”
I sat there in her office, staring at the defense file.
