Anna read the photograph of Dererick’s note until the words stopped looking handwritten and became shapes on a screen.
You always wanted the truth.
Come hear the part Nolan still won’t tell you.
She knew immediately what Dererick wanted. Not necessarily a meeting. Not yet. He wanted division. He wanted Anna to look at Nolan’s confession, his notebooks, his warnings, and wonder which pieces had been arranged to protect himself. Dererick had spent years learning how uncertainty changed people. Even while running, he was still using the same method.
Anna handed the phone back to Morales. “I’m not going anywhere he tells me to.”
“Good.”
“But I want to know what Nolan hasn’t told us.”
Morales had already reached the same conclusion.
Nolan was brought into another interview room. By then he had formally retained an attorney and begun negotiating the conditions under which he would cooperate. His willingness to surrender did not erase his exposure. He had admitted assisting Dererick, concealing Rachel Boone’s death, and participating in the early development of the system.
When Morales placed the photograph of the note on the table, Nolan’s face lost color.
His attorney noticed.
“So there is something,” Morales said.
Nolan looked toward the mirrored glass.
Anna was not behind it. Morales had refused to let Dererick dictate even that much. She watched the interview remotely from another secured room with Clare.
Nolan rubbed both hands over his face.
“There are many things.”
“Dererick believes there is one that matters to Anna.”
Nolan’s eyes remained lowered.
Clare whispered, “He knows.”
Anna said nothing.
Morales waited.
Silence did more than accusation could have.
Finally Nolan said, “Ask me about the first time Dererick saw Anna.”
Anna straightened.
Morales did.
Nolan swallowed.
“It wasn’t when they met.”
Anna felt a small, immediate sickness.
She and Dererick had always told the story the same way. They met at a charity fundraiser six years earlier. Clare had persuaded Anna to attend after a miserable month at work. Dererick accidentally spilled sparkling water near her shoes, apologized too much, and later found her by the dessert table.
It had become one of their marriage stories.
Friends had heard it.
Family had heard it.
Anna had told it herself.
“What does that mean?” Morales asked.
Nolan stared at the tabletop.
“Dererick saw her about four months before the fundraiser.”
“Where?”
“A pharmacy.”
Anna’s hand went to her mouth.
She remembered nothing unusual about a pharmacy four months before meeting Dererick.
Nolan continued.
He and Dererick had been watching someone else.
A woman named Melissa Grant.
Melissa worked at a dental office and regularly stopped at the same pharmacy after work. Dererick had been mapping her routine. Nolan was waiting in a car while Dererick went inside.
Anna happened to be there.
“What did she do?” Morales asked.
“Nothing.”
Nolan’s answer came quickly.
“That was the point.”
He explained that Dererick noticed Anna helping an elderly customer whose shopping bag had torn. She knelt on the floor, gathered the woman’s purchases, found another bag, and waited until an employee came over.
A trivial kindness.
Anna did not remember it.
Dererick did.
“He came back to the car and talked about her.”
“What did he say?”
Nolan hesitated.
“That she noticed people.”
Anna felt Clare turn toward her.
“He followed her?”
“Not that day.”
“But later?”
“Yes.”
The word struck like a physical blow.
Four months before the fundraiser, Dererick had begun learning Anna’s routine.
He discovered where she worked.
Where she bought groceries.
Which café she visited on Saturdays.
That she had a sister at the hospital.
That she volunteered twice a month.
That she lived alone.
The fundraiser had not been a meeting.
It had been an introduction.
Dererick had arranged to be there.
The spilled drink had not been an accident.
The dessert-table conversation had not been chance.
Anna stood and walked away from the screen.
Clare followed but did not touch her.
“Everything,” Anna whispered.
“No,” Clare said.
Anna turned.
“He chose the room. He chose the conversation. He knew who I was.”
“He chose his behavior. That doesn’t mean he authored yours.”
Anna wanted to believe the distinction mattered.
At that moment it barely did.
On the screen, Morales asked why Nolan had never mentioned Anna’s surveillance in his notebooks.
Nolan’s answer revealed the secret Dererick had been pointing toward.
“I removed those pages.”
“Why?”
“Because I was already trying to leave.”
Nolan had begun doubting Dererick after Rachel Boone’s death, but fear and complicity kept him involved. He occasionally sabotaged plans in small ways: deleting addresses, changing quantities, warning people anonymously.
When Dererick became interested in Anna, Nolan recognized something different.
“He wasn’t talking about leverage.”
“What was he talking about?”
“Keeping her.”
Anna returned to the monitor.
Nolan explained that Dererick usually treated relationships as temporary mechanisms. People were useful until they became risky. Anna was different. He spoke about constructing a normal life around her.
Marriage.
Neighbors.
Family.
Respectability.
A stable home would make him look ordinary.
It would also provide social access.
“He wanted a wife as cover?” Morales asked.
“At first.”
Anna closed her eyes.
“At first?”
Nolan looked miserable.
“He became attached.”
The answer did not comfort her.
It made everything worse.
Dererick’s feelings had not stopped the surveillance. They had incorporated it.
“He told me he could have both,” Nolan said. “A real marriage and the work.”
The work.
Anna hated the phrase.
Nolan had removed several pages concerning Anna because he feared Dererick would eventually use the records against her. He destroyed photographs and altered one early log.
But he did not warn Anna.
“Why?” Morales asked.
Nolan looked toward the camera.
“Because by then I was afraid of what would happen if Dererick knew I’d interfered.”
Anna laughed once.
Clare looked at her.
“So he protected me by not protecting me.”
The bitter contradiction captured Nolan’s entire history.
He had saved Elise’s life but not prevented what happened to her.
He had warned victims anonymously but avoided accountability.
He had removed records about Anna but allowed Dererick to enter her life.
Remorse had changed his behavior without making him innocent.
Morales pressed further.
“What did you alter about the night represented by the 02:17 code?”
Nolan stopped answering.
His attorney requested a break.
Anna knew they had reached the real secret.
Twenty minutes later, the interview resumed.
Nolan asked for confirmation that his cooperation would be documented.
His attorney intervened, and several legal details were discussed beyond what Anna could hear.
Then Nolan began.
The older 02:17 recording—the night Anna could not remember—had been the only time Nolan entered Anna and Dererick’s bedroom.
Dererick had asked for help testing a revised mixture.
Nolan believed Anna would simply sleep.
He arrived after midnight.
Dererick had already administered something in her tea.
At 2:17, they began recording.
Anna’s stomach tightened.
“What happened?” Morales asked.
“She reacted badly.”
Nolan’s voice became quieter.
Her breathing slowed too much.
Dererick initially wanted to continue documenting.
Nolan stopped him.
He monitored Anna, repositioned her, and insisted they discontinue.
For several minutes Nolan believed they might need an ambulance.
Anna stared at the screen.
She had been lying in her own bed while two men debated whether her breathing was dangerous enough to interrupt an experiment she never knew was happening.
Clare stood abruptly and left the room.
Anna remained.
Nolan continued.
When Anna stabilized, Dererick became furious—not because she had nearly been harmed, Nolan said, but because Nolan had interfered with the recording.
That argument ended their partnership.
Nolan left before dawn.
Later he deleted part of the footage and removed several pages from his notes.
“That was the night you stopped?” Morales asked.
“Yes.”
“You still didn’t tell Anna.”
“No.”
“You still didn’t report Dererick.”
“No.”
“You knew Rachel Boone had died.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Elise had nearly died.”
“Yes.”
“And you left Anna in the same house.”
Nolan’s eyes filled, but he did not defend himself.
“Yes.”
Anna turned off the monitor.
She found Clare in the corridor leaning against a wall.
For several minutes neither sister spoke.
Then Clare said, “I want to hit him.”
Anna almost smiled.
“I think Morales would object.”
“I work in a hospital. I know where not to leave bruises.”
That did make Anna smile, briefly.
The humor disappeared quickly.
“There’s more,” Anna said.
Clare knew.
Dererick’s note had not merely exposed Nolan’s cowardice.
It had revealed that Anna’s marriage began as a planned encounter.
They spent the afternoon reconstructing those first months.
Anna opened old photographs she had not looked at in years.
Dererick at the fundraiser.
Dererick at their first dinner.
Dererick meeting Clare.
Dererick helping Anna move furniture.
Dererick proposing beside the lake.
Every image now contained an invisible question.
What did he already know?
Investigators searched Nolan’s surrendered notebooks for references to the pharmacy and fundraiser.
Several missing-page stubs appeared.
One surviving note mentioned “A.M.” and a phrase: stable anchor.
Anna asked what it meant.
Nolan explained.
Dererick believed a conventional relationship would stabilize his public identity. A wife with ordinary friendships and a respected family network made scrutiny less likely.
Clare’s hospital employment increased the value.
“So I was useful too,” Clare said.
Nolan did not answer.
He did not need to.
Another entry mentioned “credibility transfer.”
Dererick understood that people trusted people who were trusted by someone they already knew.
Anna became the bridge.
Through her came Clare.
Neighbors.
Coworkers.
Friends.
The realization was almost unbearable.
Then Morales found something that changed it again.
Not every person Dererick met through Anna appeared in his target records.
Most did not.
He had opportunities he never used.
That inconsistency suggested limits even within his system.
“Why?” Anna asked Nolan.
Nolan considered.
“Because it wasn’t automatic. He chose.”
That mattered too.
Dererick was not controlled by an uncontrollable compulsion that turned every acquaintance into a target.
He made decisions.
He evaluated.
He selected.
He stopped when it suited him and continued when it suited him.
Choice ran through everything.
Near evening, police examining the farmhouse found another concealed item.
A memory card taped beneath the kitchen table.
It contained one audio file.
Dererick’s voice.
The recording had been made that morning.
“Anna,” he began, calm and intimate, “Nolan will tell you I chose you because I needed cover. He’ll tell you he tried to protect you. Both things are partly true. Partial truth is Nolan’s favorite kind.”
Anna listened with Morales and Clare.
Dererick continued.
“He knew about Rachel. He knew about Elise. He knew about you. Ask him why he kept the original Rachel recording.”
Nolan had never mentioned possessing it.
Morales stopped the audio.
Investigators searched Nolan’s surrendered material again.
Nothing.
Morales confronted him.
Nolan denied keeping the recording.
Then his expression changed.
He asked whether Dererick had specifically said original.
Yes.
Nolan closed his eyes.
“There were two copies.”
“Where is yours?”
“I destroyed it.”
“Then where is the second?”
“With Rachel’s things.”
The storage unit.
Unit 218 contained belongings from multiple people.
Investigators returned to the boxes.
Inside an envelope labeled R.B. they found a memory card.
Eight years old.
The recording was intact.
It did not merely document Rachel’s death.
It captured the argument afterward.
Nolan demanding they call for help.
Dererick ordering him to move objects.
Nolan saying, “You knew that was too much.”
And Dererick answering with a sentence that removed any possibility that Rachel’s death had been an unforeseeable accident.
“I needed to know where the limit was.”
Anna heard only the transcript.
That was enough.
The investigation had just gained evidence tying Dererick’s experimentation directly to a death.
But the recording contained something else.
A third voice.
Brief.
Distant.
Female.
Someone else had been present the night Rachel Boone died.
And neither Nolan nor Dererick had ever named her.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: A Woman’s Voice on an Eight-Year-Old Recording Exposes the Earliest Witness—and the Family Connection Dererick Spent Years Keeping Outside Every File
The Cup Anna Refused to Drink Became the First Crack in a Marriage Built Around Secrets She Was Never Meant to See
Part 9 of 22
