Chapter 6 - The Missing Minute.
Mrs. Alvarez's doorbell camera showed my father standing on my porch at 8:14 the next morning.
He wore the same dark trousers from the party and a different shirt.
He looked freshly showered.
That detail made me angrier than it should have.
I had spent the night under fluorescent lights beside my daughter while Robert had gone home, changed clothes, and started working on the next move.
The video had no dramatic soundtrack.
No shouting.
No threat.
Just my father approaching my front door with an old brass key in his hand.
He tried the lock once.
Then again.
He stared at the key as if the door had betrayed him.
After that, he walked around the side of the house toward the back gate.
Mrs. Alvarez's second camera caught him there.
He opened the gate latch from the outside because he knew exactly where to reach through the slats.
Then he disappeared from view for twenty-three seconds.
When he returned, he was carrying nothing.
He looked directly toward Mrs. Alvarez's house before leaving.
"Send me the original files," Dana said when I called her.
"Already downloaded."
"Send them to Detective Morales too."
"Already did."
Dana was quiet for a second.
"You're learning fast."
I did not feel proud.
I felt tired.
"What could he have wanted?"
"We don't guess."
Her answer sounded almost identical to Morales.
"We document."
That became the rhythm of the next forty-eight hours.
Document.
Save.
Screenshot.
Forward.
Write down the time.
Write down the words.
Do not answer emotionally.
Do not delete anything.
It was strange how quickly survival became administrative.
Lily stayed in the hospital another night for observation.
She grew more alert, but she tired easily.
The doctors remained cautious and reassuring without promising anything beyond what they knew.
A child advocacy specialist visited and explained the next steps to me in plain language.
Lily would be interviewed only when appropriate.
I would not be in the room because children sometimes watch a parent's face and change answers to protect them.
That sentence hurt.
The idea that Lily might protect me while she was the one lying in a hospital bed felt unbearable.
I agreed anyway.
My job was not to hear everything first.
My job was to make sure the truth had somewhere safe to land.
Meanwhile, the police obtained consent from Ethan to make forensic copies of his memory cards.
Detective Morales called me that afternoon.
"The audio is usable."
I sat down.
"What does usable mean?"
"It means voices can be distinguished."
"Robert's?"
"Yes."
"Patricia's?"
A pause.
"Yes."
I pressed my thumb into the seam of the chair cushion.
"Do they say what I heard?"
"The portion we recovered includes Robert's comment and the sound of glasses."
My throat tightened.
"And Patricia?"
"There is laughter and a response afterward."
"What response?"
"I can't go into the full evidentiary sequence with you yet."
I almost snapped at her.
Then I remembered she was not protecting my parents.
She was protecting the case.
"Okay."
Morales continued.
"We also recovered images that help establish movement through the house."
"The reflections?"
"Those and something else."
"What?"
"Your parents have a home security system."
I knew that.
Robert had installed cameras after someone stole a package from the front porch two years earlier.
He had become obsessed with the system.
Cameras covered the front door, driveway, kitchen entrance, and upstairs landing.
My heart accelerated.
"There's a camera upstairs."
"Yes."
"Then you can see what happened."
Morales was silent long enough that I knew the answer before she gave it.
"Not exactly."
"Why?"
"The upstairs camera has a gap."
I closed my eyes.
"How long?"
"Sixty-eight seconds."
My eyes opened.
"That's it?"
"That's the obvious missing section."
"When?"
Morales gave me the time.
Six twenty-six and fourteen seconds to six twenty-seven and twenty-two seconds.
The gap sat inside the window when Patricia and Robert were upstairs.
"Could the camera just fail?"
"It could."
"Did it?"
"We're examining that."
I stood and began pacing the family waiting room.
"Robert controls the system from his phone."
"We know."
"He showed me the app once."
"We know that too."
"How?"
"Mr. Hale told responding officers he was the system administrator."
I stopped.
"He volunteered that?"
"He was trying to explain why he could produce other clips quickly."
A bitter laugh escaped me.
Robert's need to demonstrate control might become the thing that proved he had exercised it.
"Can you tell if a clip was deleted?"
"Sometimes."
"Can you tell who did it?"
"Sometimes."
I hated that word.
Sometimes was where fear lived.
Morales lowered her voice.
"Claire, there's another issue."
"Of course there is."
"The system logs show a remote administrator session that evening."
I stopped breathing for a second.
"From whose device?"
"We're working on attribution."
"But someone accessed it?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Within minutes of the missing segment."
My fingers went numb around the phone.
"Robert."
"Don't make that conclusion yet."
"You don't have to. I do."
Morales let the silence sit.
Then she said, "Let us prove what we can prove."
After the call, I found Naomi near the nurses' station.
I told her about the missing footage.
She listened without reacting dramatically.
"You look like you haven't eaten."
I stared at her.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"Yes."
"And you're asking about food?"
"Because you can't control their security system from this hallway."
I looked away.
"You can eat a sandwich."
I wanted to argue.
Then my stomach cramped hard enough to answer for me.
Naomi brought me turkey on wheat and an apple.
I ate half while standing.
The ordinary taste felt obscene.
Lily called for me before I finished.
I went back to her room.
She was sitting slightly upright with pillows supporting her.
Mr. Buttons sat in her lap.
"Mom, can we paint his ear when we get home?"
"Why his ear?"
"It's boring."
"What color?"
"Gold."
"Very fancy."
"Madison had gold balloons."
My chest tightened.
"We can get gold paint."
Lily nodded seriously.
Then she looked toward the window.
"Is Grandma mad at me?"
"No one gets to make this your fault."
"But is she?"
Six-year-olds had a brutal way of rejecting adult evasions.
I took her hand.
"Grandma is responsible for Grandma's feelings."
"That's not an answer."
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
"You're right."
I chose the truth she could carry.
"Grandma may be upset, but you didn't do anything wrong."
Lily considered that.
"Grandpa said grown-ups decide what happened."
The room went cold.
I kept my expression steady.
"When did he say that?"
Then I stopped myself.
I had been told not to question her.
"You don't have to answer that."
Lily frowned.
"At the party."
She said it anyway.
"He said if I woke up, I should remember grown-ups decide what happened."
I felt my nails press into my palm.
"Okay."
That was all I said.
I kissed her forehead and changed the subject to gold paint.
As soon as she fell asleep again, I stepped into the hall and called Morales.
She answered on the second ring.
"I need to tell you something Lily just volunteered."
Morales listened.
Then she said, "Don't ask her anything else about that."
"I didn't."
"Good."
"Does it matter?"
"Everything matters."
Before she hung up, I heard another voice in the background.
Morales covered the phone for a moment.
When she returned, her tone had changed.
"Claire, I have to go."
"What happened?"
"The forensic technician found activity in the security system logs."
My heart started pounding.
"What kind?"
"The upstairs camera didn't simply stop recording."
I gripped the railing beside me.
"Then what happened?"
Morales answered with four words.
"Someone manually disabled it."
I asked the question even though I already feared the answer.
"Can they tell which account did it?"
"The administrator account."
"Robert's account."
"The account registered to Robert, yes."
I leaned against the wall.
"Then that's it."
"No."
Morales's voice sharpened just enough to stop me.
"An account is not a hand."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we still have to establish who had the device and who initiated the command."
The distinction felt infuriatingly small.
But I knew she was right.
Facts had to survive more than my certainty.
"Was there anything after the camera came back?"
Morales paused.
"Yes."
"What?"
"The first frame after reactivation shows Robert leaving the guest room hallway."
I closed my eyes.
"And Patricia?"
"Not in that frame."
My stomach tightened.
"So where was she?"
"That's what we're trying to determine."
The call ended.
I stood alone beneath the fluorescent lights, thinking about a sixty-eight-second darkness someone had deliberately created.
Then my phone buzzed with a new notification from Dana.
She had forwarded a court filing.
I opened the first page and saw my parents' names above mine.
They were not waiting for the investigation to finish.
May you like
They were asking a judge for emergency visitation rights to Lily.
The Door I Closed
