Chapter 10 - What Lucy Remembered
I wanted to ask Lucy a hundred questions.
Ortiz said no.
“She’s a child, Daniel.
She’s already been through enough.
A trained interviewer will handle it.”
So I sat in the waiting area with Ruth and bought a chocolate milk Lucy didn’t ask for.
It stayed unopened between us.
“Did Caroline really think I’d help?” I asked.
Ruth watched the interview-room door.
“She said you were decent when you paid attention.”
That one stayed with me.
Inside the room, Lucy drew the service passage.
A rectangle.
A blanket.
A small square near the floor.
She described Caroline unscrewing a metal cover.
Then removing something wrapped in a grocery bag.
“Did your mom take it with her?” the interviewer asked.
Lucy shook her head.
“Somebody came.”
“What happened then?”
“She put me in the little room.
She said quiet feet, quiet hands.”
Lucy flattened both palms on her knees to show her.
“And the bag?”
“Mommy pushed it under.”
“Under what?”
“The place where shoes go.”
Ortiz paused the interview.
We returned to the house with the search team.
The narrow passage ran behind a built-in bench beside the mudroom.
Under the bench was a row of shoe compartments.
One had a loose back panel.
An investigator removed it.
Behind it sat a grocery bag containing an old phone, a flash drive, and a folded service invoice.
Caroline hadn’t come back for the main recording drive.
She had come back for the parts she’d hidden before fleeing three years earlier.
Original material.
Something Emily and Danner had never found.
The phone was dead.
The invoice wasn’t.
Danner had billed for “audio distribution upgrades.”
Emily’s signature appeared at the bottom.
Beneath the invoice was a handwritten access code.
Ortiz bagged everything.
I stood in the mudroom and looked at the space where Lucy had waited.
There were tiny marks in the dust.
Finger circles.
The outline of the rabbit’s head.
She had been only a few feet from the kitchen.
Had Emily walked past her?
Made coffee?
Answered calls while a frightened child counted footsteps behind the wall?
I heard myself ask, “Did she know?”
Ortiz didn’t pretend not to understand.
“We’re working on that.”
That evening, the old phone powered on.
Its last saved video showed Caroline standing in my office.
Emily was beside her.
And Emily was saying, “Nobody will believe you over me.”
Then a man stepped into the frame.
May you like
It wasn’t Danner.
It was Colin Mercer.
