Chapter 2 - The Recording Plays
I threw the deadbolt and told the dispatcher he was standing outside my door. He kept leaning on the buzzer. My mother's voice bled through the intercom, begging me not to "blow up this family over a misunderstanding."
Then Roland dropped his voice low.
"You're a widower with an anxiety history, Daniel. Think hard about which one of us a judge is going to believe."
Red and blue light washed across the hallway windows.
When the officers came off the elevator, Roland's whole face changed. He smiled. He reached for his wallet, like the right number of bills had ever failed to make a problem disappear. I only opened the door once they'd put space between him and my mother.
I handed the fox to the nearest officer.
I told him to press the paw.
The recording played right there in the hallway. Roland's voice. "Quit crying. Your daddy doesn't need to know every little thing."
My mother's face lost all its color when her own voice came through next — asking about the locked door, then going quiet, then walking away after he told her Emma had torn her dress and gotten upset about it.
A detective turned to Roland. "Where's your phone, Mr. Vance?"
For the first time all night, his confidence slipped.
May you like
Then the detective's radio crackled with a message from the team already at my mother's house.
"We've pulled the deleted footage off the hallway camera."
