Chapter 2 - The Photograph Outside Emma’s School)
Claire read the message three times.
Each time it became worse.
“She should have been mine?”
Detective Bennett arrived twenty minutes later.
She placed the photograph into an evidence sleeve.
“Did Richard ever say anything suggesting Emma belonged to him?”
“No,” Claire said.
Daniel shook his head.
“Never.”
“Did he ever try to take her somewhere without permission?”
Claire hesitated.
Daniel noticed.
“What?”
She looked at him.
“Last summer.”
“What happened last summer?”
“Your father showed up while you were working. He told Emma he wanted to take her for ice cream.”
Daniel stared.
“You never told me that.”
“I said no. He argued for maybe thirty seconds, then left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because every time I mentioned something strange about Richard, you told me he was trying.”
Daniel opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Claire’s expression softened slightly.
“This isn’t the time to fight.”
Bennett looked between them.
“Did he have access to Emma’s school records?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Emergency pickup list?”
Daniel’s face changed.
“He used to be on it.”
Claire turned.
“What?”
“When Emma started kindergarten. Before we updated the forms.”
“How long ago was he removed?”
“Two years.”
Bennett wrote something down.
“Schools sometimes retain old records in archived systems.”
Claire sat down.
The weight of everything seemed to hit at once.
“Why would he write that?”
Nobody answered.
Bennett asked about Richard’s house.
Daniel explained that his father lived twenty minutes away in an old colonial property on Hartwell Lane.
Police were already searching it.
At 8:14 p.m., Bennett received a call.
She stepped into the kitchen.
When she returned, her expression was different.
“What did they find?” Daniel asked.
“Your father’s house is empty.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No clothes in the bedroom closets. No medications. No toiletries.”
Claire stared.
“He planned to leave.”
“It appears that way.”
“When?”
“We don’t know.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“He was here yesterday afternoon helping me bring groceries inside.”
Bennett studied him.
“Did you notice his car?”
“Black Buick.”
“Same one he normally drives?”
“Yes.”
“It’s in his garage.”
Daniel froze.
“So he has another vehicle.”
“Possibly.”
Bennett continued.
“We also found something else.”
She placed her phone on the table.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
It showed a room inside Richard’s house.
One wall was covered with framed photographs.
Daniel leaned closer.
His breath caught.
Every photograph showed Emma.
At the playground.
At school.
At a grocery store.
At soccer practice.
Sleeping in the back seat of Claire’s car.
Claire recoiled.
“Oh my God.”
Daniel stared at Bennett.
“My father took those?”
“We don’t know whether he took all of them himself.”
The detective swiped to the next image.
A desk.
Folders.
Maps.
Emma’s school calendar.
Claire’s gym schedule.
Daniel’s office hours.
Then another photograph.
An old newspaper clipping from nine years earlier.
The headline concerned a maternity ward malfunction at St. Anne’s Hospital.
Daniel frowned.
“Why would he have that?”
Bennett enlarged the image.
One sentence had been circled in red ink.
Temporary electronic failures affected newborn identification systems for approximately forty-three minutes.
Claire slowly sat down.
Emma had been born at St. Anne’s.
Daniel looked at her.
“No.”
Claire’s eyes filled.
“No what?”
Bennett did not speak.
May you like
Daniel pointed toward the article.
“That hospital problem happened the night Emma was born.”
