CHAPTER 3: THE EMPTY HALLWAY
Hospital security locked the maternity floor.
Detective Ortiz stationed an officer outside Claire’s room and ordered staff not to release information to anyone.
Diane never appeared.
At 11:40 p.m., security found a woman’s coat abandoned beside the emergency exit.
The coat belonged to my mother.
Her phone was inside one pocket.
The battery had been removed.
“She wanted us to think she came here,” Ortiz said.
“Why?”
“To keep us here while she went somewhere else.”
I knew the answer immediately.
“The apartment.”
Ortiz and I drove back through the rain.
The front door was unlocked.
Inside, drawers had been emptied onto the floor. Claire’s laptop was gone. Her prenatal documents had been burned in the kitchen sink.
The gray blanket had disappeared.
So had the bottle of tea Diane kept in the refrigerator.
“She’s destroying evidence,” I said.
Ortiz examined the sink.
“Or collecting something she can use.”
The bedroom had been searched more carefully.
My clothes were untouched.
Claire’s belongings were scattered across the floor.
I opened the closet.
A storage box had been pulled from the top shelf.
Inside were photographs from our wedding, hospital ultrasound prints and a small notebook.
The notebook belonged to Claire.
Most pages contained grocery lists and baby names.
Near the back, however, I found dates.
Beside each date, Claire had written a single sentence.
May 3 — Diane came at 9:15. I woke up at 1:40.
May 6 — Pain in left ankle. She said I slipped.
May 12 — She canceled my appointment.
May 18 — She asked whether I wanted my baby to survive.
May 21 — Ethan believes I am tired.
The last sentence broke me.
Ortiz read the entries silently.
“This helps.”
“It doesn’t prove enough.”
“It establishes a timeline.”
A floorboard creaked behind us.
I turned sharply.
No one was there.
Ortiz drew her weapon.
We searched every room.
The apartment was empty.
Then I noticed the narrow cabinet above the refrigerator was open.
A tiny red light blinked inside.
Ortiz climbed onto a chair and removed a wireless camera.
Someone had been recording our kitchen.
We found two more cameras.
One faced the living room.
The other was hidden inside the bedroom smoke detector.
My mother had watched us.
She had known when I left for work.
She had known when Claire was alone.
“She may have recorded the assaults,” I said.
Ortiz examined the memory slot.
“No card. The footage probably uploaded remotely.”
“Can you trace it?”
“We’ll try.”
My phone rang.
The caller ID displayed my mother’s number.
Ortiz signaled for me to answer on speaker.
“Mom?”
For several seconds, I heard only breathing.
Then Diane spoke.
“You always were an ungrateful child.”
“Where are you?”
“I gave up everything for you.”
“You hurt Claire.”
“She was turning you against me.”
“You drugged my pregnant wife.”
“I corrected a problem before it destroyed this family.”
Ortiz began tracing the call.
“What happened to Rachel?” I asked.
Silence.
“Tell me.”
“Your sister was weak.”
My blood ran cold.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she was always crying. Always threatening to tell people our business.”
“What business?”
Diane’s voice softened.
“The same things Claire is threatening to tell them now.”
A car horn sounded faintly in the background.
Ortiz wrote something and handed it to another officer.
The call was being traced toward North Portland.
“Did you hurt Rachel?”
“I protected you from the truth.”
“You lied to me.”
“I gave you a father to blame.”
My knees nearly gave way.
“Where is he?”
Diane laughed quietly.
“You still think Thomas disappeared?”
The line went dead.
Ortiz looked at the trace results.
The call came from a public phone near Union Station.
Security footage showed Diane entering a black sedan.
The vehicle was registered to a private eldercare facility outside Salem.
When Ortiz contacted the facility, the director confirmed that one resident had received a visitor matching Diane’s description.
The resident’s name was listed as Thomas Reed.
But the photograph attached to the record showed my father.
May you like
Diane had not gone to the hospital.
She had gone to silence the only other person who knew what happened to Rachel.
