“You think Vanessa did this to her.”
“I think my sister filled a cup where no one could see her, felt nothing when it mattered, and told me not to overreact before we had a single fact between us. That’s not proof. That’s a reason to look.”
Michael didn’t argue. He’d spent five years flying trauma patients out of car wrecks and farm accidents, and he knew the same thing I did — that the people closest to a scene almost never look the way you expect them to look, and the ones who look wrong almost always are.
“Look where?”
The four cameras Michael had bolted around the house after a run of break-ins. All four had stayed on. Nobody had killed the system for the party.
“The cameras,” I said. “Every angle. Tonight.”
His jaw locked.
“Then let’s see what they caught.”
PART 3
I called Grace Kowalski next door — retired county IT, the one who’d helped Michael wire the whole system — and asked her to pull footage remotely. She didn’t ask why. She just said, “Ten minutes,” in the voice people use when they can already tell it isn’t a small favor.
