Chapter 3: The Midnight Camera
"He's heading to the cabin," Daniel said immediately. "It’s four hundred acres of dense timber off an unpaved logging road. If he gets deep into the woods, the state troopers will need tracking dogs to find him."
"We already have Michigan State Police setting up a perimeter on the access roads," Officer Miller replied. "Right now, I need to know how and when he tampered with that jar. Do you have interior security cameras?"
"No," Daniel said. "Only the exterior doorbell."
"Wait," I interrupted, suddenly remembering the smart-home setup I had installed in the living room the previous week. "We have a motion-activated pet camera on the bookshelf. I bought it to watch the dog while we're at work, but it covers the entire Christmas tree area."
I grabbed my phone from the counter and opened the cloud storage app. My fingers flew across the screen, filtering the recorded video clips by timestamp from the night before—Christmas Eve.
At 11:45 PM, Daniel and I had gone upstairs to sleep after putting the gifts under the tree.
At 2:14 AM, a video clip had been triggered.
I pressed play.
In the infrared black-and-white footage, Richard Pierce walked out of the guest bedroom downstairs. He was fully dressed, carrying a small flashlight and the bottle of commercial solvent from his overnight bag.
We watched in horrified silence as Richard knelt by the Christmas tree. He carefully untied the red velvet ribbon on Emma's gift box, unscrewed the lid of the pink jar, and used a plastic motel spoon to stir a teaspoon of the drain solvent directly into the lotion.
He didn't look angry. He didn't look frantic.
May you like
He was smiling.
"Jesus Christ," Officer Miller muttered, leaning over my shoulder to stare at the screen. "Export that file right now. That isn't just child endangerment anymore, Mrs. Pierce. That is premeditated first-degree assault with a caustic substance."
