Chapter 2 - The Impossible Detail

By 4:15 a.m., two police cruisers and Blair’s sedan pulled back up to the quiet brick house on Elm Street.

The morning air was thick with humidity, the scent of Corinne’s front-yard roses mixing with the sharp smell of rain.

The front door was ajar, the lock scratched, but there were no signs of a forced entry.

Nolan had used his own key.

Blair walked through the entryway, her boots sounding heavy against the oak floorboards that her mother kept polished to a mirror shine.

In the center of the living room, a small round table had been overturned.

A porcelain tea set lay shattered near the rug.

Beside the sofa, where Corinne had been found by the first responding officers, sat an old wooden grandfather clock—a family heirloom that had stood in the corner for thirty years.

Blair knelt beside the base of the clock.

The dark oak wood near the brass pendulum showed fresh, jagged scratches, as if someone had used a heavy screwdriver to pry something out of the internal frame.

"He wasn't looking for money," Blair said, pointing her flashlight at the hollow space behind the pendulum.

"And he didn't come here to visit."

Detective Miller crouched beside her, his flashlight beam revealing three tiny, microscopic wires dangling from the hollowed-out wood.

"Your mother had a hidden camera inside this clock?" Miller asked in disbelief.

"My mother didn't put it here," Blair said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register.

"Six months ago, she told me she felt like someone was moving her mail. She said her bank statements were arriving opened, then resealed."

"I thought she was being forgetful."

"I told her it was just the mail carrier."

Blair reached into her tactical vest, pulled out a small handheld RF signal detector, and swept the room.

The device immediately began to hum, a steady blue light flashing as it locked onto a secondary encrypted signal originating from the attic space directly above the hallway.