Chapter 2
I followed Daniel across the street.
Margaret Pike was waiting inside their foyer.
Her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the cordless phone.
“We didn’t call anyone,” she said immediately.
Daniel closed the door behind us.
“How do you know your number was used?”
Margaret handed me the phone.
The screen showed three missed calls from the county emergency communications center.
One voicemail.
Daniel played it.
“Mr. Pike, this is County Dispatch returning your emergency report. Please contact—”
I looked at him.
“We never made an emergency report,” he said.
Margaret lowered herself onto a chair.
“At seven twelve, somebody from dispatch called asking whether the suspicious man was still with the child.”
My stomach turned.
“What did you say?”
“I told them I had no idea what they were talking about.”
Daniel continued.
“They asked if this was 555-0184. It is.”
“So someone spoofed your number.”
“I believe so.”
“What exactly did the caller report?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“A Black male in a dark coat. Young girl. Caller said the girl looked frightened and was being pulled toward a vehicle.”
I stared at her.
There had been no vehicle.
No pulling.
Nothing remotely resembling that description.
My fists tightened.
Daniel noticed.
“There’s something else.”
He led me toward the back of the house.
From the kitchen window, we could see my property across the street and three houses down.
At that moment, everything looked normal.
Then Daniel pointed toward my driveway.
“Your garage door.”
It was open six inches.
I never left it open.
Ever.
I ran.
By the time I reached my house, Daniel was behind me calling the police again.
This time, ironically, I wanted them there.
The side door from my garage stood unlocked.
Inside, the kitchen looked untouched.
Living room, untouched.
Upstairs bedrooms, untouched.
Then I entered my study.
The room had been searched.
Not destroyed.
Searched.
That distinction frightened me more.
Desk drawers were open.
File cabinet unlocked.
Closet boxes moved.
Someone had been looking for something specific.
My laptop remained on the desk.
Television untouched.
Cash inside a drawer untouched.
My wife’s jewelry, what little I had kept after her death, was still inside the safe.
Nothing obvious had been stolen.
Then I noticed the small black case beneath my desk was missing.
My stomach dropped.
Inside that case had been three external hard drives.
Two were mine.
The third had belonged to Naomi.
I had not opened it in almost two years.
I did not even know what was on it.
I sat slowly.
For the first time, the morning began to make sense.
The police stop had not been the event.
It had been the distraction.
Someone had needed me outside.
Visible.
Occupied.
And someone had known exactly what time Sophie’s bus arrived.
Sirens approached again.
Daniel stood in my doorway.
“Marcus?”
I looked at the empty space where the hard-drive case had been.
“They were looking for something my wife left behind.”
Naomi Bell had died on October 18, two years earlier.
Officially, it was an accident.
Rain.
A dark road.
A curve outside the city.
Her car had crossed the center line and struck a concrete drainage barrier.
She died before paramedics arrived.
For months afterward, I replayed every detail.
Why had she taken that road?
Why had she been forty minutes from home?
Why had she called me twice that afternoon and then said nothing was wrong?
Eventually grief exhausted the questions.
I stopped asking.
That morning, they returned.
Naomi had worked as a senior data analyst for the county planning department.
It sounded boring when she explained it at parties.
Zoning models.
Population growth.
Property assessments.
Redevelopment projections.
But Naomi loved patterns.
She could look at a spreadsheet and notice something nobody else saw.
Three weeks before she died, she had become distracted.
She stayed awake late.
Started locking her home office.
Once, I found her standing in the kitchen at two in the morning staring through the window.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Naomi.”
She smiled.
“You worry too much.”
“I’m your husband. It’s literally my job.”
She kissed my cheek.
Then said something I had forgotten until that morning.
“Sometimes a pattern becomes dangerous when somebody realizes you can see it.”
At the time, I thought she was talking about work stress.
Now someone had broken into my house during a staged police confrontation and stolen her hard drive.
I no longer believed in coincidence.
Officer Ortiz returned.
Whitaker did not.
Instead, a sergeant named Malcolm Reed arrived with two detectives.
Ortiz avoided my eyes.
The detectives photographed the study.
Checked doors.
Collected prints.
Then Reed asked me to sit at the kitchen table.
“Mr. Bell, I need to discuss the earlier call.”
“I’m listening.”
He glanced toward Ortiz.
She remained standing.
“The emergency call that generated Officer Whitaker’s response was made through a voice-over-IP service.”
“So?”
“The account was created yesterday.”
“With Daniel Pike’s number?”
“Spoofed to display his number.”
“Who created it?”
Reed hesitated.
“That is under investigation.”
“That’s not what dispatch said.”
Ortiz looked at him.
I caught it.
“Dispatch said the caller had been identified.”
Reed folded his hands.
“The account registration information is irregular.”
“What does that mean?”
No answer.
I leaned forward.
“My house was burglarized while your officers detained me across the street. Whoever called knew my schedule. Whoever entered my house knew where to look. So I’m going to ask again.”
I lowered my voice.
“Whose information was used to create the account?”
Ortiz closed her eyes for half a second.
Reed finally answered.
“Officer Whitaker’s.”
The kitchen went silent.
I almost thought I had misunderstood.
“Cole Whitaker?”
“Yes.”
“Your officer called the police on me?”
“We do not know that.”
“You just said—”
“We know the VOIP account was created using identifying information connected to Officer Whitaker. That does not prove he created it.”
“Where is he?”
“Administrative leave.”
“Since when?”
“Thirty minutes ago.”
I stared at Ortiz.
She finally met my eyes.
Something in her expression scared me.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Reed stood.
“Mr. Bell, until we know more, I recommend you stay somewhere else tonight.”
“Why?”
He looked toward my study.
“Because whoever came into your house found what they wanted.”
Then he paused.
“And we don’t know whether they found all of it.”