Chapter 3 - WHAT HE REMOVED FROM HER ROOM
Police met me at the house the next morning.
Luke was gone.
The black trash bag sat beside the garage, empty. Addie’s bedroom looked almost normal until I noticed what was missing.
Her tablet.
The small indoor camera we used when her asthma flared at night.
And the plastic medication log I kept inside the dresser drawer.
Luke had removed the records showing when Addie used her inhaler.
A detective named Marisol Vega photographed the room. She explained that the doorbell footage established Luke had taken property after being told not to disturb anything, but it did not prove what had happened to Addie.
“Did the bedroom camera upload anywhere?” she asked.
“To Luke’s account. He set it up.”
“Do you have access?”
“I thought I did.”
My password no longer worked.
Detective Vega requested preservation of the account data from the camera company. She also collected the inhaler Davis had protected at the scene.
The prescription label showed it had been filled three days earlier. It was nearly full.
Addie had apparently received almost no rescue medication during my absence.
I called her preschool. The director said Addie had been absent both days I was in Denver.
Luke had told me she was at school.
“He called Tuesday morning,” the director said. “He said she had a stomach bug.”
There had been no stomach bug.
He had kept her home where no teacher could hear the wheezing or see her distress.
That afternoon, Addie was discharged into my care under a safety plan. Luke was prohibited from unsupervised contact while child-protection investigators reviewed the case.
At my sister’s apartment, Addie refused to sleep unless her inhaler rested beneath her pillow.
I sat beside her.
“Did Luke keep you home because you were sick?”
She nodded.
“Did he give you medicine?”
“He said medicine was cheating.”
“What else happened?”
She pulled the blanket to her chin.
“He put my bear in the trash.”
“Why?”
“Because I cried for you.”
Her stuffed bear had been in the black bag.
Luke had not returned to destroy evidence alone. He had also removed the object Addie associated with punishment.
The next morning, Detective Vega called.
The camera company had preserved the account before Luke could delete everything.
Most videos had already been erased.
One audio clip remained because it had been automatically flagged for loud noise.
It was recorded twelve hours before I came home.
In the background, Addie was coughing.
Then Luke’s voice said, “Your mother always comes back when you make yourself sick.”
Another voice answered him.
May you like
A woman’s voice.
“You said you were done using children to punish women.”
