Chapter 4 - The House Vanessa Had Already Entered
A Chandler police officer accompanied me to the house that evening while Tyler remained at the station for a second interview.
Vanessa had been released pending further investigation. Her car was gone.
The officer explained that he could keep the peace but couldn’t conduct a search without proper authority. Rachel had given me written permission to collect her belongings and Lily’s feeding supplies.
Tyler’s father, Grant, opened the door.
He looked exhausted rather than angry.
“Diane, this has gotten out of control.”
“Your son locked a newborn in a car.”
“He says Rachel panicked.”
“You believe that?”
Grant rubbed his forehead. “I believe Tyler’s been dealing with more than you know.”
That sentence had worked on me before. This time it sounded rehearsed.
I walked past him.
The guest room closet held women’s clothes in Vanessa’s size. Makeup covered the dresser. A shipping label on an unopened package carried her name and Tyler’s address.
She hadn’t been visiting.
She had already moved in.
In the kitchen, six clean bottles stood beside the sink. Two formula containers sat in the pantry. They were different brands, and the scoops were different shapes.
The yellow scoop lay inside the wrong container.
I didn’t touch it.
The officer photographed the shelf while I called the DCS worker, who instructed us to place both containers in separate grocery bags and bring them directly to the hospital.
The feeding log was attached to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a cactus. Rachel’s handwriting filled the first pages: time, ounces, wet diapers, sleep.
Later entries were written in Tyler’s square block letters.
Several pages had been torn out.
Grant watched me remove the log.
“Rachel was obsessed with that thing,” he said. “Tyler said she’d write down feedings that never happened.”
“Did you see that yourself?”
“No.”
“Then Tyler told you.”
Grant didn’t answer.
As I carried the bags outside, the next-door neighbor, Carol Kovacs, stepped from behind her stucco wall.
“Is Rachel okay?”
“She’s in the hospital.”
Carol’s mouth tightened. “I told my husband something was wrong.”
“What did you hear?”
“Arguments. Mostly after midnight. Tyler kept accusing her of forgetting things.” She looked toward the driveway. “Today I heard the baby crying and the horn going off. Tyler walked inside with the keys.”
The officer turned toward her.
“You saw that?”
Carol nodded.
“And Vanessa followed him. She kept saying, ‘This wasn’t what you said we were doing.’”
Inside the house, Grant closed the front door.
Not slammed.
May you like
Closed.
As if the family’s greatest danger was still being seen.
