Chapter 4 - THE FIRST DOOR PETER OPENED
Peter gave CPS everything.
Phone screenshots.
Billing statements.
Dates.
Old voicemails.
He hated doing it because documenting his relationship with Mark meant documenting how easily pride had kept them apart.
Tasha Greene never promised him a conclusion.
She only said, “We follow patterns.”
Peter decided he would too.
His home inspection happened the next morning.
He had spent half the night moving tools from the spare bedroom, locking chemicals in the garage cabinet, and borrowing a toddler bed from a coworker.
It looked desperate because it was.
His manager called while the inspector checked smoke detectors.
“You’ve used your personal days.”
“I know.”
“You need more time?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer could cost Peter shifts he could not afford to lose.
But he gave it anyway.
By afternoon he was approved for short-term kinship placement if the hospital discharged the children and if CPS finalized the safety plan.
Then Peter did something more difficult.
He drove to Mark and Reena’s house with Tasha and a police officer while investigators documented the basement.
The room was not a recreation room.
It had once been one.
Peter recognized the old Kansas City Chiefs rug Mark had bought years earlier.
But the television was gone.
So were the toys.
Two thin mattresses lay on the floor.
The small basement window had been covered from the inside.
A sliding bolt had been installed high on the hallway side of the door.
Peter touched nothing.
He just stared.
Mark had been handy.
He had renovated most of that basement himself.
Peter knew his work.
And he knew something else.
“That bolt isn’t his.”
The officer glanced at him.
“You can tell?”
“Mark hated surface-mounted hardware. He’d have recessed it.”
It sounded ridiculous until Peter noticed the screw heads.
New.
Bright.
The rest of the door hardware was old.
Tasha photographed it.
Peter walked toward the utility shelf and found an old plastic bin containing household receipts and manuals.
He didn’t remove anything.
He pointed.
“Tasha.”
Among the papers was an invoice from a local handyman Peter knew.
Luis Ortega.
The date was twelve weeks after Mark’s funeral.
The description was short:
Install exterior slide bolt—basement hall door.
May you like
Reena had told police Mark built the punishment room.
Mark had already been dead for three months when the lock went on.
