Chapter 1 - The Girl With the Syringe
“Daddy made her swallow something.”
Officer Paul Hayes looked up from his keyboard. Two little girls stood on the other side of the station desk, soaked through their gray hoodies. The one who had spoken held out a clear plastic bag. Inside lay an empty oral medicine syringe. Her hand shook so hard the plastic crackled.
“Tell me your name,” Paul said.
“Nora Mercer. That's Violet. We're seven.”
Violet was bent over, pressing both palms against her stomach. Her mouth looked almost blue under the fluorescent lights. Paul came around the counter, took one look at her, and reached for the phone.
“Nora, what did your father give her?”
“He said it was vitamins. But he locked the kitchen door when he did it.”
“Did he give you any?”
Nora shook her head. “I spit mine in the sink when he wasn't looking. Violet couldn't. He watched her.”
Paul called for an ambulance, then asked dispatch for another officer. He kept his voice low. Violet swayed; he pulled a chair over and helped her sit. Nora wouldn't let go of her sister's sleeve.
“The bag,” Paul said. “Where did you find it?”
“In my shoe. I hid the syringe after he went upstairs. He always checks our pockets.”
A label was still stuck to the barrel. Paul typed the numbers into the station's shared prescription verification portal, the one used when officers found unidentified medication during welfare calls. A record appeared. He read the patient's name, the dispensing pharmacy, and then the prescriber.
PRESCRIBER: DR. RICHARD HAYES.
Paul's fingers went cold. Richard was his older brother. Richard had been dead for twenty-two months.
Outside, headlights swept across the rain-streaked lobby windows. A black luxury SUV turned into the parking lot.
Nora saw it first. “That's Daddy's car.”
For a second, the room felt painfully ordinary: a stale doughnut by the printer, the buzz of a vending machine, a calendar showing a smiling golden retriever. Paul had spent fourteen years listening to frightened people. He had learned that real fear rarely sounded loud. It sounded like a child trying to keep her voice steady while her sister couldn't straighten up.
Paul pressed the remote lock for the public doors. It clicked into place.
“Stay behind the counter,” he told them.
May you like
The driver-side door opened. A woman stepped out into the rain, and Paul recognized the face from a missing-person poster he had studied for almost a year.
It was the girls' mother.
