Chapter 6 - The Vanishing Footprints|
By midnight, my study had become an interrogation bunker.
Daniel had brought up the closed-circuit camera feeds from the previous afternoon, displaying twelve different angles of the estate’s ground floor and corridors on my wall monitors.
"Here's the footage from yesterday at 2:10 PM," Daniel explained, fast-forwarding the video.
On the screen, a man wearing a dark blue technician uniform, a baseball cap pulled low over his face, and carrying a heavy toolbox walked through the side entrance. He paused at the wall-mounted security panel, pulled out a white keycard, tapped it, and entered a six-digit PIN code.
The green light flashed, and the heavy door unlocked.
"That’s Rosa's keycard," Daniel pointed out. "And that’s her private PIN code."
"Where did he go next?" I asked, leaning over his shoulder, my eyes burning.
"He took the service elevator directly to the third floor," Daniel said, switching camera angles. "He was inside the nursery for exactly seven minutes. He placed the device behind the rosette, re-attached the molding, and walked out."
"Did he speak to anyone?"
"No one," Daniel replied. "He walked out the rear gates, climbed into an unmarked white van, and drove off. We ran the license plate number. It belongs to a stolen vehicle recovered in South Chicago two hours ago, wiped clean of fingerprints."
I ran my hands through my hair, pacing behind my desk.
"If Rosa is innocent," I reasoned, "someone had to physically steal her keycard, learn her private PIN, install that torturous device, and return the keycard without her noticing."
"Or," Daniel countered softly, "she was paid a massive sum of money to hand her keycard over for ten minutes."
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Before I could answer, my desk phone chimed. It was the night guard stationed at the gatehouse.
"Mr. Callahan, we have a problem," the guard reported nervously. "There’s a lawyer at the main gate. He claims he was hired by an anonymous third party to deliver an urgent legal notice directly to you."
