Chapter 3 - THREE BLOCKS AWAY
Sitting in my parked sedan just three blocks away from the house, the physical distance felt like a canyon. Through the high-definition cellular feed on my tablet, I watched every agonizing movement Emma made on the carpet. Her fingers brushed against the sharp edges of the broken pharmaceutical bottle where Vivian had deliberately crushed her prescribed pain management medication. Blood smeared lightly against the white carpet fibers as Emma tried to steady herself. Vivian stood over her, cradling a screaming Oliver with an expression of cold, unrelenting disdain. My phone buzzed again; it was Natalie calling back, her voice shaking with a mixture of suppressed trauma and white-hot fury. “Dan, do not go in there empty-handed,” Natalie urged. “If you just yell at her, she’ll twist it. She’ll tell the whole family that Emma is unstable, that postpartum depression made her smash her own pills. You need more than one angle.” She was right. As an operations director, I knew that building a airtight case required logging every variable, securing the perimeter, and ensuring there was no escape route for the perpetrator.
