Chapter 4 - Digital Evidence
Twenty minutes later, my phone buzzed against the kitchen counter. I picked it up instantly, stepping away from Claire so she could rest her head against the kitchen island.
"Talk to me, Marcus," I murmured into the receiver.
"You've got a clean sweep of evidence, Ethan," Marcus said, the sound of typing clicking rapidly in the background. "First off, that electrician story is absolute garbage. I pulled the municipal permit logs and traffic data for your street. The only vehicle parked across from your house between 7:00 and 8:30 PM was a nondescript Ford sedan registered to a collection agency out of Chattanooga—*Apex Recovery LLC*. Not an electrician in sight."
My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. "Go on."
"Better yet," Marcus continued, his voice dropping an octave. "One of the neighbors across the street—an old retired engineer named Miller—has a high-definition dash camera mounted on his truck facing right at your driveway. I accessed his feed remotely. It shows your mother walking out to the Ford sedan at 7:15 PM, talking calmly to two heavy-set men in suits, and opening your front gate for them. They walked right in like they owned the place."
"Was there a 911 call?" I asked, remembering the chaos in the house.
"Funny you should ask," Marcus chuckled darkly. "An emergency call *was* placed from a landline inside your house at 7:42 PM—right around the time your wife was being assaulted. The dispatcher picked up, but twenty seconds later, the caller hung up and dialed a secondary code to cancel the dispatch. That secondary code was entered using your mother’s personal security pin."
They hadn't just staged an assault; they had deliberately silenced emergency services to ensure no witnesses or cops arrived before they forced Claire to sign away our life savings.
"Marcus, I need you to forward those video files and the call logs to my secure cloud," I instructed. "Send copies to Detective Miller at the state police barracks in Knoxville, too. Not the local precinct—the state troopers."
"Done," Marcus said. "They're en route now. What's your play, Captain?"
"They're coming back at ten o'clock," I said coldly. "They brought paperwork for a seventy-five-thousand-dollar consolidation loan against my house equity, and they need Claire's signature to finalize it before the bank closes the quarter. I'm going to let them walk right into their own trap."
"I'll have a state trooper unit parked three streets down in an unmarked van," Marcus warned. "Don't let them push you too far, Ethan. People backed into a corner do desperate things."
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"Let them try," I said, and ended the call.
TITLE: The Price of Blood and Rice
