Chapter 13: The Badge at the Door
Standing on the covered porch was Officer Vance, a veteran neighborhood patrol officer whom Clara recognized from the local block watch meetings. He wore a bright yellow slicker that glistened with rainwater, his grey hair neatly cropped under his patrol cap. "Morning, Clara," Officer Vance said with a polite, tired nod, stepping out of the driving rain into the tiled foyer. "Sorry to bother you on such a miserable morning, but we had a weird call from the Johnson house down the street. Their teenager heard scratching noises behind their upstairs drywall late last night, and when they opened a utility panel, they found some old surveyor equipment and fresh footprints." Clara’s stomach dropped into her shoes. She gripped the edge of the console table behind her to steady herself, fighting hard to keep her facial micro-expressions completely neutral.
"Surveyor equipment?" Clara echoed, injecting just the right amount of polite confusion into her tone. "In their walls?" Officer Vance sighed, pulling a small notebook from his breast pocket and flipping it open with a damp thumb. "Yeah. Sounds crazy, right? The Johnsons think it might be some kind of urban explorer or a homeless transient squatting in the old crawlspaces between the foundations. We’re going house-to-house down the block to check utility access panels and see if any other families noticed anything unusual." Clara nodded slowly, her mind working at lightning speed. If the police checked her kitchen cabinet panel, they would find Julian's hidden access shaft instantly, leading directly to the basement guest room where an elderly, legally dead man was currently eating breakfast.
Before Clara could formulate a plausible excuse to keep the officer out of the kitchen, Maya rounded the corner from the hallway, holding Lily’s hand. Lily immediately let go of Maya’s fingers, trotted directly over to Officer Vance, and stared up at his shiny silver badge with wide, curious eyes. "The house has bones, Officer," Lily announced in her clear, calm toddler voice, pointing a small finger toward the kitchen. "And the builder is resting in the basement." Officer Vance blinked, looking down at the red-haired toddler in surprise before shifting his gaze up to meet Clara’s frozen, terrified eyes. The heavy silence stretched between them, pregnant with a secret that could no longer be contained by walls, cabinets, or clever architectural designs.
