Chapter 4
Back at the empty house, the crime scene tape across the double doors fluttered slightly in the evening breeze. Marcus bypassed the police barrier using his homeowner clearance, ignoring the chalk outline near the kitchen island. He walked directly to the smart-home hub installed behind the pantry door, bypassing the standard interface to access the local backup drive. The ceiling camera’s red indicator light glowed steadily in the darkened room, a silent sentinel recording his every move. Marcus plugged his encrypted external drive into the console, initiating a manual download of the high-definition footage from the exact hour of the incident. The progress bar crawled forward painfully slow on the tiny LED screen.
As the files transferred, Marcus reviewed the metadata. Something was wrong. A fifteen-minute gap existed right before he entered the house—a precise window where the video file appeared corrupted, overwritten by a loop of empty kitchen space. Someone with administrator credentials had tampered with the cloud storage in real-time, executing a clean override to hide whatever interaction had occurred between Cali and Elena prior to the fall. Marcus gripped the edge of the counter, his knuckles turning white. Elena couldn't have performed a remote wipe from inside the kitchen unless she had possessed Cali’s master tablet or knew the override code that Marcus had set up for absolute privacy.
The front doorbell chimed, breaking the heavy silence of the house. Marcus pocketed the drive, his heart hammering against his ribs as he walked through the living room to peer through the peephole. Detective Miller stood on the porch, holding a clipboard and looking serious under the porch light. Marcus unlocked the heavy wood door, letting the cool night air rush into the hallway. Miller didn't waste time with pleasantries; he stepped inside and placed a manila folder on the entryway table. The police had already questioned Elena, and her story had shifted. She was no longer claiming to be a mere visitor; she was claiming she was invited there to discuss a business partnership that Cali had secretly initiated behind Marcus’s back.
