Chapter 5 - The Man Who Touched Every Photograph
By Monday morning, I had slept fewer than ten hours since the birthday dinner.
Every small noise startled me, and every time Noah asked when we could go home, my mouth felt full of broken glass.
The locksmith had replaced the damaged front lock, but I refused to take my son back until the bedroom door was repaired and investigators finished their work.
Tessa helped him pack his school bag while I drove to the police station for a scheduled interview.
Officer Grant introduced me to Detective Leah Moreno, a compact woman with silver streaks in her dark hair and a habit of letting people finish sentences before she spoke.
She reviewed what investigators knew and what they did not.
Todd Hails had been located near the building shortly after the break-in and detained for questioning.
A copied key, a metal prying tool, and a pair of work gloves had been recovered during the investigation.
Testing and comparison were still underway.
The hallway camera showed a person consistent with Todd entering the third floor before Eric arrived.
It did not show every doorway inside the building.
Moreno told me not to repeat uncertain details publicly, especially if I wanted the prosecution to have a clean record later.
I appreciated that she regarded the truth as more important than the satisfying version of events.
“Do you know Todd outside maintenance visits?” she asked.
“No,” I answered.
“He repaired my kitchen sink last month.”
“Did you give him access while you were absent?”
“Never.”
She asked whether he had ever commented on my family or finances.
I remembered a question from the repair visit that had seemed harmless until now.
He had noticed an old framed picture of June holding baby Noah.
“Your mom still lives up north?” he asked while tightening the pipe.
I had told him she lived fifteen minutes away, then wondered why he cared.
Moreno wrote that down without suggesting it proved anything.
She asked whether the note in my bedroom sounded like something Patricia would say.
“Not exactly,” I answered.
“Mom says the past is the past when she wants you to stop asking questions.”
“Is there anyone else who would want your mother to hear that sentence?”
The question unsettled me.
I had been so focused on Patricia that I had not considered Todd might have his own reason to threaten her.
Moreno explained that a person who broke into my apartment could have been acting on instructions, improvising, or pursuing a separate dispute.
The note might have been intended as a warning, a taunt, or a deliberate attempt to implicate somebody else.
Only evidence could distinguish those possibilities.
I gave her the photographs of Eric's handwritten instructions, including the line about the blue folder.
She asked who had retained the original paper.
“Jenna has it until Eric gives it to you,” I said.
Moreno wrote Jenna's number down.
Then she showed me a still photograph from a building camera, keeping identifying details outside the investigation to herself.
I recognized Todd's jacket and the dark cap he wore during maintenance calls.
A second figure appeared near the service entrance several minutes earlier, partly hidden beneath an umbrella.
The person's face could not be seen.
I asked whether it was my mother.
“We cannot determine that from this frame,” Moreno said.
“Don't decide for us.”
I accepted her correction, though my imagination had already supplied Patricia's pearl earrings and navy jacket under the umbrella.
After the interview, I visited the building with Simon Hails present.
He had arranged for a licensed crew to replace the bedroom door and repair the front frame.
The workmen moved carefully around the spots still marked for examination.
Simon looked uncomfortable when I asked about Todd's access.
“My nephew has helped us for years,” he said.
“I never thought he'd do something like this.”
“You still haven't said who authorized him to copy a key.”
Simon admitted there had been an older master-key system with poor records.
Todd had access to a maintenance cabinet before Simon changed the locks on that cabinet after the incident.
I asked for the records in writing.
Maya Chen, the attorney I would meet later that day, had already advised me to document all conversations about security.
Simon promised to send what he had.
Then he said something I had not expected.
“Your mother called our office last week.”
My heart thudded.
“What did she want?”
“She asked about your tenancy, whether a relative could change the locks, and whether we could remove belongings if there was a family emergency.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That she wasn't the tenant and had no authority over your apartment.”
“Did you speak to Todd afterward?”
Simon hesitated.
“He was in the office that afternoon.”
I held my phone so tightly the case creaked.
“Please tell Detective Moreno that.”
He agreed, suddenly more conscious of the possible significance of his words.
Inside the apartment, I stood in front of Noah's dresser photographs.
The forensic team had released them, and I began setting each upright again.
The pumpkin-patch photograph came first.
Then the school picture.
Then the photograph from the day Noah learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels.
Turning them toward the room felt like reclaiming something more important than furniture.
I found a faint scratch on the edge of my desk drawer.
Nothing appeared missing inside it, because the folder Patricia apparently expected was not there.
I had never made a physical blue folder.
The name had been an invention I used while discussing the attic discovery on the phone with an old friend, months before the break-in.
Then the memory snapped into place.
I had mentioned a blue folder during a conversation at Patricia's kitchen table.
My mother had been washing dishes behind me.
She had apparently remembered a detail I barely remembered saying.
I went to the window and looked down at the wet sidewalk.
Someone had broken through two doors to search for a thing that existed only in Patricia's understanding of my life.
The thought made the room feel colder than the November wind outside.
When my phone buzzed, I flinched.
It was a message from Moreno saying that a new lead might connect the break-in to a financial dispute involving Todd.
She could not discuss it yet.
I read the message, then slid my phone into my pocket and faced the photographs again.
The person who turned them down had wanted my home to feel like a place he could control.
He had failed at that, at least in one small way.
May you like
Noah's face looked back at me from every frame.
And in two hours, I would sit with a lawyer and learn whether my mother's secret had begun years before any of those photographs were taken.
