Chapter 3 - The Fortress of PaperworkBy 4:00 AM, the emergency room had cleared of police officers, leaving behind a cold, clinical quiet.
Gareth had been dragged out of the hospital in heavy steel restraints, booked on charges of felony child abuse, domestic battery, and witness intimidation. My mother had followed him to the precinct in a taxi, weeping hysterically and shouting threats at Dr. Shaw from the parking lot.
Lydia and I were moved to a secure, private room on the pediatrics floor under a secondary alias to prevent Gareth’s brother, Detective Richard Dixon, from accessing our medical records or location.
Dr. Shaw sat in the vinyl armchair beside Lydia’s bed, a laptop open on her lap, reviewing the files from my flash drive alongside an investigator from Child Protective Services named Sarah Jenkins.
Sarah was a woman in her late thirties with tired eyes, dark hair tied in a messy bun, and a heavy leather binder overflowing with case files. For two hours, she had listened to the audio files through headphones.
Her face had turned an ugly, pale shade of gray.
"Maya," Sarah said softly, removing her headphones and looking at me. "I've been a CPS investigator for eleven years. I have rarely seen a record this meticulous."
She turned her laptop screen toward us.
The folder structure was organized by month, week, and date. Each audio file was paired with a corresponding PDF containing Lydia's photographs, timestamps, and a transcription of every threat Gareth had made.
"File 042," Sarah read aloud, her voice trembling slightly with suppressed rage. "Gareth Dixon instructing Brenda Vance to withhold food for forty-eight hours because Maya received a B on an AP Physics exam."
"He used food as a lever," Lydia whispered from her bed. Her voice was weak, but her breathing had stabilized after receiving pain medication for her ribs. "If we didn't smile when he came home from work, he’d padlock the pantry and turn off the refrigerator breaker."
"And your mother?" Sarah asked gently. "How long has she been complicit?"
"Since the month after our dad died," I answered flatly. "Gareth paid off her thirty-thousand-dollar credit card debt. She traded my sister and me for a paid mortgage."
Sarah took a deep, shuddering breath, writing rapidly in her leather binder. "Detective Richard Dixon has already called the precinct house three times attempting to claim that you girls are runaway delinquents with a history of fabrication. But with this audio... with Dr. Shaw’s forensic medical report... no judge in this state will grant him access to this file."
"He's going to try to bail him out," I said, leaning forward. "Gareth has forty thousand dollars in a liquid savings account at First National. He'll be out on bond before the weekend."
May you like
Sarah looked at me, a subtle, fierce smile touching her lips.
"He won't, Maya," Sarah revealed. "Because while you were being scanned in radiology, Detective Miller executed an emergency search warrant on your house based on your audio logs. They found the belt, the padlock chains in the pantry, and a secondary hidden camera in your bedroom that you didn't even know was there."
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