Chapter 7 - The Missing HourBrooks played the audio for me at the station with my attorney present. Evan had helped me find her, but I hired her myself with money Rosa and I had saved. I needed someone whose duty was to me.
The recording began with the rustle of Sloane’s jacket. Graham’s voice came through faintly.
“Feed’s down,” he said.
“It still has a light.”
“That’s power. I cut the connection.”
Sloane asked when Evan would arrive. Graham said he was on his way up from the garage and would be at the nursery within two minutes of her call.
Then I heard the iron click against the changing table.
Finn began fussing. Sloane said, “Come on,” in a tone I had never heard her use with him before.
I wanted Brooks to stop the recording. I made myself listen.
Graham returned to the doorway. “Keep it away from the kid,” he said.
“I know.”
“She only has to see it.”
Sloane made no answer. A few seconds later, Finn screamed and my footsteps sounded in the hallway.
When it ended, I sat very still.
Graham had known she intended to stage a frightening scene. He had warned her to keep the iron away from Finn. On the camera, she had moved it closer after he left. Their voices and the video gave Brooks a clearer account of what each had done.
The recording also explained why Sloane had kept the device. It stored audio locally, like the camera. Perhaps she had forgotten it was on. Perhaps she thought she could use Graham’s warning to blame him if she needed to.
Brooks told me charges were being prepared. Until warrants were issued, she wanted me to keep my usual routine and call her if anyone approached me.
“I don’t have a usual routine right now,” I said.
She gave me a tired smile. “Then stay with your sister.”
For the next two days, I helped Rosa study for a nursing entrance exam. I made dinner. I let my burn heal. Every few hours, I checked my phone.
Daniel gave investigators more records. He acknowledged approving false invoices and moving money into accounts controlled by Sloane. He said Graham helped create trip logs for vans that made no trips. According to Daniel, Sloane had ordered the plan to blame me after seeing the invoice in my hand.
That part hurt in a strange way. I had found one piece of paper. For that, she had placed an iron beside her own child.
Evan called after he learned it.
“I keep trying to understand how she thought this would end,” he said.
“You may not be able to.”
“I lived with her. I should have seen—”
I interrupted him. “You can ask how to protect Finn now. You can ask why staff couldn’t tell you what they saw. You can’t make her choices yours.”
He was quiet for a while.
Then he said, “I can change the things that let her get away with them.”
That morning, he had met the foundation’s board. They were replacing its payment controls and bringing in directors who did not work for him. He said the review had found unpaid bills to real transport providers. He had personally arranged to cover them while investigators determined where the foundation’s money had gone.
I told him that was a start.
Sloane’s supervised visit with Finn was scheduled for Friday at ten. The center had trained staff and controlled entrances. Evan was uneasy, but the court order was clear. Brooks knew about the visit and had notified the center.
At nine forty-five, a staff member checked Sloane in. She arrived without Graham. She carried a diaper bag the center inspected and a new stuffed fox still bearing its store tag.
Finn went to her willingly. He knew his mother. The staff member wrote that in the visit log.
At ten eighteen, another woman entered the building wearing a badge and carrying a folder. She said she had been sent to transfer Finn to a different room for a child welfare interview. The receptionist asked for identification and called the supervisor.
While they were verifying her story, an alarm sounded at the side exit.
The visitor had no authority from child welfare. By the time the supervisor reached the visitation room, Sloane and Finn were gone.
The center’s camera showed Sloane carrying him through a staff corridor. A man in a maintenance jacket held the door open. His face was partly hidden by a cap, but Brooks recognized his walk and the watch on his wrist.
Graham Voss.
Evan called me from the center. His voice was level, which frightened me more than shouting would have.
“Finn’s missing,” he said.
I could hear people moving around him, doors opening, police radios answering one another.
“Brooks is here. They’re looking for the car.”
I closed my eyes and pictured Finn the last time I had seen him: reaching for a spoon, grinning because he had learned to bang it against a table.
Then I remembered the new fox.
“Tell Brooks to check the tag,” I said. “If Sloane bought it this morning, there may be a store camera. Graham may have been there.”
Evan repeated it to someone beside him.
May you like
Within twenty minutes, officers found the purchase. The store camera showed Graham waiting outside in a white Northline van.
It was the same van Rosa and I had seen at the warehouse.
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