Chapter 3 - THE CAMERA IN THE HALLWAY
The building footage did not show Charles burning me.
It showed something nearly as useful.
At 10:41 p.m., Lauren left the penthouse.
Returned twelve minutes later.
At 10:54, she handed something to Brian outside the door.
A small black case.
Then disappeared back inside.
At 11:09, I exited with my suitcase.
Brian followed.
The hallway audio was limited.
But the microphone near the elevator captured one sentence clearly.
Brian:
“Don’t call the police.”
Then:
“Dad cannot have another incident on record.”
Another incident.
Detective Collins replayed it twice.
“What incident?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked at me.
“Has Charles assaulted anyone before?”
“Not that I know.”
“Threatened?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I started listing things I had once classified as “Charles being Charles.”
Throwing a whiskey glass during an argument.
Shoving Brian against a garage wall five years earlier.
Grabbing Lauren’s boyfriend by the collar.
Threatening a contractor.
Putting a fist through a cabinet door.
None reported.
Every incident absorbed by the family.
“He has a temper.”
That was how we all described it.
A temper.
Such a small phrase for behavior that taught everyone around him to calculate risk.
Detective Collins asked:
“What was the black case?”
I didn’t know.
Police later learned it contained a compact external drive.
Lauren had gone downstairs to retrieve it from her car.
Why?
That question mattered because the drive contained exported copies of security logs from a Hawthorne-owned office suite.
And those logs connected directly to the documents Naomi was reviewing.
Lauren had not gone to retrieve evidence for me.
She had gone to retrieve something Brian wanted removed from the penthouse before officers arrived.
The hallway camera caught the transfer.
Police later obtained the drive through lawful process.
Brian’s fear at the elevator finally made sense.
The assault was terrible.
May you like
But it was not the only thing he wanted hidden that night.
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