Chapter 4 - The Night Nurse’s Lie
Clara Ortiz had been awake for twenty-six hours, and the police interview had not made her look innocent.
When Marcus entered the small conference room at St. Agnes, she stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor. She was thirty-two, with tired eyes and a careful voice. Her nursing credentials were legitimate. Her references were excellent. She had cared for premature infants and grieving parents, and she had never been accused of losing a baby.
“Mr. Falcone,” she said, “I know what everybody thinks.”
“What do they think?” Marcus asked.
“That I left Matteo alone.”
“Did you?”
Clara shook her head, then hesitated. “I left the nursery when the internal phone rang. The woman said the mother’s medical records had been delivered to the wrong room and contained private information. She said someone from the household needed to sign for them.”
“Why would they need a nurse?”
“She said Isabella wanted me, specifically. I thought it was because I handled the hospital discharge file.”
Marcus felt the old instinct to demand why she had followed such an odd instruction. But Clara had worked in his home for only two nights. Everybody knew Isabella Cross could order staff to move mountains. Marcus had made sure of that.
“Who was watching Matteo?” he asked.
“Daphne, the relief aide. She said she would stay until I returned.”
“Where is Daphne?”
Clara swallowed. “I haven’t seen her since.”
The aide had been hired through an agency the previous morning. Her application listed a downtown address, a bank account, and a reference who answered no calls. Detectives were already checking whether the documents were genuine. Marcus listened as Clara described returning to the nursery and finding the bassinet empty. She had searched the adjoining bathroom, then called security. But Andre’s team had been busy responding to a supposed malfunction in the service cameras. Nearly twelve minutes passed before anyone treated the missing newborn as an emergency.
“That delay could have killed him,” Marcus said, more to himself than to Clara.
She began to cry. “I should have called 911 right away.”
“You should have. And the people who trained you should have made that clear.” Marcus took a breath. “But someone created a diversion. I intend to find out who.”
He asked Detective Park to interview Clara without his presence. His name could make witnesses say whatever they believed would please him. For years he had considered that useful. He was beginning to understand the danger.
Back at the estate, Andre showed Marcus a diagram of the security network. The mansion had eighty-four cameras. Most recorded to a central server managed by an outside vendor. The service cameras were also linked to a maintenance system controlled from Isabella’s office. Somebody had entered a routine replacement request, then switched three cameras into diagnostic mode during the precise window in which Matteo disappeared.
“Can you tell who entered it?” Marcus asked.
“Credentials belong to Isabella. But anybody with her password could use them.”
“Who knows that password?”
Andre did not answer immediately. “Her assistant Celia, possibly. Your lawyer Bennett once received emergency access. And Isabella tends to leave her tablet unlocked.”
For the first time Marcus recognized how much of the family’s security had been built around deference rather than safeguards. Everyone had been instructed to trust Isabella, so no one checked her.
He ordered independent forensic specialists to make copies of the relevant logs and told Andre to preserve rather than wipe the existing systems. He refused Isabella’s suggestion that they replace the servers immediately. When she appeared in the doorway, she looked at the diagram and smiled.
“Now we’re blaming an old security system?”
“We’re checking what it records.”
“Marcus, strangers have been inside this house for weeks. Nurses, contractors, delivery drivers. That girl saw a person in a coat. It could be anyone.”
“Yes,” he said. “It could.”
Isabella seemed disappointed that he would not accuse her. She moved closer, lowering her voice. “Marisol’s daughter knows the service corridors. Perhaps she was involved in an accident and invented the bin story to avoid punishment.”
Marcus looked at her. “An eight-year-old found a child who needed help. Stop making her the problem.”
“You’ve changed.”
“A baby nearly died in my house.”
“That doesn’t mean the family should be torn apart.”
He wondered when she had begun using the word family to mean the people who controlled his household, rather than the people who lived in it.
That evening Detective Park located Daphne’s emergency contact in a rented mailbox across town. The name associated with the account led to a woman who had worked briefly for Isabella’s charitable foundation. The woman insisted she had never met Daphne but acknowledged receiving money to verify a reference over the phone.
Park warned Marcus against drawing conclusions. A fraudulent reference could mean Daphne was involved in a crime, or simply that she had lied about her work history. The police were still searching for her.
At ten that night Eva called Marcus from the hospital. “I heard you were questioning Clara.”
“I listened. Detective Park is handling the investigation.”
“Good. Matteo needs us to be parents, not detectives who think they already know the ending.”
He sat on the nursery floor, looking at the empty space beneath the mobile. “I keep thinking if I had gone upstairs five minutes earlier—”
“Then someone planning to hurt him might have waited five more minutes.”
Marcus closed his eyes. Eva was exhausted, but she had found the truth he could not bear to admit: this was not a failure he could repair by blaming his timing alone.
After they hung up, Andre knocked on the open door. He held a sealed evidence-copy request from Park.
“The internal phone record is back,” he said. “Clara’s call came from extension 14.”
“Isabella’s office?”
“No. The line was reassigned last month. Extension 14 is in the private conference room used by the trust attorney.”
“Bennett?”
Andre nodded. “And this morning he asked the IT company to delete its call history as part of a software upgrade.”
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Marcus rose slowly. For the first time, Isabella’s power did not look like the whole betrayal. It looked like one piece of something built much earlier.
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