Chapter 10 - THE BASEMENT SERVER
The next morning, Rafael returned with Detective Cole, Dr. Shah, and a district IT technician.
Bell met them in the lobby.
"Mr. Ortiz is suspended," he said.
Cole showed his badge.
"Today he's assisting an investigation."
Bell's jaw tightened.
They went downstairs.
Behind the boiler room sat an old server cabinet installed before the district moved most security systems to the cloud. Rafael had kept it running because the building's fire and door-access logs still passed through it.
The IT technician connected a laptop.
"There are archived video indexes here."
Bell said quickly, "Indexes aren't footage."
The technician clicked again.
"These are local cached clips."
Nobody spoke.
They found the hallway outside Room 214.
Then they found Landon.
Six months earlier, a small boy could be seen entering the supply room while Kendrick stood beside him. She closed the door. Twenty-three minutes passed.
Bell appeared.
He looked through the narrow window.
He spoke to Kendrick.
Then he walked away.
Leah, watching from the back of the room, whispered, "He knew."
The technician kept scrolling.
There were other dates.
Other children.
Not every clip showed the closet. Some showed Kendrick blocking crying students from leaving her room after dismissal. One showed Mills carrying a stack of behavior forms into Bell's office late at night.
Bell's face had gone gray.
"These files are being taken out of context."
Cole turned toward him.
"Then give me the context."
Bell opened his mouth.
Before he could answer, the server screen went black.
The lights in the basement flickered.
A red warning appeared on the laptop.
REMOTE WIPE COMMAND RECEIVED.
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The technician shouted, "Someone's deleting the archive right now."
And according to the access log, the command had been issued from inside the school.
