Chapter 12 - The Voice From the Nursery
"I need to know what happened before the ambulance came," I told Detective Ortiz. "Not what Ruth says happened. What actually happened."
She nodded. "We have the messages and the porch footage. Do you know of any cameras inside?"
I thought of the nursery. Daniel had mounted a small camera on a bookshelf to test the baby monitor before our daughter arrived. It faced the crib, but the open doorway was visible behind it. The microphone picked up everything in the hall.
"It saves recordings for two days," I said. "If they haven't been overwritten."
Daniel checked the cloud account. The clips were still there. He gave Ortiz access to preserve them and held my hand while we watched.
At 2:11 a.m., the hallway was dark. My voice came through the speaker, thin and far away.
"Ruth? I'm bleeding. Please."
At 2:19, footsteps. Ruth's silhouette appeared in the doorway.
"Daniel's gone," she said, just outside the camera's view. "Go back to sleep."
"I need my phone."
"You've upset him enough."
A door creaked. At 2:28 Ruth passed the nursery holding something rectangular against her chest. The small charging cable dragged behind it for a second before falling out of frame.
Ortiz paused the video. "Was your phone in a pale green case?"
"Yes."
Daniel covered his face. The room went silent, but the recording kept playing.
My voice rose from the bedroom again: "I haven't felt her kick. Ruth, please!"
Ruth stopped in the hallway and answered clearly enough for all of us to hear.
"Victor needs until noon. You can be sick after that."
Daniel made a sound I'd never heard from him before. He pushed his chair back and walked to the window, pressing his forehead to the glass.
I watched the empty hallway on the screen. No one came back for me.
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Then Ortiz noticed a second file marked 3:07 a.m.
"Before we turn this off," she said, "there's one more recording."
