Chapter 2 - The Red Notebook
The night shift ended at six in the morning, but I couldn't bring myself to log off my console.
While the rest of the dispatch floor cleared out, the soft hum of fluorescent lights filling the quiet room, I pulled up the archived recording of Lucy’s 911 call. I put on a pair of noise-canceling studio headphones and played the audio back at maximum volume, running it through an audio enhancement filter.
“Daddy’s snake got out again.”
I replayed those five words fifty times. There was something unnatural about the way she said it. She hadn't said the snake or a snake. She said Daddy's snake. And her voice hadn't carried the simple panic of a child afraid of a wild animal; it carried the deep, ingrained horror of a child who knew a secret that was crushing her alive.
I brought up the property records for the address: 1442 Elmcrest Lane.
The house was registered to Richard Vance. He was forty-two years old, a senior partner at a corporate law firm in downtown Des Moines, and a former prosecutor for the county. His wife, Sarah Vance, had died three years ago in a single-car accident on an icy highway outside the city. Since then, Richard had lived alone in the two-story suburban home with Lucy.
On paper, Richard Vance was a pillar of the community. He donated to local charities, sat on the board of a civic youth league, and drove a clean, late-model German sedan.
I pulled up the body-cam footage from Officer Torres’s unit.
I watched the ten-minute interaction over and over, zooming in on the background details of Lucy’s bedroom. The room was unnaturally sterile. There were no posters on the walls, no scattered toys, no messy stacks of schoolbooks. The bed was made with military precision. The windows were fitted with heavy, light-blocking blinds that were pulled down completely and locked at the frame.
And then I saw it—the final three seconds of the footage before Torres left the room.
Lucy pointing her finger toward the space under her bed.
"What were you trying to show her, Lucy?" I muttered to myself, rubbing my tired, bloodshot eyes.
"You're still here, Collins?"
I jumped slightly, turning around to see Detective Mark Callahan standing behind my desk holding a steaming paper cup of black coffee. Callahan was a veteran homicide detective who had spent twenty years navigating the darkest corners of Des Moines. He was a grumbler with a tough exterior, but he was one of the few investigators who actually listened to dispatchers when we felt something was off.
"I can't let this call go, Mark," I admitted, turning my monitor so he could see the CAD file. "Look at this welfare check from Elmcrest Lane last night."
Callahan leaned over my shoulder, taking a slow sip of his coffee as he scanned the notes. "Richard Vance? The defense lawyer?"
"You know him?"
"I know of him," Callahan said, his forehead furrowing into deep lines. "He's slick. He used to work in the DA's office before he jumped ship to private criminal defense. He knows every legal loophole in the state of Iowa. Why were units at his house?"
"His ten-year-old daughter called 911 whispering that her father's 'snake got out again,'" I explained, playing the enhanced audio clip for him. "When officers arrived, Vance claimed it was a bad dream. The child backed up his story, but she was trembling with fear. And look at this detail—Vance had completely removed the lock from her bedroom door right before the call."
Callahan listened to the recording, his relaxed posture instantly stiffening. "That doesn't sound like a nightmare, Megan. That sounds like a child trying to speak in code."
"Exactly," I said, leaning forward. "And look at the body-cam footage right here. Just before Torres leaves, the kid points under her bed. The patrol officers missed it because they were busy arguing with Vance in the hallway."
Callahan stared at the frozen frame on my monitor, his dark eyes fixed on the gap beneath the child's bed frame. "Did anyone look under that bed?"
"No," I replied bitterly. "Vance refused permission for a full search, and because there were no visible injuries on the child, the officers cleared the scene."
Callahan slammed his coffee cup down onto my desk, pulling his phone from his coat pocket. "Torres is still on duty filling out her end-of-shift reports downstairs. Grab your coat, Megan. We're going to talk to her."
Ten minutes later, we were sitting in a small briefing room on the first floor of the precinct. Officer Sarah Torres was sitting across from us, looking exhausted, her uniform shirt wrinkled from a long night on patrol.
"I felt it too, Megan," Torres admitted, rubbing her face with her hands. "The air in that house felt wrong. Vance was standing over us like a hawk the entire time. Every time I tried to get Lucy to step away from him, he stepped right into my line of sight. But legally, I had nothing to hold him on."
"Torres," Callahan said firmly, leaning across the table. "When you turned around to leave the bedroom, did you see the kid point down at the floor under her bed?"
Torres blinked, her eyes widening as she recalled the moment. "I... I saw her hand move, but I thought she was just waving goodbye or reacting to the light."
"She wasn't waving," I insisted, pulling up the printed freeze-frame photo on the table. "She was pointing at something hidden beneath the bed frame."
Torres leaned over the photo, studying it closely. "Wait... while Miller was talking to Vance in the hall, I noticed a small dark shadow near the floorboards, but I thought it was just a dust cover or an old shoebox."
"We need to go back there," Callahan said, standing up. "We need a judge to sign a search warrant."
"On what grounds, Mark?" Torres countered helplessly. "A child pointing at the floor isn't probable cause for a search warrant. Any judge in Polk County will throw that application out in two seconds, especially against an attorney like Richard Vance."
"Then we don't go with a search warrant," I said, a dangerous, reckless idea forming in my mind. "We go with Child Protective Services. We request an unannounced home welfare follow-up based on the 911 call log."
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Callahan looked at me, a slow, approving grin creeping onto his tired face. "Collins, you're a dispatcher. You're not supposed to be playing detective."
"I took the call, Mark," I said softly, looking him dead in the eye. "I heard her voice. If we leave that little girl in that house with him, something terrible is going to happen."
