Chapter 10 - The Camera With No Cloud
Rosa slapped Mateo before anyone could stop her.
It wasn’t hard.
That somehow made it worse.
Mateo was twenty-six, broad-shouldered, tattooed, and suddenly looked twelve.
“Auntie—”
“Don’t.”
Rosa’s hand shook.
Grace stood near the interview room door while an investigator separated them.
Mateo had not sold the card yet.
He had texted Daniel from a prepaid number and offered it for twenty thousand dollars.
Daniel had agreed to meet.
Police got there first because Mateo, nervous and stupidly proud of himself, had mentioned the plan to his girlfriend. She called Rosa’s sister. Rosa’s sister called the sheriff.
The chain of luck felt almost insulting.
Rosa stared at her nephew. “Why?”
Mateo looked at the floor.
“Debt.”
“What debt?”
He said nothing.
“Mateo.”
“Sports betting.”
Rosa closed her eyes.
Grace expected a speech.
Rosa gave none.
She simply turned away from him.
The memory card contained photographs from Cedar Pines after the fire: a chained fire exit, sprinkler valves tagged OUT OF SERVICE, and a maintenance clipboard with dates that contradicted the official report.
But the most important image was blurry.
In the background of one photo, a small camera was mounted above a hallway door.
Grace leaned toward the monitor.
“That camera wasn’t in the fire report.”
The investigator zoomed in.
Rosa said, “Cedar Pines had cameras everywhere.”
“Cloud storage?”
Grace shook her head. “No. Daniel complained about the subscription fees. They used local recorders.”
The investigator looked at her.
“Where?”
Grace thought.
She had visited Cedar Pines twice before the fire. The administrator had once shown her a cramped equipment room when a network outage knocked out payroll access.
A metal cabinet.
Two recorders.
A backup drive.
“The server closet was in the basement,” Grace said.
The investigator frowned. “Basement flooded during firefighting.”
“The live system was there.”
“What about backup?”
Grace stared at the photo.
Daniel hated paying for anything twice.
Except when he feared losing it.
At home, every important file had a second local backup.
She whispered, “There was probably another drive off-site.”
Rosa turned. “Where?”
Grace remembered a row she and Daniel had once had about boxes in their garage.
He had refused to let her throw out an old gray network recorder.
“That’s company property,” he’d snapped.
A week later it disappeared.
Grace’s eyes lifted.
“Daniel’s workshop.”
The investigator said, “We searched the house.”
“Not the house.”
Grace looked toward the window.
“He rents a storage bay under his mechanic’s name.”
Then she remembered something else.
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Daniel had taken that mechanic fishing two days after the Cedar Pines fire.
The mechanic never came back.
