There were two of them, one in plain clothes and one in uniform, both professional and thorough. Lucy gave her statement at the kitchen table with Thomas beside her and my mother on her other side. I gave mine in the hallway. The plain-clothes officer went through the phone with the systematic focus of someone who has done this before and understands that evidence requires documentation, not interpretation.
Steven tried the same things he had tried with us. The hacked phone. The misunderstanding. The suggestion that Lucy was unstable, that her history made her prone to misreading things, that coming into someone’s room every night was itself the suspicious behavior worth examining.The officer looked at him with an expression that had seen these particular arguments before.
The photos were documented. The video was documented. Lucy’s statement about the doorknob, the footsteps, the light, and the systematic escalation was documented. My corroboration of the light under the door was documented. My mother’s recollection of two separate incidents at family gatherings that she had dismissed at the time was documented.
