Then, with a scream torn straight from his lungs, he smashed something onto the desk. CRACK. It was a smartphone.
The screen was split like a spiderweb, the casing battered. “She dropped this!” Leo shouted, voice raw and trembling. “She dropped it when she shoved Janie in the wagon!
The room froze. All the mockery evaporated. Even Kowalski’s smirk vanished.
I pushed away from my desk. My chair screeched harshly against the floor, slicing through the silence. I approached them, pushing past the stunned rookie, and focused on the boy.
His eyes were enormous, terrified, begging. They weren’t the eyes of someone telling a story. They were the eyes of someone telling a truth.
“What’s your name, kid?” I asked quietly. “Leo,” he rasped. “Please.
She has my sister.”
I picked up the phone. It was locked, but the camera app was still open. And the model was expensive—far too nice to be something a random kid would stumble across on the street.
“You said she dropped it?” I asked, not looking away from the cracked screen. “She was fighting with the blanket,” Leo said quickly, almost tripping over his own words. “Janie tried to yell.
The lady… she looks kind, but she’s really strong. The phone fell when she pushed the stroller. I grabbed it and ran here.”
The last photo wasn’t posed. It was a burst of shots, taken accidentally when the phone hit the sidewalk. “Let’s see what you brought us,” I murmured, dragging my thumb across the broken glass.
I reached the last image. And my heart—long hardened, long deadened—stopped for a beat. The photo was taken from the ground, angled upward, chaotic.
It showed a woman bending down—an older woman. But what was under her frail-looking hands made my stomach twist. I zoomed in. Continue reading…
