CHAPTER 14: THE SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPH
The next morning, someone slid an envelope beneath my front door.
I found it while bringing in the newspaper.
Inside was a photograph of Sophie leaving school with Owen.
A date had been written on the back.
It was taken four days earlier.
There was no threat written beneath it.
There didn’t need to be.
I called Ortiz and left the envelope where it lay.
She arrived with an evidence technician.
They examined the doorway, photographed the paper, and collected it for further review.
I called Claire after they left.
She began crying before I finished describing the picture.
“I hoped Patricia would never go that far,” she said.
I asked whether she had warned Owen.
“He’s speaking with the school and an attorney now.”
Nora called fifteen minutes later.
She said the photograph could be relevant to a pattern of harassment, but investigators still needed to establish who had taken and delivered it.
I agreed to provide my statement.
That afternoon, a reporter knocked at my door.
She introduced herself as Hannah Price from the county newspaper.
She had seen Ethan Rowe’s article and wanted to know whether my father had secretly financed an abduction.
I told her the allegations involved a real family and a child who deserved privacy.
She asked whether that meant the story was true.
“It means I am not going to let an eight-year-old become public entertainment,” I answered.
Hannah lowered her recorder.
“I can respect that,” she said.
She then asked a question I hadn’t expected.
“Did you know Patricia Voss was once a volunteer family-court advocate?”
I hadn’t.
Hannah showed me an archived newsletter from twenty-two years earlier.
Patricia appeared in a photograph beside a judge and several volunteers.
The caption praised her work helping children through difficult custody cases.
Patricia had not merely known how the system worked.
She had been part of it.
