Chapter 6 - The Missing CameraDetective Ortiz obtained a warrant for Grant’s SUV, phone, office, and home.
Grant surrendered the devices through his attorney.
The second camera was not among them.
Neither was the memory card.
Sarah returned to Grant’s house accompanied by an officer to collect Ethan’s clothing and school backpack.
She had lived there once.
Three years earlier, before the divorce, the house had been theirs.
Now every room felt like a museum dedicated to a life she had escaped.
Grant’s expensive whiskey remained on the kitchen shelf.
Arthur’s photograph still hung in the hallway.
Ethan’s bedroom looked untouched.
Sarah stepped inside.
His sneakers were beneath the desk.
A science worksheet sat half completed.
On the dresser was the wooden birdhouse Ethan and Arthur had built together.
Sarah touched it.
“I should have known.”
The officer remained near the door.
“Known what?”
“That Grant hated anything he couldn’t control.”
She opened Ethan’s backpack.
A folded paper sat beneath two books.
WAIVER OF LIABILITY.
Junior Mountain Descent Experience.
The program logo resembled Hale Ridge Outfitters’ branding.
Sarah frowned.
She had never signed it.
Yet her name appeared at the bottom.
SARAH HALE.
Her signature.
Almost.
The final stroke on the H tilted in the wrong direction.
Sarah photographed it before handing it to the officer.
“That’s forged.”
The supposed training company had no website.
No registration.
No listed instructor.
No insurance certificate.
Nothing.
Grant had manufactured an activity that did not exist.
When Ortiz confronted him through counsel, Grant claimed a contractor had handled the paperwork.
He could not name the contractor.
The missing second camera remained more important.
Digital forensic technicians recovered fragments from Ethan’s damaged camera.
Not video.
Not yet.
But timestamps.
The camera had recorded for thirty-eight minutes that morning.
Then stopped fourteen seconds after Ethan went over the cliff.
Fourteen seconds.
Long enough to capture something.
The memory card had suffered physical damage during the fall, but specialists believed parts of the footage might still be recoverable.
Ethan improved slowly.
He hated sleeping.
Every time he closed his eyes, he returned to the cliff.
Sarah began sitting beside him at night.
One evening he whispered, “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Did Dad think I was going to die?”
Sarah’s heart broke.
She wanted to lie.
Instead she said, “I think your dad did something terrible. The police are figuring out exactly what.”
“Because of Grandpa’s money?”
Sarah was startled.
“Who told you that?”
“I heard Grandma talking to Grandpa.”
Diane and Robert.
Sarah sighed.
“Partly, maybe.”
Ethan stared at the blanket.
“So he likes money more than me.”
“No.”
Ethan looked at her.
Sarah chose her words carefully.
“What Grant did isn’t a measurement of your value. It tells us something about him.”
Ethan said nothing.
After a while, he whispered, “I still miss him.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
That was the cruelest part.
Grant had not pushed a stranger.
He had pushed a child who still wanted his father.
“You’re allowed to,” Sarah said.
The next morning, Ortiz received a call from the state digital forensics lab.
They had recovered eleven seconds of usable audio.
Sarah, Miriam, and a prosecutor listened in a conference room.
Wind.
Ethan crying.
Then Grant.
“If you won’t jump…”
Static.
A scrape.
“…I’ll push you.”
Ethan’s voice.
“Dad… don’t!”
The recording cut into violent distortion.
Then one final word.
Ethan screaming—
“DAD!”
Silence followed.
Nobody spoke.
Ortiz looked at the prosecutor.
He nodded once.
“Get the warrant.”
At 2:17 that afternoon, Grant walked out of Hale Ridge Outfitters headquarters.
Two sheriff’s vehicles were waiting.
Employees watched through the glass doors as Ortiz approached.
“Grant Hale?”
He stared at her.
“You are under arrest for attempted first-degree murder and felony child abuse.”
Grant’s face remained still.
Until Ortiz added one sentence.
May you like
“We recovered the audio.”
For the first time since Ethan had survived, Grant looked afraid.
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