Chapter 3 - THE NUMBER THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST
The police turned Daniel’s estate into a map of possibilities. Every room was measured against the timeline. Every guest was placed according to memory, security footage, receipts, and phone records. At 9:09 p.m., Nora entered the kitchen. At 9:11, the corridor camera went dark. At 9:12, according to the anonymous message, the red-ribbon bottle was switched. At 9:16, Lily received the message telling her to come downstairs. At 9:19, the guests returned to the dining room for tea. At 9:21, Lily knocked the cup from Daniel’s hand. Twelve minutes had changed the shape of his family forever.
Serrano began with the people who had disappeared from the cameras during the six-minute gap. Most could be accounted for by overlapping footage in other parts of the house. Two guests were smoking on the terrace. Daniel’s attorney was speaking with a client near the library. Marta was carrying dessert plates through the service hall. Nora was in the kitchen. Esteban, however, was unaccounted for between 9:10 and 9:14. He told Serrano that he had gone upstairs to use the guest bathroom. No camera covered the interior staircase landing, and no one remembered seeing him. The fact meant nothing by itself. Yet to Daniel, it felt like the first loose thread on a sleeve he was afraid to pull.
The anonymous prepaid phone complicated everything. Investigators discovered that it had been purchased in cash at a convenience store six miles from Esteban’s private clinic. The store camera showed the buyer wearing a baseball cap and a medical mask. The person’s face could not be identified. The height and build were ordinary. What mattered was the timing: the phone had been bought the morning before the dinner, then remained silent until it connected to Daniel’s guest Wi-Fi. Whoever held it knew the network password, which was printed only on a small card inside the guest rooms and on a placard behind the study bar.
Daniel’s toxicology results arrived that evening. His blood still contained low traces of the sedative found on the old tea stains. A doctor at the hospital explained that repeated exposure could cause fatigue, disorientation, blurred memory, and suggestibility. Daniel sat in the examination room while Lily colored quietly beside him. He remembered signing pages in bed, nodding through conversations, and once waking to find Nora standing over his open briefcase. She had laughed and said she was searching for her charger. He had believed her because belief was easier than suspicion. Now he wondered how many pieces of his life had been arranged while he was too drugged to notice.
Lily had her own memory, and children often remembered details adults dismissed. On the way home, she asked why Dr. Esteban had been near the piano before dinner. Daniel turned toward her. “When?” Lily kicked her shoes gently against the seat. “Before everyone sat down. He told me my doll looked lonely. He asked if I always left her there.” Daniel felt a cold line move down his spine. “Did he tell you to leave the doll?” “No. I forgot it.” Lily frowned. “But he knew it was there.” Daniel said nothing until they reached the house. Then he called Serrano.
Esteban reacted with irritation when confronted. “Of course I saw the doll. I walked through the music room when I arrived. I spoke to Lily. Is that a crime now?” He was not wrong. The inspector kept his tone calm. “No, doctor. But whoever texted Lily knew the doll was beside the piano.” Esteban’s eyes flickered toward Daniel, wounded more than angry. “You think I sent the message?” Daniel wanted to say no. He wanted to restore the world in which his wife loved him, his doctor protected him, and his daughter never had to save his life. Instead, he answered, “I don’t know what to think.”
That night, Nora’s attorney contacted Serrano. Nora wanted to make a second statement, but only if Daniel was not present. Serrano agreed. Four hours later, he returned with a recording and a face that revealed little. “She has changed her story,” he told Daniel. “She admits the red-ribbon bottle existed. She admits she used it on you before.” Daniel’s stomach tightened. “What was in it?” “A sedative, according to her. She claims Esteban gave it to her.” Daniel stared at him. Serrano continued. “She says he told her it was a concentrated herbal calming formula, safe in very small doses. She used it to make you sleep more deeply after stressful days. At first she says it was to help you. Later she realized you were easier to persuade after taking it.”
The admission was uglier than Daniel had expected because it contained no single clean motive. Nora had not begun with murder. She had begun with convenience. She wanted Daniel calmer, softer, less watchful. Then came the financial transfers. Then the forged approvals. Then the boarding-school applications that would remove Lily from the house. Nora told police that Esteban had helped her understand Daniel’s company structure and suggested Nébula as a consulting channel. He promised she could build an independent fund “in case Daniel became controlling.” She knew the transfers were unauthorized, but she convinced herself she was taking what she would someday be entitled to as his wife.
According to Nora, the red-ribbon bottle was normally kept inside the velvet pouch in her bathroom. On the night of the dinner, she placed it in the pantry before guests arrived. When she returned later, it was still there. She never suspected it had been switched. She added six drops to Daniel’s tea, the same amount she had used before. “She says she had no reason to kill you,” Serrano explained. “She says she needed you alive because access to the business accounts depended on your authorization.” Daniel’s jaw tightened. “So I should be grateful she was only drugging and robbing me?” Serrano did not soften the answer. “No. But crimes have structures. Motive matters.”
Serrano then played part of the recorded interview. Nora’s voice sounded different through the speaker—smaller, stripped of the elegance she had worn like armor. “Esteban said Daniel was exhausted and impossible to talk to. He said the drops would help him sleep. I knew later they made Daniel confused. I still used them. I know what that makes me.” There was a pause, then Nora continued. “But I did not bring poison into that house. When Lily screamed, I thought she had exposed the sedative. I panicked. I said I wasn’t trying to kill him because Esteban had just said the substance could stop his breathing. I understood how it looked. I was terrified.”
The most important part came at the end. Nora described seeing Esteban near the service corridor at approximately 9:12. He had stepped from the direction of the pantry and nearly collided with her. When she asked what he was doing, he said he was looking for the restroom. “I thought nothing of it,” she told Serrano. “But he knows that house. He has been there hundreds of times. He knows exactly where the bathrooms are.”
Daniel listened twice. The second time hurt more. Memory supplied images he wished it would withhold: Esteban holding newborn Lily in the hospital; Esteban sitting beside Daniel after Sofia’s funeral; Esteban telling him grief came in waves and that surviving them required patience. Trust did not vanish all at once. It resisted. It argued. It invented alternative explanations.
At 11:40 p.m., Serrano received a call from the digital-forensics team. The deleted camera footage had not been removed through Daniel’s security panel. It had been erased using a maintenance backdoor created years earlier during a software update. The credentials had been sent by email to Daniel, the security company, and one other person: Dr. Esteban Rivas, who at the time had been helping Daniel install a remote medical alert system after Sofia’s death.
Serrano looked up from his phone. Before he could speak, Daniel’s house phone rang. It was Esteban’s clinic manager. The doctor had canceled all appointments, cleared his desk, and left the clinic forty minutes earlier. No one knew where he had gone.
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Then Lily appeared at the library door holding her doll. “Daddy,” she said, “there’s something inside her.” She squeezed the stuffed body, and a hard object clicked beneath the fabric.
Daniel took the doll carefully. Sewn into the back seam was a small plastic memory card.
