Chapter 4 - The Shadows of the Past
Lena immediately handed the scrap of paper to Detective Vance, who bagged it as evidence. The discovery changed the entire direction of the investigation. The prescription was not in Sarah’s name, nor was it in Mark’s name. It belonged to Diane Morgan.
Vance requested a background check on the Morgan family through the state police database, while social services formally stepped in to place Ella under temporary protective custody while she was in the hospital.
An hour later, Vance received a preliminary report from his officers who had executed the search warrant at the Morgan residence. What they found in the house was disturbing.
"Doctor, you're going to want to see this," Vance said, walking into Lena’s office with a laptop. He opened a secure folder containing photos from the search.
The photos showed the nursery. It was beautifully decorated—almost unnaturally pristine. But inside the closet, hidden behind stackable storage bins, officers found a hidden camera disguised as a digital clock.
"We pulled the memory card," Vance said. "It has been recording continuously for the past six months. It covers the entire nursery."
Lena sat down beside him, her heart hammering in her chest. "Does it show what happened tonight?"
"We're going through the footage now," Vance said. "But the camera was set up by Mark. He had the mobile app connected directly to his phone."
"Why would Mark set up a hidden camera in his own child’s room without telling his wife?" Lena asked.
"To record her," Vance said grimly. "Or to control the narrative."
They fast-forwarded through hours of footage from earlier that evening. At 9:15 p.m., the video showed Sarah rocking Ella in a rocking chair. Sarah looked visibly exhausted, her eyes sunken with dark circles, but her demeanor was soft, gentle, and tender. She was softly humming a lullaby. Ella was fussy, crying softly.
At 9:45 p.m., Diane Morgan entered the nursery. The audio on the recording was crisp.
"Sarah, dear, you look ghastly," Diane’s voice rang out on the speakers. "You're going to faint if you keep this up. Let me give her her late night bottle. You go lay down in the guest room."
"I'm fine, Diane, really," Sarah replied, her voice weak. "I want to stay with her."
"Nonsense. Mark agrees with me. You're unstable. Look at your hands—they're shaking. Go to sleep before you do something you regret."
Sarah hesitated, looking at her baby with immense love and sadness, before giving in to her mother-in-law's pushy insistence. She kissed Ella’s forehead and walked out of the room.
Once Sarah left, the footage showed Diane taking a premade bottle of milk from a small cooler bag she had brought into the room. She fed the bottle to Ella. Within fifteen minutes, the baby became abnormally limp, her eyes closing heavily, her breathing slowing dramatically.
"That was the poisoned bottle," Lena whispered, horror mounting in her throat. "Diane gave it to her at 10:00 p.m."
"Keep watching," Vance said grimly.
At 11:15 p.m., Mark entered the room. He didn't look surprised to see his mother there. He walked over to the crib and looked down at his deeply unconscious daughter.
"Is she completely out?" Mark asked on the audio track.
"She’ll stay asleep for hours," Diane replied coolly. "Now, did you make sure Sarah’s prescription needs renewing?"
"Yeah. I threw out her sleep meds yesterday so she’d be desperate for a refill," Mark said, his voice flat and unfeeling. "I told her the 24-hour pharmacy downtown had it ready. When she wakes up around 1:30, I’ll tell her she needs to run out and get it immediately, and I'll text her to pick up Benadryl for Ella's 'stuffy nose'."
Lena gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. "It was a setup! A completely calculated setup!"
"Good," Diane said in the video. "Once Sarah leaves the house to get the medicine, you drop the baby onto the rug. Just enough to cause a bump or trauma. Then you call the police and say Sarah dropped her before she stormed out in a rage. With my notebook of her 'mental instability' and the medicine receipt, no jury in the world will believe her."
"What about Ella?" Mark asked, a brief hesitation in his voice. "Will she be okay?"
"She’s tough," Diane sneered. "A little bump won't kill her. It’s the only way, Mark. If you divorce Sarah normally, her family has money—she’ll get full custody of my granddaughter. I will not allow that pathetic woman to raise a Morgan child. We get rid of Sarah, you get full custody, and I raise Ella properly."
Lena stood up from her chair, her body trembling with absolute fury. "They planned to frame Sarah for child abuse and attempted murder... and they were willing to brain-damage or kill a five-month-old infant just to win a custody battle!"
"It gets worse," Vance said quietly. "We ran a deeper check on Mark and Diane's financials."
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He pulled up a second document. "Mark’s business failed six months ago. He’s millions in debt. But Sarah’s family established a five-million-dollar trust fund for Ella upon her birth—a trust fund that Mark controls completely if Sarah is deemed legally incapacitated or convicted of a felony, and he has sole custody."
"It wasn't just about custody," Lena realized, the chilling truth settling in. "It was about money."
