The same week Violet had started acting strange on our calls.
Detective Ellis asked whether I knew anything about a temporary code.
“No.”
“Could Violet have created one?”
“Possibly.”
“For whom?”
I thought about her friends.
Her teachers.
Her boyfriend, if she had one and hadn’t told me.
But then I remembered the torn paper.
VIOLET — 3:30 TODAY.
I asked the technician to identify every access event associated with the temporary profile.
There had been five.
The first was six days earlier.
The second was four days earlier.
The third was yesterday.
The fourth was this afternoon.
The fifth had happened while the paramedics were still inside the house.
I felt the room go cold.
“Someone used it again today?” Ellis asked.
“Yes.”
“At what time?”
The technician gave us the timestamp.
It was twenty-three minutes after I had arrived.
But I had not seen anyone enter.
The police had already secured the property by then.
