Chapter 3 - WHAT AVERY SAW
At the hospital, doctors treated Emily for dehydration, malnutrition, and chemical sedation.
She had been held in the wall for at least three weeks.
But Avery had been calling the thing in her bedroom “the snake” for months.
That meant the dead animal was only part of the story.
Mason sat across from Avery in a child-interview room the next morning. The walls were painted soft blue. A box of crayons rested between them. Avery held her teddy bear in her lap and stared at its missing button.
A child psychologist named Dr. Helen Brooks sat nearby.
Mason kept his voice gentle.
“Can you tell me what the snake means?”
Avery shook her head.
“Did your father put the snake on your bed?”
Her eyes filled with fear.
Dr. Brooks raised one hand, signaling Mason to slow down.
Avery picked up a black crayon.
She drew a rectangle.
Then another rectangle inside it.
A room inside a room.
Inside the smaller room, she drew a woman.
Outside it, she drew a tall man.
Then she drew a long black line from the man’s mouth to the child’s ear.
“What is he saying?” Dr. Brooks asked.
Avery pressed the crayon so hard it snapped.
“He says Mommy became a snake because she lied.”
Mason felt his stomach tighten.
“What lie?”
Avery looked toward the mirrored observation window.
“He said she hid something.”
“What did she hide?”
The little girl hugged the bear.
“The blue box.”
Daniel’s notebook had mentioned Emily hiding something.
Now there was a box.
Mason asked where it was.
Avery shook her head again.
“Daddy asks every night. He makes the snake come back when I don’t tell.”
The dead rat snake had been placed on her bed as punishment.
But the older references to “snake” suggested something else.
“What happened when the snake came before last night?” Mason asked.
Avery’s lips trembled.
“The wall opened.”
Dr. Brooks leaned forward.
“And then?”
“Daddy wore the face.”
“What face?”
Avery drew a black square over the man in her picture.
A mask.
Daniel had entered the hidden passage wearing a mask and terrified his daughter into believing a creature lived inside the walls.
He had used fear to force information from her.
But why did he think a six-year-old knew where Emily hid a blue box?
At Daniel’s house, detectives searched every room.
They found no blue box.
They did find financial records.
Daniel had been transferring large amounts of money from elderly clients’ accounts into shell companies. Emily, who worked as a paralegal, had discovered the theft shortly before she disappeared.
She copied the records.
Daniel believed she hid them before he captured her.
The case looked clear.
Until Mason received a call from the hospital.
Emily was awake.
He arrived twenty minutes later.
Emily looked fragile beneath the white sheets, but her eyes were alert.
“Daniel held you inside the house?” Mason asked.
“Not the whole eighteen months.”
She swallowed.
“I escaped the first time.”
Mason glanced at Dr. Brooks.
“The first time?”
Emily closed her eyes.
“I came back for Avery three weeks ago. Daniel caught me.”
“Where were you before that?”
“Hiding.”
“Why didn’t you contact police?”
“I did.”
She turned toward him.
“I contacted one officer.”
Mason’s chest tightened.
“Who?”
Emily gave him a name.
May you like
Lieutenant Robert Hale.
Mason’s commanding officer.
