Chapter 5: What the Camera Saw
The security system was Harlan's own — a cheap four-camera setup he had installed himself three years ago, he said, after a break-in.
The monitor sat in a locked cabinet in his office, a small room behind the main kitchen that smelled of cigarette smoke and old coffee.
Reyes stood in front of the cabinet.
Harlan stood behind her with his keys.
"The footage from today," she said.
"Back room camera.
Start from six this morning."
"The back room camera hasn't been working properly," Harlan said.
"I've been meaning to have it serviced."
Reyes turned to look at him.
"Since when?"
"A few weeks.
Maybe a month."
"Which camera is it?"
He pointed to the monitor.
Four small squares.
Three showed live feeds — the front counter, the side entrance, the alley behind the building.
The fourth square was black.
"Convenient," Daniel said from the doorway.
Harlan looked at him sharply.
"You don't need to be in here."
"He stays," Reyes said.
She pointed to the monitor.
"Pull up this morning's footage from the front counter camera.
Six a.m.
onward."
Harlan hesitated for just a moment — the kind of hesitation that looks like compliance but is really a calculation — then unlocked the cabinet and sat down at the monitor.
The footage appeared.
Grainy, timestamped, but clear enough.
At 6:14 a.m., the front door opened.
Two small figures entered.
Rosa, in a thin jacket.
Theo, holding her hand.
Harlan, behind the counter, looked up.
He said something.
The footage had no audio.
Rosa pointed toward the back.
Harlan nodded.
He walked them to the back room himself.
"You told the officer they wandered in unsupervised," Daniel said.
Harlan said nothing.
On the screen, Harlan returned to the front counter alone.
He served three customers.
He swept the floor near the entrance.
He made no move toward the back room for the next forty minutes.
"Where's Theo in this footage?" Reyes asked.
"In the back," Harlan said.
"Waiting.
Like I said."
"You walked them back there yourself."
"I was showing them where to wait.
Out of the way."
"And then you didn't check on them."
"I was busy.
It's a working bakery."
Reyes leaned forward and pointed at the timestamp.
"At 6:14 you walked two children into the back room.
At 7:52 your employee photographed a child sitting alone beside a locked freezer.
At approximately 3:45 this afternoon, that child was removed from inside that freezer.
That is nine and a half hours, Mr.
Harlan.
Not six."
The room was very quiet.
Harlan's attorney had not yet arrived.
That had been deliberate on Reyes's part — she had moved quickly, and Harlan had not thought quickly enough to slow her down.
"I want to wait for my attorney," he said.
"You're not under arrest," Reyes said again.
"But I am going to need this footage preserved.
All of it.
All four cameras, all of today." She straightened up.
"I'm also going to need to know about the children.
Who are they?
Where do they live?
Who is responsible for them?"
Harlan said nothing.
Daniel spoke from the doorway.
"Rosa told me there's no one else.
I think they might be living rough."
Reyes looked at him.
"How old is she?"
"Seven, maybe.
Theo looks younger.
Five, possibly."
"And no adult with them."
"No."
Reyes pulled out her radio.
She stepped past Harlan into the kitchen and made a call — quiet, efficient, a string of codes and an address and then a name: Rosa.
And then: *two children, no guardian identified, one currently at hospital.*
When she came back, Harlan was still sitting at the monitor.
He hadn't moved.
He was looking at the screen — at the frozen image of himself walking two small children toward the back room — with an expression that was very hard to read.
Not guilt.
Not exactly.
More like a man watching a door close that he had believed would stay open.
"Mr.
Harlan," Reyes said.
"Is there anything you want to tell me before your attorney arrives?"
He looked up.
The smile was completely gone now.
What was underneath it was not remorse.
It was something flat and careful and very old.
"No," he said.
"There is not."
Daniel looked at the screen.
At the timestamp.
At the two small figures disappearing through the back room door.
Then he looked at Harlan.
"Theo couldn't talk when they brought him out," Daniel said.
"His throat was too damaged from the cold to make a sound.
But Rosa told me one thing before she got in the ambulance."
May you like
Harlan's eyes moved to him slowly.
"She said this wasn't the first time."
