The group filed into Richard's spacious home office. Heavy oak bookshelves lined the walls, and a large multi-monitor security system sat on the executive desk. Richard sat down in his leather chair, typing in his administrator password into the security console.
Richard: The cameras log every motion event automatically. Let us pull up the footage from 2:15 PM today on Camera 4.
Victoria: Richard, please... this is putting too much stress on you. Remember what the doctor said about your high blood pressure!
Richard: Be quiet, Victoria. I need to see this myself.
The screen flickered, and the backyard footage appeared on the primary monitor. Everyone leaned in closer to watch the playback. On the screen, two-year-old Lily was seen walking near the edge of the clear pool, holding a small toy.
Sarah: Look! There is Victoria standing right behind her!
On the screen, Victoria walked up behind the toddler. But suddenly, the video glitched violently, showing a static bar across the screen for three seconds. When the picture restored itself, Lily was already in the middle of the pool, splashing wildly, and Victoria was standing three feet back with her hands over her mouth in apparent shock.
Victoria: See! I told you! The camera missed the exact moment she slipped, but you can see I was shocked!
Sarah: The video skipped! It was edited!
Mark: Look at the time stamp on the bottom right corner, Officer. It jumps from 02:14:52 straight to 02:14:56. Exactly four seconds of footage have been wiped out clean.
Officer Davis: Mr. Miller, does your security system normally jump like that?
Richard: Never. This system runs on a cloud server with redudant local backups. A drop like that only happens if someone manually cuts the feed or overwrites the file.
Victoria: That is absurd! I don't even know how to use this security system! How could I edit a video?
Maria: Because she didn't do it herself. She had someone else do it remotely!
Everyone turned as Maria walked into the office, carrying a wrapped blanket. Behind her came another man wearing a dark blue suit—Sarah's private investigator, David Vance.
Sarah: David? What are you doing here?
David: Sarah, you asked me last week to investigate the changes in Richard's corporate estate and trust funds. I followed a paper trail that led me directly to Victoria's private bank accounts.
Victoria: Who is this man? Get him out of my house!
David: Officer, I have a certified digital forensic log right here. At 2:20 PM today, an external IP address accessed this mansion's security server using administrator credentials that were issued to Victoria Miller.
Richard: What? Victoria... you had administrator access to my security server?
David: She paid an IT specialist five thousand dollars through a wire transfer from her personal checking account two hours ago to remotely wipe the four seconds of footage showing her physically shoving Lily into the pool.
Victoria: That is a complete fabrication! You forged those documents!
David: The IT specialist panic-deleted the local file, but he forgot about the secondary cloud backup server that mirrors all data to Richard's corporate headquarters. I took the liberty of retrieving the unedited cloud file ten minutes ago.
Sarah gasped, holding her breath as David pulled out a USB flash drive and handed it to Officer Davis.
Sarah: Play it, Officer. Play the real video.
Leave a Comment