Chapter 3 - The Missing Footage
The walls of the tiny interrogation room felt like they were rapidly closing in on me.
I realized with horrifying clarity that Diane had been wearing thick rubber cleaning gloves when she handed me that bottle earlier.
She had meticulously planned this entire setup down to the very last, devastating detail.
"I am being framed, and you have to believe me!" I pleaded, my voice cracking from the strain.
"Pull the security footage from the cameras installed inside our house."
I frantically explained that Mark and I had placed high-definition cameras in the living room and the nursery for safety.
"The footage will clearly show Diane slapping me and dropping the baby," I insisted.
Detective Reynolds raised a skeptical eyebrow but eventually picked up her phone to dispatch an officer to my home.
I sat in agonizing silence for nearly an hour, praying that the digital truth would finally set me free.
The door eventually clicked open, and the detective returned with a deeply frustrated look on her face.
"My officers just spoke with your husband at the property," she announced.
"He willingly provided full access to the home security system network."
I let out a massive sigh of relief, thanking God that the nightmare was almost over.
"However, the entire cloud storage drive was manually wiped clean exactly ten minutes before you arrived at the hospital," she continued.
My brief moment of hope shattered into a million irreparable pieces.
Mark was the only person besides me who had the administrative password to delete those files.
He wasn't just blindly believing his mother's lies.
My husband was actively helping her destroy the evidence of her crime.
"Without that footage, we have your fingerprints on the poison and your husband's sworn testimony against you," she summarized grimly.
"Child Protective Services has officially granted emergency temporary custody of Daisy to your mother-in-law."
I screamed in pure, unadulterated agony, fighting violently against the metal handcuffs holding me down.
They were giving my precious, vulnerable baby to the exact monster who had just tried to kill her.
Suddenly, Dr. Evans burst into the interrogation room without knocking, looking completely out of breath.
"You need to release this woman immediately," the doctor commanded with surprising authority.
Detective Reynolds stood up aggressively, demanding to know why a doctor was interfering with a police investigation.
Dr. Evans slammed a new stack of medical papers onto the metal table.
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"Because we just ran a specialized genetic panel on the baby's blood sample," he stated firmly.
"Daisy has a rare genetic marker that proves she is absolutely not Mark's biological daughter."
