Peter looked at the camera again.
Then he moved one hand behind his back, out of Victor's sight line.
Three fingers opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
Grace leaned so close to the tablet that I could hear her breathing change.
"What is he doing?" Simone asked.
Sophie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "That's our signal."
"What signal?"
"When I was little, he used it when he couldn't talk." Her voice shook. "Three fingers meant wait."
"Two meant run," Grace said quietly.
"One meant listen."
Peter opened three fingers again. Then two. Then he pointed downward with his whole hand, slow and deliberate.
Grace stood up straight. Something in her face settled β the way it had on my roof that morning, a decision locking into place.
"He wants us to go to his house," she said.
"His house?" I said. "He doesn'tβ"
"My house." She was already looking toward her yellow property across the fence. "The basement."
Ruth was on her radio before anyone could argue. "Suspect inside the residence. Possible access to smart-home controls. Do not enter until power and network systems are isolated."
"Secure Grace's house first," Simone said. "Now."
Two officers crossed the street and circled around to the rear of the yellow house. A third stayed with Sophie on the sidewalk. The girl looked small standing there, the old tablet pressed against her chest, sixteen years old and holding the proof of her own life being watched.
I didn't want to leave her. But I couldn't stand uselessly on the curb either, and Grace was already moving.
"Stay with the officer," I told Sophie. "Don't leave this street. Okay?"
She nodded without looking at me.
Grace led us through her side gate and around to the rear door. Her tomato plants lined the fence, tall and heavy with green fruit, and for one strange second I remembered the Sunday dinners she used to bring β the casseroles wrapped in foil, the way she'd ask about Mia's homework and never once mention how quiet the house had gotten after Carla died. I had spent two months resenting her for the damage to my roof. Now I was following her into her basement, and I was the one who owed her everything.
The rear door was locked. One of the officers tried the handle.
"Wait," Grace said. She pulled out her keys. "Firefighters confirmed no remote lock controls this door. It's old enough to be safe."
Behind us, officers were taping off the street. A second cruiser had arrived. I could see Sophie on the sidewalk, still holding the tablet, still not moving. Ruth kept her radio close to her mouth, coordinating the perimeter in a voice too low to carry, and I realized how fast an ordinary Saturday was being reassembled into a crime scene around us.
"Old enough," Ruth repeated, and almost smiled.
The door opened onto a small mudroom that smelled of soil and machine oil. Grace's boots were lined up by the wall, each pair cleaner than the last. Past the mudroom, the basement door stood half open, and the air rising from below was cool and damp.
Ruth held up a hand. "Firefighters confirm?"
The officer at the rear called back. "Clear on the ground floor. Basement stair lights are on. No smart locks detected on the interior doors."
We went down single file. The stairs creaked under my weight. At the bottom, Grace pulled a string and two bare bulbs came on, throwing hard shadows across a room that looked like a museum of telephone history.
Shelves lined three walls β old telephone equipment, radio parts, metal boxes labeled by year in Grace's careful handwriting. A workbench stood against the far wall, covered with tools and small components, neat in the way of someone who spent a career not losing track of wires.
Grace stood in the middle of the room, breathing slowly, as if the place steadied her.
"Why is Peter alive?" I asked her. The question had been sitting in my chest since the mask came off. "You buried him. You identified his watch."
"I identified what they showed me," she said. "A covered body. Dental records. The watch they put in my hands."
"And the casket stayed closed."
"They said it had to. The fire." She crossed the room and stood facing the workbench. "I never once opened it, Daniel. I never once asked to. Eight years, and I never once asked."
Sophie was upstairs with an officer. Her grandmother was down here with a dead son who wasn't dead. I thought about Mia's closet wall, about the hollow knock I had ignored, about Carla walking those halls in her last year with a camera watching and no one telling me.
"Grace," Simone said gently, "we need what you have. Show us."
Grace put both hands on the edge of the workbench.
Then she shoved it away from the wall.