By morning, my head feels packed with broken glass.
I stand at the kitchen sink, fingers curled around a mug that has long gone cold, and watch fog slide down the Maple Hollow slope. Headlights crawl up the hill and smear across my window, haloes dragging behind them. Every streak looks like the afterimage of last night’s candle flame, or the guardrail, or Liam on that embankment in my mind.
I whisper the rule I promised myself: “Only what’s on paper. Only what I can print.”
The silhouettes and body sensations stay locked in the notebook on my couch. What I carry upstairs to my office is different: a manila folder fat with actual documents. Copies of the anonymous crash-cluster reports. Screenshots of the camera contractor registration. The HOA meeting minutes. A printed transcript of the bodycam timeline Liam showed me, scrubbed of any trace of how he got it.
I slide everything into the folder and write one name on the tab: Ruiz.
Micro-hook: this is my last attempt at an adult conversation before I become exactly what they whisper—the unstable mother who haunted the detective until someone filed a restraining order.
The station stonewalls me when I call. The desk sergeant says Ruiz is “not available for unscheduled walk-ins” and offers to “take a message and have him reach out, maybe next week.”
I hang up and dig my nails into the phone.
Maple Hollow parents post their grief in sunlit squares on Instagram, angelversary posts with soft filters and Bible verses. I’m about to stalk a detective like a character from my own paperbacks.
I remember, though, the day of the memorial. The neighbors whispering about “that cop with the kind eyes” who stopped at the diner off Highway 26 for pie most nights after shift. I remember which diner, because Caleb loved their waffles, because we had sat in that same vinyl booth once, watching trucks flood the windows with light.
So I drive.
The freeway hum grows louder as I leave the manicured tyranny of the HOA streets—every lawn at regulation height, blinds tilted to the same angle, glass fronts carefully reflecting nothing messy. Rain thickens, a steady hiss on my windshield. By the time I pull into the diner lot, the wipers struggle to keep up.
I kill the engine and sit for a moment, watching the big front windows.
Inside, fluorescent light washes the red booths. Steam hangs over the pass-through from the kitchen. A server moves back and forth with coffee pots, every motion reflected and doubled in the glass. And there, in the corner near the window, is Ruiz.
He’s out of uniform, in a gray shirt with the sleeves pushed up, forearms resting on the table. A newspaper lies folded beside a plate stacked with crumbs. His face looks older than it did the night of the crash, lines carved deeper around his mouth. He stares out at the freeway as if listening for something under the engines.
I wipe my palms on my jeans, grab the folder, and step into the rain.
The diner hits me with heat, frying oil, and coffee. The bell over the door gives a tired jangle. A kid in a hoodie slouches at the far counter, thumb flicking across his phone. Somewhere back in the kitchen, a timer blares and someone curses over the sizzle of bacon.
Ruiz glances up when the bell rings, reflex more than interest. His gaze lands on me, recognition flashing across his face, quickly chased by wariness.
“Ms. Ellison.” He stands halfway, one hand braced on the table. “You all right?”
I walk straight to his booth before my courage cracks. “I need ten minutes.”
He looks like he wants to say no. His eyes flick to the folder under my arm, then to the server approaching with a coffee pot. The muscle in his jaw jumps.
“You’re off-duty,” I add, lowering my voice. “I know. That’s why I came here.”
The server pours him a top-off and aims the pot at me in a silent question. I nod. The smell of fresh coffee cuts through the greasy air.
Ruiz sighs, the sound grounded and heavy. “Sit,” he says. “Ten minutes, like you said.”
I slide into the booth opposite him, the vinyl squeaking under my jeans. The window muscles raindrops into long, melting lines beside his reflection. The freeway hums outside, a low, constant vibration under our table.
“Before you start,” he says, fingers wrapped around his mug, “I’m not your investigator anymore. The case is closed. Officially.”
“Officially,” I repeat. “I know. This isn’t… I’m not asking you to tear up your reports in the middle of a Denny’s knockoff.”
That pulls the shadow of a smile from him. “I don’t write the reports where we eat. Union rule.”
The joke lands somewhere under my ribs and loosens my throat by a fraction.
I put the folder on the table between us and flip it open. “I just need you to look. As a citizen. Or as someone who was there that night. I don’t care which hat you wear.”
His eyes drop to the papers.
“All right,” he says. “Talk me through the greatest hits. No TED talk, Ms. Ellison. Condensed version.”
I have rehearsed this on the drive, editing my story down to evidence I can back with ink and pixels, cutting out trance music and ghost silhouettes.
“I started seeing patterns,” I say. “Not in my head. In these.”
I slide out the printed accident reports from the anonymous folder—white paper, black ink, the same guardrail model stamped in the diagrams. Little X marks where cars did not just bounce off but wrapped around.
“Other crashes,” I say. “Same guardrail system as Caleb’s, similar failure mode. I didn’t find these alone. Someone sent them. I can’t prove who yet. But the cases are real. You can cross-check.”
Ruiz picks up the first sheet, scanning. His lips move as he reads, his forefinger tracing the diagram. He lingers on the photo of a sedan punched clean through like a straw wrapper.
“You know what it looks like,” he says quietly. “To an outsider?”
“Like a conspiracy board. I know.” My fingers drum on the folder. I force them still. “But the manufacturer is the same. The installation specs are similar. And in at least three of these, there were questions raised and then… settled.”
“Settled is a big word.” He flips to the next page. “Means lawyers. Means time. Means stuff I don’t see.”
“My ex-husband might. His firm represents the manufacturer.”
Ruiz’s eyebrows climb a few millimeters. He hides the reaction behind a sip of coffee.
I push on. “There’s also this.”
I lay down the photos of the hidden camera housing under the Old Willow overpass and the printouts from the contractor’s website—Vantage Data Services linked to the same corporate family as the guardrail manufacturer’s legal team.
“We found the camera the other night,” I say. “Storage isn’t in some neutral public server. It’s contracted out. To a company nest-mated with the manufacturer and their attorneys. They control the guardrail and the eyes on the guardrail.”
Ruiz taps the logo with a blunt fingertip. His reflection in the window looks thinner, stretched by the glass.
“You reported this to traffic engineering?” he asks.
“I’m reporting it to you.”
He exhales through his nose. “Guardrails aren’t my lane.”
“Death is your lane,” I snap. My voice wobbles, so I take a breath. “I’m sorry. I just… if the same people who profit from the installation control the footage, that matters. Especially when the footage that should exist around my son’s crash doesn’t.”
He studies me over the rim of his mug. “You’re talking about the bodycam video?”
My throat tightens. I nod.
“You saw it?” he asks. “Through… informal channels?”
“Yes.” I hold his gaze. “It shows me arriving on foot. I walked. I didn’t climb out of Caleb’s car with him. I accept that. But there are gaps in the recording. A jump. And the timestamp lines up weirdly with the 911 call.”
I do not say: And in my head I might have been sitting in the passenger seat, or standing on the roadside, or watching a man who may or may not have been Liam. Those go in a different genre.
“Video has glitches,” Ruiz says. “Bodycams drop frames. They get bumped. Batteries die at the worst time. You know that.”
“You’re right.” I nod too quickly. “Single glitch, fine. But combine it with the guardrail cluster, the camera contractor, the HOA footage someone requested from my street that night, the fact that my ex’s firm is tied to all of this—”
“Slow down.” He raises one palm, then sets it back on his mug. “You’re stacking a lot of weight on a few nails.”
Micro-hook: if he pulls those nails, everything I’ve taped together collapses, and I go back to shouting at windows.
“Then tell me which nails are rotten,” I say. “Not as the guy who closed the file to make the drunk-driving stats tidy. As someone who still eats in a place with glass windows instead of behind a desk.”
Ruiz looks past me at the freeway. The headlights smear across the glass, making it look like we’re underwater. He doesn’t speak for a long stretch of seconds. The server swings by, refills my cup, drifts away. The kid at the counter laughs at something on his phone, mechanical chime of a notification echoing mine back home.
“Your therapy stuff,” Ruiz says finally. “Those EMDR sessions. The new images you’re getting. You didn’t mention them until now, which tells me you don’t fully trust them.”
I swallow. “I don’t trust memory. Not anymore. I trust that my brain is trying to make a narrative that hurts less than ‘your son got drunk and crashed into corporate negligence.’ That doesn’t make those images useless. Just… contaminated.”
He nods once, an almost grudging respect in it. “For what it’s worth, that’s not crazy.”
“Thanks. I’ll embroider it on a pillow.”
“But,” he adds, “from a cop’s perspective? Therapy visions are not evidence. They’re cross-exam fodder. They make everything you hand me easier to dismiss in court.”
“Which is why I’m not asking you to put them anywhere near a report,” I say. “Just look at the physical pattern. Look at the timing. You were there. Does anything in your actual, non-EMDR recollection of that night feel… off?”
The question hangs between us like breath on glass.
Ruiz sets down his mug. The ceramic clinks against the saucer, a small sharp sound.
“Guardrail cluster bothers me,” he admits. “I don’t like repeat mechanical failure, especially at that angle. That’s the kind of thing that usually comes with a bulletin down the chain. We haven’t seen one for that model.”
My heart gives a hopeful stutter.
“And the camera contractor?” I ask.
“Corporations hire whoever gives them the best discount and the best indemnity,” he says. “Data’s cheap until it costs someone money.” He taps the Vantage logo again. “But yeah. Having your own lawyers’ people in charge of the footage that can burn you… I don’t love that.”
Validation, thin and sharp, slides under my skin. I fight the urge to lean across the table and shove the folder closer.
“The bodycam,” I say. “You watched it. In the original investigation. Did you notice anything off with the file? With how it was stored?”
He hesitates.
That small pause does more for my pulse than any conspiracy video online.
“Ms. Ellison,” he says, and his voice drops, “there are things I’m not supposed to discuss with civilians. Especially with parties to a case.”
“I know what I’m ‘supposed’ to be,” I say quietly. “The grieving mother who accepts the narrative and bakes cookies for the patrol division on the anniversary. I’m not that person. I write stories where the official arc is the first lie. Please. If there’s one thing that bothered you and you buried it because it didn’t fit the drunk teen crash, tell me.”
He stares into his coffee like it might answer for him. Outside the window, a semi roars by, shaking the panes. The glass shivers, distorting both our faces for a beat.
“Chain-of-custody log on that bodycam file was… odd,” he says at last. Each word lands carefully. “Nothing I could hang a complaint on. No smoking gun. Just… not standard.”
My fingers tighten on the edge of the table. “Define ‘odd.’”
“The night of the crash, the video uploaded from the patrol car like it should,” he says. “Auto-sync to the server once they dock at the station. I reviewed that copy within twenty-four hours. It had a tiny gap where the buffer dropped when the officer jostled the camera. Annoying, but not unheard of.”
“That’s the jump I saw,” I say.
“Couple of weeks later,” he continues, “I get an internal notice. IT flagged some archive files for ‘reprocessing.’ They said they were standardizing formats for long-term storage. When I checked the log out of curiosity, your case number was on the list.”
My stomach dips. “And?”
“The file on the system now is marked as reuploaded by IT,” he says. “Old version overwritten. Same length on paper. Same timestamp. But that’s not the usual way we handle it. We keep originals. We convert copies.”
I grip the table harder. The vinyl squeaks under my legs. “Did you compare them?”
“I tried,” he says. “Old one was gone. Supposedly corrupted during the conversion process.” He lifts one shoulder. “Tech tells me it happens. Data gets messy. They swore nothing important was lost. I wasn’t in the position to prove otherwise. No one was accusing anyone of misconduct. And the visible footage still supported the conclusion.”
“Which is?”
“Driver under the influence. Loss of control. Guardrail failure made it worse, but primary cause stayed the same.”
“So you let it go.”
His jaw tightens. “I documented the note about IT’s involvement,” he says. “In the internal log. I don’t throw stuff like that in a shredder, Ms. Ellison. I just don’t write headlines around it without backup.”
That’s the half-win right there, sitting on the table between the coffee rings and the guardrail photos: an official who noticed something wrong and filed it quietly away where no one scrolling memorial hashtags will ever see.
“Can you reopen it?” I ask. The words come out more desperate than I intend. “On the basis of that. On the guardrail pattern. On the contractor.”
“No,” he says. There’s no softness in the word. Then he sighs. “Not yet. I don’t have enough for that. And you—” He gestures toward my folder. “You don’t want to be the one banging on the DA’s door with half-formed theories and no new forensics. You’ll get yourself labeled, and once that label sticks, every future concern you raise goes into the ‘unstable mom’ folder.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” I ask. My voice drops to a rasp. “Wait for some other kid to die into the same metal?”
He flinches.
“Here’s what I can do,” he says. “Off the record, I can take another look at the mechanical reports. Maybe ask a question or two up the chain about why no bulletin went out on that guardrail. I can glance at the contractor relationships, see if anything lights up more than my gut.”
“And the bodycam?”
“I can’t resurrect a file IT says is dead,” he says. “But I can note the anomaly in my own notes. Quietly. If something else surfaces later that points back to that night, that weirdness won’t be invisible.”
It is not enough. It is more than nothing.
Micro-hook: now I know the official record is not as clean as the story they handed me; the question is how much dirt I can pull up before they hose me off the driveway.
“If I bring you something stronger,” I say, “something that isn’t a vision or a narrative, will you listen?”
He meets my eyes. “You show me hard evidence, Ms. Ellison—new footage, a credible witness with names, a documented mechanical defect tied to your son’s car—and I’ll do more than listen. I’ll put my name on the line to reopen what I can. But until then?” He taps the folder. “Stay careful. With what you say and who you say it to.”
“You mean, don’t tell anyone I think your IT department washed my son’s death.”
“I mean,” he says, “don’t give people ammunition to shoot down the parts you might be right about.”
The server drops the check. Ruiz grabs it before I can reach, slides a few bills out of his wallet, and stands. Outside, the rain has thickened into a curtain. The glass glows with smeared light.
“For what it’s worth,” he adds, looking down at me, “I never thought you were crazy. Grief can be loud without being wrong.”
My throat closes around any reply. I nod once.
He leaves, shoulders hunched against the rain, his reflection walking backward in the glass as he moves forward to his car. I watch him go until his taillights disappear into the fog.
When I finally step outside, the cold slaps my face awake. The freeway hum vibrates in my bones. Through the diner window, my own reflection stares back—pale, damp, clutching a folder under one arm.
Somewhere between the double images, between glass and rain, there is an investigation that is both closed and not. And now I know there is a line in a chain-of-custody log with Caleb’s case number on it and the word “reuploaded” stamped beside it.
The door isn’t open yet.
But it is no longer locked in a way that lets me pretend I can stop knocking.