Chapter 2 - five sleeps without his mother
Deputy Maya Collins arrived at 3:41 a.m.
She wore rain on her shoulders and exhaustion around her eyes.
Greg immediately began talking.
“My stepson has behavioral problems.”
Maya looked at the security officer holding him several feet from Leo’s room.
“What kind?”
“He lies.”
“About being locked in a shed?”
“He wasn’t locked.”
“So the door was open?”
Greg hesitated.
“He could’ve come out.”
“Then why didn’t he?”
“He was being disciplined.”
“For three nights?”
Greg’s face tightened.
“He exaggerates time.”
Maya wrote something.
“What was the discipline for?”
“Stealing.”
“What?”
“My phone.”
“Why did he steal your phone?”
“He’s a kid.”
Maya looked toward Leo’s room.
“Where’s his mother?”
Greg’s answer came immediately.
“Rehab.”
Thomas, listening from the doorway, turned.
Leo had said only that Greg told him she “went away.”
Maya asked:
“Which facility?”
“Harbor Pines.”
“Phone number?”
“I don’t know it.”
“Address?”
“Outside Eugene.”
Maya stared.
“You dropped your wife at a rehabilitation facility and don’t know where it is?”
“They transported her.”
“Who?”
“A crisis team.”
“When?”
“Five days ago.”
“What was the crisis?”
Greg looked toward the floor.
“She became unstable.”
Thomas stepped forward.
“Was she medically evaluated?”
Greg snapped:
“This is none of your business.”
Maya replied:
“It became my business when your nine-year-old stepson arrived with restraint-like bruises after saying you locked him in a shed.”
Greg went quiet.
Sarah tried Emily’s old emergency-contact number.
Disconnected.
She searched the hospital network.
No recent admission.
Maya called Harbor Pines.
There was no Emily Parker registered.
No past patient by that name.
Greg heard.
His face changed.
“Maybe it was another place.”
Maya took one step closer.
“You told me Harbor Pines.”
“I’m tired.”
“So is Leo.”
Greg looked toward the hallway.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’m leaving.”
“You can leave the hospital. You cannot take Leo.”
Greg’s voice rose.
“I am his legal guardian.”
Maya answered:
“That’s being verified.”
Social services arrived.
Thomas ordered imaging for Leo’s face.
Not because he wanted the mystery solved first.
Because swelling that severe near the eye and jaw could become dangerous.
He kept explanations simple.
“We’re going to take pictures of the inside of your cheek. It won’t tell us everything, but it helps.”
Leo looked toward the door.
“Is Greg gone?”
“He’s not coming in here.”
“Promise?”
Thomas hesitated.
Then gave the only promise he could control.
“I won’t let him into this room while I’m responsible for you.”
Leo nodded.
Sarah helped him onto the imaging bed.
Before the scan, she asked:
“Did something bite you?”
Leo shook his head.
“Did you hit your face?”
No answer.
“Did somebody hit you?”
His eyes filled.
He looked at her.
Then whispered:
“The wall did.”
Sarah understood.
“What made you hit the wall?”
Leo stopped.
Thomas did not push further.
Outside, Maya spoke with Greg’s employer.
He worked night maintenance at a seafood-processing plant.
His shift did not start in three hours.
It had ended two hours earlier.
He lied about work.
Why?
Maya checked his vehicle.
Because Leo had been brought for emergency care, she requested consent.
Greg refused.
So she began the warrant process.
While waiting, an officer walked around the truck.
Mud on the rear bumper.
A broken plastic padlock inside the open bed.
A child-sized sleeping bag partly visible beneath a tarp.
Greg saw the officer looking.
“That’s camping gear.”
Maya asked:
“Where did you camp?”
“We didn’t.”
“Then why is it wet?”
Greg did not answer.
At 4:18, Sarah found something else in Leo’s chart.
A pediatrician had documented that Emily requested to remove Greg from authorized pickup privileges at Leo’s school.
Date:
Six days earlier.
One day before she supposedly entered rehab.
Reason:
Family safety concern.
Maya called the school principal at home.
He remembered the request.
Emily sounded frightened.
“She said Greg had been opening Leo’s mail and intercepting messages from his father’s estate attorney.”
“Leo’s father?”
“Biological father. Deceased.”
“Name?”
“Aaron Parker.”
“How did he die?”
“Boating accident, I think.”
Thomas looked at Maya.
Estate attorney.
A dead father.
Missing mother.
A child locked in a shed.
The pattern was beginning to move away from random cruelty.
Maya asked the principal:
“Did Emily say anything else?”
“Yes.”
“She asked us never to release Leo to Greg without calling her first.”
“Was that entered into the school system?”
“Yes.”
“Did Greg pick Leo up afterward?”
A pause.
“Four days ago.”
Maya’s expression hardened.
“How?”
“Our record says Emily authorized it.”
“Did you speak to Emily?”
“No. It was an email.”
“From?”
“Her account.”
Maya looked at Sarah.
Someone could use a phone.
A password.
An account.
Then Thomas returned from radiology.
He did not have a diagnosis yet.
But the scan showed something unusual beneath the swollen tissue.
Not a simple abscess.
Not the usual pattern of infection.
There was a narrow pocket beneath the skin.
Inside it, something elongated had shifted position between two images.
Sarah stared.
“It moved during the scan?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
Thomas looked toward Leo through the glass.
“I don’t know yet.”
Then Leo raised his hand.
He had been listening.
“Is it from the shed?”
Thomas walked in.
“What makes you ask that?”
Leo looked frightened.
“Because things were flying in there.”
“What kind of things?”
“Big flies.”
Greg began shouting from the waiting area again.
“You’re putting ideas in his head!”
Maya ordered him removed from the pediatric wing.
Then Leo whispered:
“Greg said if I scratched my face, he’d tie my hands again.”
Thomas looked at the bruises around both wrists.
May you like
The explanation had just changed from suspicious to devastating.
👉 Leo’s mother had tried to block Greg from picking him up one day before she disappeared—and the bruises on his wrists suggested the shed was not punishment Leo could simply walk away from.
