The police returned the next morning with CCTV footage from the building’s lobby and hallway. Adam watched with a rising, cold dread as hours of grainy recordings played on a laptop screen. Clara never entered. Not once. Entire days and nights passed with only Adam moving through the sterile hallway, unlocking their door alone, a solitary figure in a silent frame. The officers replayed the specific timestamp from that final morning. Adam was certain Clara would have been visible, but the footage showed nothing—no Clara, no movement besides his own. The hallway remained still, indifferent.
Adam shook his head violently. “This can’t be all of it,” he insisted, his voice strained. “The footage has to be incomplete. Maybe a camera was malfunctioning. Maybe there are blind spots. Maybe someone…” He trailed off, the theory of tampering sounding desperate even to his own ears.
The officers asked more questions about Clara’s habits and recent behavior. Adam’s answers began to waver, shifting mid-sentence, contradicting his own earlier statements. He didn’t understand why things he once knew with absolute conviction now felt suddenly slippery, so hard to articulate and pin down. His gnawing anxiety—that he would be considered responsible for her disappearance—twisted everything, clouding every recollection with a film of dread. Memories felt sharp and vivid one moment, blurred and unreliable the next. The fear hollowed him out, leaving him unable to trust his own retelling.
He saw Leo looking at him with a pained concern. The more Adam spoke, the clearer it became, even to himself, that Clara must be in some danger he couldn’t fully explain or comprehend. There was no other reason, he believed, why she would just vanish without a trace.
The officers promised to pull Clara’s employment records and other official details. For a few agonizing days, there was no new development. Adam was so desperate for information he wore a path in the apartment carpet, pacing most nights. The clock on the wall seemed to tick on mercilessly as he replayed every memory with her, each loop feeling more edited and unreliable than the last.
When the police finally called on him again, Adam had all but given up any coherent hope. He opened the door with a lead
The officer who spoke first was kind-faced, but Adam felt every nerve on a raw edge. “Well?” he asked, the word bursting from him, unable to stop himself.