Chapter 4 - The Gatekeepers
By eight o'clock the following morning, Sophie was discharged under strict bed-rest orders.
I took her straight to my best friend Maya’s apartment, an old brick brownstone on the north side of the city.
Maya was a tenured investigative journalist for the Chicago Tribune, and she had spent ten years exposing corporate corruption.
She wrapped Sophie in a warm fleece blanket, made her hot cocoa, and settled her onto the couch with a cartoon movie.
"No one gets into this apartment without going through me and my deadbolts," Maya promised, kissing my forehead.
"Now tell me everything about this hotel footage."
I sat down at Maya’s kitchen island, drinking black coffee that tasted like burnt ash.
"The Whitmore Hotel's general manager refused to hand over the hard drives to the patrol officers without a formal subpoena," I explained.
"Judge Vance, the bride's father, is already pulling strings with the circuit court to delay the warrant."
Maya smirked, opening her high-end encrypted laptop and adjusting her glasses.
"Judge Vance might control the local magistrates, but he doesn't control the people who actually run the building," Maya said.
She tapped rapidly on her keyboard, bringing up an internal employee directory for the Whitmore Hotel.
"The head of security at the Whitmore is a retired Chicago police sergeant named Marcus Diaz," Maya noted.
"I helped Diaz clear his name five years ago when the department tried to scapegoat him for a botched warehouse raid."
"He hates corruption more than anyone I know."
Maya picked up her phone, dialed a direct extension, and put the call on speakerphone.
The line rang three times before a deep, gravelly voice answered.
"Diaz here," the man said.
"Marcus, it's Maya Lin," my friend said directly.
"I need a favor regarding the grand ballroom security archive from last night."
There was a long, heavy silence on the other end of the line.
"Maya, you have no idea the pressure I'm under right now," Diaz whispered cautiously.
"The hotel's legal team just ordered my department to flag the ballroom footage for a routine server wipe at noon."
My heart plummeted into my stomach like a stone.
"They're destroying the evidence," I gasped out loud.
"Who is that with you, Maya?" Diaz asked sharply.
"It's Evelyn Vance," Maya answered.
"The mother of the eight-year-old girl who was struck with the menu board."
Another pause stretched across the line, heavy and suffocating.
"Diaz, you saw that video, didn't you?" Maya pressed gently.
"I saw it," Diaz admitted, his voice dropping an octave.
May you like
"And it made me sick to my stomach."
"If you want a copy of the raw master file, you have exactly forty minutes to meet me at the service loading dock behind the hotel."
