She was five years old.

At 10:14 that morning, the three of them walked out the front door and locked it, and the sensors recorded no further entry, by anyone, until I arrived two days later.

I will not describe the footage from those two days.

The cameras captured them, and the investigators reviewed them, and they were entered into evidence, and that is where they belong; the record of a small child’s frightened, resourceful, heartbreaking attempts to care for herself is not something I will reproduce for anyone’s reading.

It is enough to say that the footage existed, that it was complete, and that it was unbearable, and that it was also, in the end, the thing that saved her, because it made the truth impossible to deny.