He asked Lily whether Leo was awake.
“He’s crying,” she said. “I gave him water, but the bottle is empty now.”
He asked whether the front door was locked.
“Yes. Mom pushed a chair under the handle.”
Then Lily repeated another instruction.
“She told me not to go outside, even if somebody knocks.”
Marcus looked at the call information on his screen, then at the clock, then back at the call information as though the numbers might rearrange themselves into something less frightening.
A seven-year-old had been left with a sick toddler, no food, no power, and a door reinforced from the inside.
Yet she had waited because her mother had told her not to bother people unless it was a real emergency.
“You did exactly the right thing by calling me,” Marcus said.
Lily released one trembling breath.
It sounded less like relief than permission.
Until that moment, she had been trying to act like the adult in the apartment.
Officer Rachel Brooks approached the building with the lights low and the siren off.
The rain had darkened the concrete and turned the entrance into a slick reflection of weak exterior lamps.
Inside, the hallway smelled of damp laundry, backed-up plumbing, and wet coats that had never fully dried.
Buckets sat beneath brown stains in the ceiling.
Clothes hung from improvised lines where the power failure had left residents with few options.
Rachel climbed toward the fourth floor while Marcus relayed what Lily had said.
Apartment 4B was at the far end of the hall.
Before Rachel reached it, a nearby door opened three inches.
A woman peered through the gap and asked who the officer was looking for.
“A little girl who called 911,” Rachel said.
The neighbor’s face tightened with the satisfaction of someone who believed a rumor had finally become official.
“Apartment 4B,” she said. “That mother is always running around. God knows what she’s mixed up in.”
Rachel stopped.
“Did you knock and check on the children before you decided that?”
The woman did not answer.
Her door clicked shut.
Rachel continued down the hall, passing more closed doors and more people listening from behind them.
The faded blue door to apartment 4B bowed inward under pressure from a heavy chair wedged beneath the knob.
That detail mattered.
People trying to leave quickly did not usually barricade a door from the inside before walking away.
