Chapter 2 - THE SECOND SET OF KEYS
I pointed.
“Security.”
Dean looked up.
Too late.
A fair employee moved the barrel.
Underneath it sat a black Ford key fob.
Dean immediately said:
“That’s Rachel’s.”
Rachel was already inside the ambulance.
A sheriff’s deputy picked it up without touching more than necessary.
“Sir, you just put this there.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I watched you.”
Dean looked at me.
For the first time, the polite face disappeared.
“You need to stay out of family business.”
The deputy answered for me.
“She’s a witness now.”
The twins were taken to Dayton Children’s Hospital.
Their names were Noah and Caleb.
Two years old.
Noah recovered quickly with fluids and cooling.
Caleb had been more severely affected by the heat but was breathing independently by the time they reached the emergency department.
Nobody promised Rachel everything was fine.
Doctors monitored him closely through the night.
Emily sat beside her mother wearing an oversized hospital sweatshirt someone found for her.
She refused to let go of the stuffed rabbit.
Dean arrived with an attorney before midnight.
He told investigators:
Rachel had asked him to stay near the SUV while she took Emily into the fair.
Then Emily supposedly returned alone.
Then Rachel accidentally walked away with the main key.
Dean claimed he went inside looking for her.
“Why lock the toddlers in?”
“They were asleep.”
“Why not take them with you?”
“It was supposed to be two minutes.”
“Why did Emily say you had the key?”
“She’s seven.”
“Why hide a key fob?”
“I didn’t.”
Then investigators discovered something simple.
The recovered fob unlocked the SUV.
Rachel’s actual key was inside her purse.
She still had it.
Dean had a second key.
He had lied before anyone accused him of anything more serious than negligence.
That mattered.
Rachel asked to speak with me in the hospital hallway.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
She looked toward the room where Caleb slept.
“I left them with him.”
Five words.
Enough guilt to crush somebody.
“You left your children with their father.”
She looked at me.
So Dean was not a boyfriend.
Not a new stepfather.
Her husband.
Father of all three children.
That made Emily’s fear harder to understand.
Rachel lowered her voice.
“We were supposed to talk tonight after the fair.”
“About what?”
She looked toward the closed door.
“Me leaving him.”
Then:
“He knew.”
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That was the first time the hot SUV stopped looking like one catastrophically stupid decision.
It began looking like part of something that had already started at home.
