A nurse crouched beside her. “We’re doing everything we can.”
But as the emergency response continued, something caught Morales’s attention.
The main gas valve was wide open. Far more than it should have been.
In the bedroom, the ventilation duct had been blocked with a towel. It was shoved tightly into place from the inside.
Morales looked at his partner.
“This wasn’t an accident,” he said quietly.
Sofia was taken into temporary care, sitting silently in the back of the patrol car as the sky began to lighten. No one told her yet that the night was only the beginning.
At the hospital, her parents were placed in intensive care. Doctors confirmed severe carbon monoxide poisoning. The exposure had lasted hours.
Back at the house, forensic investigators moved carefully through each room.
The towel blocking the vent had not fallen by chance. The boiler had been tampered with. Valves forced into positions they should not have been in.
One technician shook his head slowly.
“This doesn’t happen on its own,” he said. “Someone did this.”
When Morales spoke with Sofia later that morning in a child care room, she answered softly, swinging her legs above the floor.
“Yesterday,” she said, “Dad was very nervous. He was yelling on the phone.”
“What did he say?” Morales asked.
“He said he couldn’t pay anymore,” she replied. “And someone told him he had until today.”
“Did you see who he was talking to?”
“No.”
“Has anyone been coming to your house lately?”
Sofia nodded.
“For a month now,” she said. “Men come at night. Mom says it’s grown-up stuff.”
Morales wrote every word down.
At the hospital, Sofia’s parents remained unconscious. Machines breathed for them. The doctors warned it would be a slow recovery, if they woke at all.
By afternoon, the case shifted again.
Security footage from the residential area showed a hooded man approaching the house at 11:46 p.m. His face was hidden, but his body told a story.
Medium build. A noticeable limp on his right side.
Five minutes later, he left.
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