At noon, a small white van slowed beside Daniel’s house.
The investigators watched it from inside an unmarked vehicle.
The driver passed the property, circled the next block, and returned five minutes later.
Daniel recognized the Blue Current logo partly scraped from the van’s passenger door.
The vehicle stopped beside a corner convenience store rather than pulling into his driveway.
Bell radioed the license plate and approached on foot.
The driver saw him, started the engine, and accelerated toward the avenue.
Bell did not pursue blindly through the residential streets.
He reported the direction of travel and waited for patrol units already positioned farther ahead.
Within minutes, the van was located at a shopping center.
The driver had abandoned it with the doors open.
Its cargo space contained empty chemical containers, a folded pool net, and a thick plastic bag holding several instrument-case handles.
None of the handles had been manufactured for pool equipment.
Daniel listened as Bell relayed the discovery to Ortiz.
“That doesn’t sound like somebody picking up a repair part,” Daniel said.
“No,” Ortiz agreed.
“It sounds like somebody removing the evidence that would connect several houses.”

CHAPTER THREE — A NAME ON THE CASE

Daniel learned more about Isabel from her fellow technician, Theo Martin, who arrived at the police station that afternoon.
Ortiz asked Daniel to come because he might recognize service visits recorded in Theo’s notebook.
Daniel drove there with a uniformed officer following him, then sat in a small conference room across from a tired young man in a yellow work shirt.
Theo had been with Blue Current for six months.
He kept handwritten maintenance notes because the company’s scheduling software regularly lost service histories.
“Gideon hated the notebook,” Theo said.
“He said it made us look old-fashioned.”
“What did it actually contain?” Ortiz asked.
Theo turned pages covered with chlorine readings, pump model numbers, and small sketches of equipment pads.
“Everything that mattered for the customer,

” he replied.
“The official app mostly cared about how quickly we finished.”
One entry described a visit to Daniel’s address eleven days earlier.
Theo had accompanied Isabel because Daniel’s pump timer kept resetting.
“That was the day she asked about the black instrument case,” Theo said.
Daniel frowned.
“What black case?”
Theo looked at him.
“The one she thought she’d left in your garage.”
Daniel had never seen a black instrument case in his garage.
Theo said Isabel had borrowed a heavy case from a friend to transport delicate water-testing equipment.
When she returned to the van after inspecting Daniel’s pump, the case had disappeared.
Price claimed she had forgotten it at the previous address.
Isabel disagreed.
She had placed it beside the rear tire while carrying a toolbox.
“Was the case actually hers?” Ortiz asked.
Theo swallowed.
“It belonged to her brother.”
He explained that Isabel’s younger brother, Mateo, repaired violins and violas for a youth orchestra.
The case had been on loan to Isabel because its hard shell protected a specialized instrument she intended to deliver after work.
“What instrument?” Daniel asked.
“A viola built by a local maker.”
Theo turned another page.
“It was for a student who had finally earned a place at the summer conservatory.”
The student had been waiting for that instrument for eight months.
Isabel called Price about its disappearance, and he offered to replace the case if she stopped asking questions.
“But the viola was inside,” Theo said.
“You cannot replace a handmade instrument with a generic store model and pretend nobody will notice.”
Daniel understood the tension in his voice.
He remembered spending years saving for the piano his late mother had played in their first apartment.
That piano had been a battered upright with two stubborn keys.
It was still the only object he regretted losing when his family moved.