I thought carefully.
“She always kept it closed.”
“That alone isn’t unusual.”
“No. But hers felt different.”
I remembered that Linda had installed an electronic keypad on the side entrance.
I also remembered something else.
Months earlier, she had hired a professional crew to clean the garage.
They spent nearly two full days working inside.
Afterward, Linda told me she had finally decided to get rid of years of clutter.
Officer Delgado stopped writing for a moment.
“When was that?”
I thought back.
“Maybe eight or nine months ago.”
Then another memory came back to me.
“It was around the time everyone was still talking about Carol Vasquez.”
His expression changed.
I continued.
“Linda said something strange then. She told me Carol’s disappearance made her think about putting her own affairs in order.”
At the time, I thought it was an odd but harmless comment.
Now it sounded completely different.
Officer Delgado wrote everything down.
For the next hour, I prepared a formal statement covering every incident.
The scratched door.
The flowerpots.
The spilled paint.
Linda’s denials.
The camera footage.
And the moment the officer noticed the garage.
Outside, the investigation continued to expand.
Eventually, I heard what sounded like a tow truck.
The car beneath the tarp was being taken away.
Linda wasn’t arrested right away.
Police initially brought her in for questioning.
But her house remained sealed.
For days afterward, I felt like I had somehow stepped into someone else’s nightmare.
Reporters soon began arriving.
Local news stations parked vans along the street.
People I had barely spoken to suddenly wanted to tell reporters everything they believed they knew about Linda.
I refused to give interviews.
The more I watched the coverage, the more thankful I was for that decision.
Within forty-eight hours, authorities confirmed that the vehicle recovered from Linda’s garage was registered to Carol Vasquez.
And then investigators discovered something that made the case even more disturbing.
