Chapter 4

Sabina froze, her face locking in place.

Wallis panicked and lunged for my phone on reflex.

“We're all neighbors here. Why call the police and blow this up?”

I twisted aside and let her miss, my eyes cold.

“Moral judgment can't touch a person. The law can.”

That shut Wallis up for a second.

Sabina recovered first and burst into tears straight at the camera.

“Wallis, you know perfectly well that in this country pets count as property, not lives. You want to use that loophole to dodge moral judgment, and to insult every one of us who loves animals.”

“This is you mocking an innocent life!”

In my past life, this was exactly the kind of inflammatory line she used to pull more and more people in.

In the end, even people who didn't own pets pitied her, and everyone turned on me at once, saying they'd stand in for the law and judge me themselves.

I stared Sabina down, cold.

“You say I killed your dog, and you know every detail of how it was done. So tell me: when exactly did I do it, and how do you know?”

She hesitated, clearly not expecting the question.

I kept going. “This is a live stream. The whole internet is watching. Every frame becomes evidence.”

She pulled her thoughts together fast and cried harder.

“Ms. Finch, I loved my dog. I never wanted to drag this to the station. I just want an explanation, I want justice for my dog!”

The moment she said it, the crowd and the livestream comments went wild.

They piled on.

【Exactly! The law won't deal with dog abuse, so we will!】

【She just lost her puppy, that's a terrible thing, and this witch wants to pressure her with the law. That's rubbing salt in the wound.】

The more they came at me, the calmer I got.

I looked Sabina dead in the eye.

“Sabina, you still haven't answered my question.”

A small shiver ran through her, and she forced out an answer.

“It was the day before yesterday. I heard the dog barking, I saw it through the peephole... there's no camera in that spot...”

Realizing she'd said too much, she snapped her mouth shut.

Inside I was laughing coldly. On my face I only nodded and pressed on.

“What did I use to kill your dog?”

Sweat rolled down from her temple. She bit her lip like she'd made up her mind.

“A kitchen knife!”

“What color was it?”

She broke down sobbing.

“I was terrified. How would I remember details like that? Ms. Finch, every time I think about my dog dying I can't bear it, so why did you kill my dog and then torture me like this?”

“It hurts too much. I can't take it anymore.”

She clutched her chest, the picture of a woman breaking with grief.

The viewers and the crowd ached for her.

【This is psychological abuse! Poking at the victim's pain over and over, just to push her into a breakdown.】

【Poison of a woman! She's trying to drive her insane so she won't have to answer for anything!】

Seeing her sob story work, the traffic climbing higher and higher, a flicker of smugness slipped into Sabina's eyes.

With no camera, he could fabricate any fact out of thin air.

All she had to do was hold her story and keep milking the sympathy, and my family and I would be dragged into a bottomless pit.

What she didn't know was that I'd long since covered my front door with a dense grid of pinhole cameras.

Every corner of the shared space, every moment of the past two weeks, all of it recorded clean and clear.

I let out a soft laugh, my voice clear and serious.

“The time of the so-called crime, the day before yesterday, I was away at a country bed-and-breakfast with my son.”

“So tell me, how did I kill your dog?”

Her face went white and she shrieked. “You're lying!”

“You're dodging responsibility!”

Someone in the crowd couldn't hold back.

“Don't listen to this witch running her mouth! No camera, real or fake, it's all whatever she says!”

“Get her! Teach her a lesson.”

With that, they rolled up their sleeves and moved to rush me.

Right then, a shout went up.

“The police are here!”

An officer pushed through the crowd with a team behind him.

“Who called it in?”

I stepped forward. “I did.”

I laid out what had happened, plain and clear, then handed over the USB drive I'd prepared ahead of time.

Sabina charged up, pointing at the bloodstains by my door, crying.

“Officer, she killed my dog. These bloodstains are the proof!”

I glanced at her and calmly pointed at the drive. “This is the footage from my front door. It'll prove I'm innocent.”

“Footage?”

Sabina's voice shot up in disbelief.

“What footage?”

I looked at her mildly. “I installed it myself.”

“Nothing illegal about putting a camera on my own front door, is there?”

The color drained out of her face in an instant, and she pointed a shaking finger at me.

“It has to be fake! You used AI to make it up and frame me!”

I looked around, then stepped right up in front of the camera.

“Whether the footage is fake, the officer can decide that.”

“You wanted justice for your dog, didn't you?”

“Then let's do it right here in front of the officer and see exactly what happened the day before yesterday!”