Chapter 3 - The Interrogation Room
The precinct waiting room smelled of stale coffee and industrial cleaning solution. It was 3:00 AM, but my adrenaline kept every nerve ending screaming.
An officer walked out of the back hallway and motioned toward me. "Mr. Vance? You can come back now. The doctor at City General Hospital just cleared your wife to speak briefly, and your mother and brother have been placed in separate holding rooms."
I stood up so fast the metal chair scraped loudly against the linoleum. "Can I see her?"
"Not yet. Child Protective Services and the detectives are with her now. But Captain Miller wants a word with you first in Interrogation Room B."
I followed the officer down a narrow, windowless corridor lined with cinderblock walls. Inside the small room, a metal table sat beneath a buzzing fluorescent light. Captain Miller, a weathered detective with sharp gray eyes and a permanent scowl, sat waiting with a thick manila folder open in front of him.
"Sit down, Mr. Vance," Miller said, not looking up.
I pulled out the chair and sat, slamming the stolen legal folder onto the metal table.
Miller blinked, looking up at the documents and then at me. "What’s this?"
"That is proof of corporate fraud, forgery, extortion, and murder orchestrated by Evelyn and Nathan Vance," I said, my voice steady. "And it’s the motive for why they tried to murder my wife."
Miller flipped open the folder, scanning the forged signatures, the shell company bank statements, and the internal memos detailing illegal cargo shipments passing through Vance Logistics warehouses. As he read, the skepticism in his eyes slowly transformed into grim realization.
"Where did you get this?" Miller asked, tapping a finger against a fraudulent transfer slip worth twelve million dollars.
"My father's private safe. The same safe my wife unlocked before they drugged her into a catatonic state and tried to bury her."
Miller leaned back, crossing his arms. "We’ve been looking into Vance Logistics for six months. Ever since your father died under suspicious circumstances. But the financial firewall your family built was airtight. We couldn't get a warrant without probable cause."
"You have probable cause now," I said leaning forward. "They tried to bury a living woman to keep these documents from seeing the light of day. Where are Evelyn and Nathan?"
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"Down the hall. Your mother is invoking her right to counsel and refusing to say a word without a high-priced defense attorney. Nathan is claiming you staged the whole thing out of a bitter family inheritance dispute." Miller slammed the folder shut. "We need to talk to Claire. If what you’re saying is true, she’s the primary witness to an attempted homicide and a massive federal conspiracy."
"Take me to the hospital," I demanded. "Now."
