Chapter 7 - The Grand Alliance
Over the next two weeks, my house became a war room.
I contacted an old friend of mine, Marcus Vance, a retired federal prosecutor who owed me a favor from our younger days. When Marcus saw the independent lab reports, the forged financial documents, and listened to the recordings, his face turned pale.
"This isn't just a local custody dispute, Charles," Marcus said, taking off his glasses. "This is first-degree murder, federal bank fraud, and grand larceny. If we take this to the local DA, Arthur’s connections might tip him off, and he’ll flee to the Bahamas. We need to present this directly to the federal authorities—and we need to make sure he has no escape route."
Meanwhile, Lucy, Rachel, and even little April helped organize the evidence. We made digital copies of everything, uploading them to secure cloud servers. Rachel, who had been completely silent since the funeral, finally spoke up.
"Grandpa," she whispered, holding a photo of her mother. "Can we make sure everyone knows what he did to Mom? I don't want people to think she just got sick. She was strong."
"They will know, sweetheart," I promised her, pulling all three of them into a tight embrace. "The whole world will know."
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Marcus secured a secret meeting with the FBI's white-collar crime and violent crimes divisions. Because of the heavy metal poisoning crossing state lines (Arthur had ordered the thallium from a supplier in Alabama), the feds eagerly took the case, but they agreed to our timing. They wanted to catch Arthur and Chloe when they were both in one place, alongside their financial accomplices.
And there was no better place than the altar.
