Chapter 5 - Confessions in the Dark
The interrogation rooms at the county precinct were cold, sterile boxes of concrete and stainless steel. Through the two-way glass, I watched my mother sitting in a metal chair, her hands trembling as she clutched a paper napkin. She looked small, frail, and entirely stripped of her haughty suburban authority.
Detective Miller sat across from her, sliding a stack of crime scene photographs onto the table.
"Teresa," Miller said gently. "Derek has already started talking. He's trying to cut a deal with the prosecutor. He claims you were the one who suggested locking Clara and Lily in the third-floor room after he assaulted her."
My mother’s head snapped up. "That's a lie! Derek is a good boy! He was just trying to protect our family finances!"
"Your 'good boy' fractured your daughter-in-law's hyoid bone," Miller said coldly, pointing to an autopsy report. "The coroner confirmed it an hour ago. Clara didn't hang herself, Teresa. She was strangled to death on the floor of her bedroom. Then Derek and Beatrice used a bedsheet to stage a hanging from the attic rafters to make it look like suicide."
My mother covered her face, letting out a horrific, low mournful wail. "We didn't mean for her to die! We just wanted the drive! She was going to ruin Derek! She was going to send my son to prison!"
"So you sacrificed Clara instead?" Miller leaned forward. "And what about your granddaughter? What about six-year-old Lily? You locked her in that room with her mother's body for twelve hours!"
"I took her phone!" my mother sobbed hysterically. "Clara was trying to call the police! I took her phone and locked the door from the outside so she couldn't run away before Vance's men arrived to collect the files! I didn't know Derek had... had choked her! I thought she was just sleeping!"
Behind the glass, I closed my eyes, my forehead resting against the cold wall. The betrayal burned like acid in my throat. My own mother—the woman who raised me—had chosen her golden-child criminal son over the life of my innocent wife and the sanity of my daughter.
Miller stepped out of the interrogation room a few minutes later, closing the door behind him. He walked over to where I stood in the observation hallway.
"We have full confessions from Teresa and Beatrice," Miller said softly. "Beatrice forged the preliminary death certificate under pressure from Vance's lawyers in exchange for a fifty-thousand-dollar payoff to clear her funeral home's mortgages. They're all going down, Alex. Murder in the first degree, conspiracy, tampering with evidence, and child endangerment."
"And Derek?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Derek is looking at life without parole," Miller replied. "The prosecutor isn't offering him a dime. The physical evidence under Clara's fingernails matched his DNA. She fought him to her last breath, Alex. She gave us everything we needed to bury him."
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I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. "I need to take Lily home. I need to get my father out of that house."
"Go home, Alex," Miller said, touching my shoulder. "The house has been released from the crime scene hold. Clean it out. Start over. We'll handle the rest."
