Chapter 9 - The Weighing of the Soul
The interrogation room at the Blackwood Police Department was cold, sterile, and lit by buzzing fluorescent bulbs.
Evan Mercer sat at the metal table, his hands handcuffed to an iron ring anchored into the center of the wood. His tuxedo was ruined, his hair matted, his eyes sunken and bloodshot.
Across from him sat Chief Detective Vance and Aunt Eleanor.
On the metal table between them sat the grey portable cassette player, along with the manila folder and the private toxicology report Lila had retrieved from the library safe.
"We played the tape, Evan," Detective Vance said quietly, resting his hands on his notepad. "Your wife’s voice was clear. Claire’s voice was clear. And the toxicology report from the Boston lab confirms lethal levels of Digitalis."
Evan didn't look up. He stared at his handcuffed wrists, his shoulders shaking silently.
"She told me it was just a sedative," Evan wept softly, his voice barely audible. "Claire said... she said Naomi was going to divorce me and take everything. She said if we gave her small doses, Naomi would seem mentally unfit, and the court would give me control of the estate."
"And the night she died?" Eleanor asked, her voice dangerously quiet, vibrating with pure hatred.
Evan swallowed hard. "I was downstairs. I heard them arguing in the study. Naomi found the offshore account transfers... she threatened to call the police. I heard a glass shatter. Then... then I heard the fall."
"And you did nothing," Eleanor said, leaning forward across the table. "You watched your wife die at the bottom of those stairs, and you let her killer move into her house, wear her pearls, and try to raise her daughter."
"I was terrified!" Evan cried out, lifting his head, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks. "Claire said if I went to the police, she would tell them I ordered the poison! She controlled everything! I couldn't stop her!"
"You could have saved your daughter," Detective Vance said sternly, turning a page in his folder. "Tonight, Claire was ready to throw Lila from that loft. And you sat in the dirt and wept."
Evan had no answer. He lowered his head back to the cold steel table, sobbing as the gravity of his cowardice finally crushed him completely.
In the adjacent room, behind a one-way mirror, Claire Dalton sat silently in her own cell. She refused to speak to her court-appointed lawyer. She sat staring at her manicured nails, now ruined and caked with dried mud, her face a mask of bitter, cold silence.
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The grand Mercer estate was officially seized as a crime scene. The white wedding flowers in St. Jude’s Chapel were swept away into the trash. The news of the Mercer murder conspiracy shattered the quiet town of Blackwood, filling front pages across the state.
The monster had been dragged out into the light.
