Chapter 2 - The Paper Trail Begins
The Maple Valley Police Department was a quiet, brick building on Main Street. At 7:30 PM, the lobby was illuminated by flickering fluorescent lights, smelling of stale coffee and floor wax.
Detective Karen Miller—a sharp-eyed woman in her late forties with salt-and-pepper hair—sat across from me in a private interrogation room.
On the metal table between us rested two evidence bags. One contained the opened gold tin with its fake label peeled half-off; the other contained the fine white powder I had swept off my kitchen floor.
Detective Miller put down her pen, looking up from her notepad.
"Mrs. Duncan," Miller said carefully, her voice professional but laced with grave concern. "You’re making a very severe allegation against Whitney Duncan. She is a prominent figure in this county. Her late husband’s foundation funds half the youth programs in Maple Valley."
"I don't care if she funds the whole state, Detective," I said, holding my sleeping son tightly against my chest in his wrap. "Look at the tin. Send that powder to the state toxicology lab. Run a test for synthetic growth hormones, industrial stabilizers, and heavy metals."
Miller reached out with a gloved hand, turning the gold tin over to examine the red warning underneath. Her eyebrows drawn tight into a dark line.
"The fake label..." Miller muttered, touching the sticky residue on the side. "This isn't a factory mistake. This was manually applied with industrial adhesive. Where did she say she got these?"
"She claimed she imported them through private connections," I said. "She brought six tins to my house today."
"Where are the other five tins?"
"In my kitchen," I said. "Unless my husband destroyed them after I left."
Detective Miller immediately picked up her desk phone and dialed three digits. "Officer Gable, I need a unit dispatched to 142 Elmwood Lane immediately. Secure the kitchen premises. Do not let Neil Duncan move or dispose of any containers."
Twenty minutes later, Detective Miller’s desk phone rang. She listened in silence for thirty seconds, nodding slowly, her face growing grimmer by the moment.
"Understood. Bring him in," Miller said, hanging up. She turned to me. "My officers reached your house. Your husband was in the backyard with an incinerator bin. He had already thrown three of the remaining tins into a fire."
A cold spike of adrenaline shot through my blood. "He tried to burn the evidence?"
"Officers managed to extinguish the fire and recover the unburned tins, along with the burnt residue," Miller said, standing up. "Neil Duncan has been taken into custody for tampering with physical evidence in a potential felony investigation."
My heart hammered against my ribs. My own husband—the man I had promised to love and protect—had tried to burn the toxic evidence to shield his mother from the law, completely ignoring the fact that the powder was meant to poison his own son.
"Can I see him?" I asked, my voice cracking slightly.
"Not right now," Miller said smoothly. "Right now, Mrs. Duncan, I suggest you take your baby to a safe place. Do you have family nearby?"
"My sister in Seattle," I said. "Two hours away."
"Go to Seattle," Miller advised, opening the door for me. "I’m issuing an emergency protective order for you and Micah against both Whitney Duncan and Neil Duncan. Don't go back to Elmwood Lane tonight."
As I walked out of the police station into the rainy night, my phone began vibrating frantically in my purse.
The caller ID displayed: WHITNEY DUNCAN.
I stopped under the streetlight, staring at the screen. My thumb hovered over the red button, but then I changed my mind. I hit record on a call-recording app I had installed months ago, then answered.
"Adriana!" Whitney’s voice shrieked through the speaker—no longer the polished, aristocratic tone she used in public, but a sharp, hysterical rasp. "What have you done?! Why are police cars outside Neil’s house?! Have you completely lost your mind?!"
"Your son is in handcuffs, Whitney," I said, keeping my voice as cold as ice. "Because he tried to burn the expired livestock poison you brought into my nursery."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the line.
"You cheap, ungrateful little gutter rat," Whitney spat, her voice dropping into a guttural threat. "You think you can destroy my family with some nonsense about baby formula? I own the banks in this town! I own the judges! If you try to slide my grandson out of Maple Valley, I will have you arrested for kidnapping by midnight!"
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"Try it, Whitney," I whispered into the phone. "The state crime lab has the powder. The police have the fake labels. And now, I have this phone call."
I hung up before she could respond, turned off my GPS tracking, and drove straight onto Interstate 5 toward Seattle.
