Chapter 6 - The Gathering of Evidence
The next ten days were a blur of legal preparation. Julian Vance worked like a man possessed. He didn't just pull the cell phone records; he dug deep into the financial history of the Whitman Corporation.
"Look at this, Claire," Julian said, throwing a digital spreadsheet onto his monitor during our final prep session. "Two weeks before your 'vacation' to Death Valley, your father transferred five hundred thousand dollars into a offshore account belonging to Dr. Lawrence Vance’s medical research foundation in Panama. It was labeled as a 'charitable donation.'"
"A bribe," I said, my voice flat. "He paid him to write the fake psychiatric report."
"Exactly," Julian nodded. "And there's more. We managed to obtain the security footage from the gas station outside Furnace Creek where you said your mother gave you the iced tea. The local sheriff’s department retrieved it under a federal grand jury subpoena."
He played the video clip. The quality was crisp. It showed our rented SUV parked by the pumps. My mother could be seen standing by the cooler inside the store, opening a bottle of iced tea, and dropping a small, white tablet into the liquid before shaking it vigorously. She smiled at the cashier as she paid, completely unbothered by the fact that she was about to poison her own child.
"This is attempted premeditated murder, Julian," I whispered, tears of rage burning my eyes. "Why haven't the criminal police arrested them yet?"
"Because the federal prosecutor wants a airtight conspiracy case," Julian explained. "If they arrest them now, your father's defense team will have them out on bail within an hour, and they might flee the country on their private jet before we can get Sophie back. The prosecutor has agreed to let our family court hearing proceed first. We are going to use the civil court to lock them into their testimonies under oath. Once they swear on that Bible that you abandoned the child, and we drop this evidence... they will walk out of that family courtroom in handcuffs, with no possibility of bail."
May you like
"And Sophie?"
"Sophie will be remanded to your custody the exact second the judge sees the gas station footage," Julian said firmly. "Tomorrow morning, Claire. The theater opens."
