Chapter 3 - The Interrogation Room
The observation glass in Interrogation Room B was cold against my forehead as I watched Detective Vance sit across from my son. Dennis sat slumped in his orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed to the metal loop anchored in the center of the table.
"Your father handed over the hard drives from the house, Dennis," Vance said, slapping a thick folder onto the table. "We have footage of you walking up those attic stairs with a box of crackers and a single water bottle before you left for the airport. You locked a deadbolt from the outside."
"It has a vent!" Dennis blurted out, leaning forward, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "The attic has a ventilation shaft! She wasn't going to suffocate! I was only going to be gone for three days! I left her food!"
"Three days?" Vance echoed, her tone dropping into terrifying disgust. "A five-year-old child left unattended in a seventy-eight-degree room with half a bottle of water? Do you know what happens to a toddler's kidney function after forty-eight hours of severe heat and dehydration?"
"I didn't have a choice!" Dennis shouted, his voice cracking. "Trisha was going to leave me! She hated the kid! She said if I didn't get rid of Sophie, she’d divorce me and take half of everything! I was trying to find an adoption agency in secret! I just needed a few days to figure it out!"
Through the speaker in the observation room, his words filled me with profound shame. Dennis hadn't acted out of panic; he had acted out of pure, calculated selfishness. He sacrificed his daughter to preserve his luxurious, rent-free lifestyle.
I pushed open the interrogation door and stepped inside.
Dennis looked up, his face lighting up with a horrific, delusional hope. "Dad! Dad, thank God! Tell them to drop this! Tell them it was a misunderstanding! You can take custody of Sophie! We’ll sign over full rights to you! Just get us out of here!"
I looked down at the boy I had raised, seeing him clearly for the first time in my life.
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"I came here to tell you one thing, Dennis," I said, my voice steady, cold, and final. "I have hired the top family law attorneys in Oregon. I am revoking your residency, evicting you from the house, and filing for full, permanent legal guardianship of Sophie. And when the district attorney takes this to trial, I will be the prosecution's lead witness against you."
Dennis stared at me, his mouth agape, as the realization finally hit him: his protector was gone.
