Chapter 4 - The Interrogation Room-4
Across town, inside the reinforced concrete basement of the County Judicial Annex, Eleanor and Audrey Vance sat in separate interrogation rooms under the heavy glare of fluorescent tube lights.
I stood behind the one-way observation mirror in Interrogation Room B, accompanied by Detective Miller and the District Attorney, a sharp, unyielding woman named Evelyn Croft.
Inside the room, Audrey was breaking. She had surrendered her arrogant posture hours ago. Her designer clothes were wrinkled, her mascara was smeared across her pale face, and her hands trembled so violently she could barely hold the plastic cup of water the investigators had offered her.
Across the table sat Detective Miller’s partner, Investigator Rodriguez, a veteran detective who specialized in domestic terror and extortion.
"Audrey," Rodriguez said smoothly, tapping a manila folder flat against the metal desk. "Your mother isn't talking. She’s sitting in Room A telling us that this is a minor family dispute and that Captain Vance is going to drop all charges once he cools down. But you know that's not true, don't you?"
Audrey swallowed hard, her eyes darting nervously toward the corners of the room. "Lucas wouldn't... he wouldn't send his own sister to prison. He loves us."
"Lucas is a Special Forces Captain who just walked into his home and found his newborn son dying of a 104-degree fever and his wife beaten within an inch of her life," Rodriguez countered brutally. "He isn't thinking like your little brother right now, Audrey. He's thinking like a commanding officer dealing with an enemy threat. And right now, the federal grand jury is preparing indictments for human trafficking, conspiracy to commit murder by deprivation, forgery, and grand larceny."
"Conspiracy to commit murder?!" Audrey shrieked, her voice cracking into a high-pitched, hysterical panic. "No! No, that wasn't the plan! That was all Eleanor! I didn't want to hurt anyone!"
"Then tell me what the plan was, Audrey," Rodriguez leaned in, his voice dropping to an empathetic whisper. "Because if you don't lay this entirely at Eleanor’s feet right now, you are going to be tried as a co-conspirator. You will be looking at twenty to thirty years in a federal penitentiary without the possibility of parole."
Audrey buried her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with ugly, frantic sobs. "It... it started six months ago," she babbled, the words spilling out of her in a desperate, uncoordinated torrent. "Eleanor was in massive debt! She lost over a hundred thousand dollars gambling on offshore trading accounts! The bank was going to foreclose on her personal condo in Charlotte!"
Behind the glass, my jaw tightened. I had known Eleanor was frivolous with money, but I had no idea she had bankrupted herself.
"She saw the trust money," Audrey continued, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her blouse. "She knew Dad’s trust was worth over half a million dollars if we included the commercial lot downtown. But she couldn't touch it while Lucas and Sophia were together. Eleanor hated Sophia from the day Lucas brought her home! She hated that Sophia came from a respected family, that she was educated, that Lucas listened to her instead of Eleanor!"
"So what did Eleanor do?" Rodriguez prompted.
"She told me that if we helped her take control of the baby, the court would grant her an administrative management stipend of eight thousand dollars a month from the trust!" Audrey wept. "She said Sophia was weak, that nobody would believe an orphan girl with no family nearby over a military mother! Eleanor paid Dr. Finch five thousand dollars to sign those medical affidavits! She... she was giving Sophia sleeping pills mixed into her tea every night so she would look dazed and confused whenever the neighbors saw her!"
"And the physical abuse, Audrey?" Rodriguez asked coldly. "Who gave her those fractured ribs?"
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Audrey pressed her back against the chair, her face going translucent white. "Eleanor... Eleanor hit her with the wooden valet stand three days ago because Sophia tried to crawl out the back door to get to the neighbor’s house. I... I just held the door shut... I swear I didn't hit her! It was Eleanor! Eleanor said if Sophia died of an infection from her injuries, we could just tell the police she suffered postpartum complications!"
Inside the observation room, District Attorney Croft turned to look at me, her eyes burning with lethal professional focus. "That is a full, uncoerced confession to attempted murder and premeditated conspiracy, Captain Vance. We have everything we need."
