Chapter 5 - The Paper Trail-5
With David and Theresa scrambling in Key West, I left Ethan in the secure care of the hospital staff and took an encrypted taxi to our home on Willow Creek Lane.
I needed physical evidence.
I walked through the quiet, empty house, wearing latex gloves. I went straight to Theresa’s guest bedroom. She thought she was clever, but she was careless. In the back of her closet, hidden inside a hollowed-out vintage jewelry box, I found a small glass vial labeled Diphenhydramine Concentrated Surfactant—the exact substance detected in Ethan's formula.
Beside the vial lay a small leather ledger.
I sat down at the guest room desk and flipped through the pages.
The ledger didn't just contain notes about Ethan’s trust fund. It contained detailed entries dating back six years—entries recording systematic financial theft from David’s late father's pension, fraudulent life insurance claims, and a long list of shell companies registered in Delaware under Theresa’s maiden name.
Theresa Vance was a serial financial predator. She had bankrupted her first two husbands, drained their estates dry, and was now using David as her puppet to execute her largest score yet: my father's thirty-million-dollar estate.
Even more shocking was a folded document tucked inside the back cover.
It was a draft of a forged will bearing my digitized signature, dated three weeks before Ethan’s birth, which bequeathed all my personal properties, real estate, and parental rights to Theresa Vance in the event of my death or permanent mental incapacitation.
They hadn't just planned to poison my baby and lock me away in an asylum. If that failed, they were prepared to orchestrate a far more permanent "accident" for me once the C-section recovery was complete.
My hands remained completely steady as I used my high-resolution scanner app to digitize every page of the ledger, uploading the files directly to the FBI Financial Crimes Unit portal in Seattle.
Then I called Detective Raymond Briggs of the Portland Police Homicide and Special Victims Unit.
"Detective Briggs," I said, my voice cold as ice. "I have the physical poison vial, the financial paper trail, and the forged documents used in the attempt on my son's life. I am ready to sign the formal criminal complaint."
"Mrs. Vance," Detective Briggs responded with intense gravity. "Where are the suspects right now?"
"They are currently stuck at the Miami International Airport airport terminal," I replied, checking Marcus’s real-time location tracker on my phone. "They couldn't pay their resort bill, so they were forced to take an economy bus to Miami. Their flight back to Portland lands tomorrow at 4:00 PM."
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"Good," Detective Briggs said. "We'll be waiting at the gate."
"No, Detective," I requested firmly. "Let them come back to the house. I want them to walk through that front door believing their plan worked. I want to look them in the eyes when their world shatters."
