Chapter 7 - The Smoking GunDetective Vance frowned, taking the envelope from the young officer. “What is it?”
“We found a burner phone, a lockbox containing thirty thousand dollars in cash, and two one-way airline tickets to the Cayman Islands booked for tomorrow morning under an alias,” the officer reported quickly. “And on the tablet… well, look at the cloud backup sync history.”
Vance pulled a small, high-definition memory card out of the envelope and slipped it into his department laptop. He clicked open a folder of video files, his eyes widening as the screen illuminated his face with a pale, flickering light.
I leaned forward as far as the handcuffs would allow, straining my eyes to see the screen.
It was a security feed—not from the front porch, but from a hidden camera installed inside my mother’s bedroom.
On the screen, the grainy, high-angle video showed Evelyn standing over my mother’s bed three weeks ago. In the video, Evelyn wasn't comforting her. She was holding a heavy glass bottle, forcing my mother to swallow a handful of unknown pills while pinning her down by the throat.
“Swallow it, you old witch,” Evelyn’s voice hissed from the laptop speakers, crystal clear and chillingly cruel. “Once Mark is declared dead in action or locked up in a military psych ward, this house is mine, and you’re going straight to a county dumpster.”
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Detective Vance slowly closed the laptop lid and looked up at me. The skepticism in his eyes was entirely gone, replaced by a grim, hard realization.
“Well,” Vance muttered, unlocking my handcuffs with a small brass key from his pocket. “It looks like your wife is a very bad liar, Sergeant.”
