Chapter 3 - THE INTERROGATION ROOMThe interrogation room at the Cedar Rapids police precinct smelled like old coffee, disinfectant, and decades of human misery. The metal table between us was scarred with cigarette burns and deep scratches from desperate fingernails.
Megan sat across from me—or rather, across from the two state investigators who had taken over the case. Her hair, usually impeccably styled, was coming loose from its pins. Her designer sweater was stained with spilled beer and dirt from the dining room floor.
She looked small, pathetic, and utterly defeated.
Except she wasn't crying. She was staring at the tabletop with a cold, dead gaze that sent a chill straight down my spine.
Investigator Vance, a towering man with salt-and-pepper hair and sharp, analytical eyes, dropped a heavy manila folder onto the metal table with a loud thwack.
"Let's go over this one more time, Mrs. Miller," Vance said, his voice deep and steady. "The state forensics lab ran a full gas chromatography-mass spectrometry on the steak sample recovered from the floor. Do you know what they found?"
Megan remained silent, her lips pressed into a thin, white line.
"Thallium," Vance said, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the table. "A heavy, odorless, tasteless metallic poison. Ingesting even a fraction of a gram causes rapid cellular breakdown, neurological failure, and within hours, cardiac arrest. It’s an assassin's poison, Megan. It's not something you pick up at the local grocery store."
Megan finally raised her eyes, glaring at Vance with open contempt. "I want my lawyer."
"You'll get your lawyer," Vance replied smoothly. "Right after you explain how a bottle of pharmaceutical-grade thallium sulfate—registered under a phantom LLC linked to an offshore account in the Cayman Islands—ended up in the glove compartment of your Audi parked outside your mother-in-law's house."
My breath caught in my throat. The Audi.
I had been sitting outside in the hallway with Lauren, Chris, and the kids while the state police searched every vehicle in the driveway. Hearing that they had found the source—the actual weapon—made the nightmare feel terrifyingly real.
Megan’s composure finally cracked. A bitter, hysterical laugh escaped her throat.
"You think you're so smart, don't you, Daniel?" she snarled, turning her venomous glare directly onto me through the glass partition separating the observation room where I sat. Even though she couldn't see me clearly, she knew I was watching. "You think you dodged a bullet because your dog had a better survival instinct than your son?"
"Why, Megan?" I spoke through the intercom system, my voice echoing metallic and hollow in the interrogation room. "Why did you want me dead?"
Megan smiled, a chilling, distorted grin. "Because you were standing in the way, Daniel. Chris is a useless alcoholic. My mother-in-law's house is mortgaged to the hilt. But you? You had the clean corporate job. You had the life insurance policy with the double-indemnity rider. And do you know who the primary beneficiary was on your corporate supplemental policy?"
My stomach plummeted. "My estate... goes to Lauren."
"And who is Lauren’s designated power of attorney if anything happens to her?" Megan tilted her head, her eyes flashing with triumphant malice. "Me. Her loving sister. I would have controlled the entire payout within six months. I would have paid off my debts, bought the house in Naples, and left you all behind to rot in this frozen midwestern wasteland."
The sheer audacity of it—the cold, calculated greed—left me speechless. She had planned to kill me, let Lauren inherit the grief and the money, and then systematically manipulate or eliminate Lauren to claim the entire fortune. It was a multi-stage execution plan disguised as a family holiday.
"You're insane," I whispered into the microphone.
"No, Daniel," Megan whispered back, leaning right into the recording microphone on the table as if she were speaking directly into my ear. "I'm ambitious. And you just ruined my masterpiece."
Investigator Vance slammed his hand down on the table, standing up and towering over her. "Take her down to holding. Bail is denied. We're upgrading these charges to attempted capital murder, animal cruelty, and conspiracy."
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As two uniform officers grabbed Megan by the arms and hauled her out of the chair, she didn't scream. She didn't fight. She just stared straight into the observation mirror, her lips curling into a smile that promised this wasn't the end of the story.
Little did she know, the nightmare was only beginning. Because back at the house on Elmwood Drive, something was waiting in the basement that Megan hadn't accounted for.
