Chapter 9 - The Poisoned Interrogation
Marcus rushed to Dr. Vance-Kowalski before the heavy doors could fully swing shut behind her.
“Clara? Is she… are they alive?” Marcus gasped, his heart slamming against his ribs.
The doctor pulled off her surgical cap, her weary face softening with cautious relief.
“We managed to arrest the placental abruption with high-dose magnesium and emergency tocolytic medication,” Dr. Vance-Kowalski explained.
“Her lungs are clearing, and the baby’s heart rate has stabilized back to one hundred and thirty-five beats per minute,” she continued.
Marcus let out a ragged, trembling breath, sinking against the wall as if his bones had turned to dust.
“However,” the doctor added, her expression turning stern and grave.
“Clara remains in critical condition under heavy sedation in the intensive care unit,” she said.
“She suffered significant chemical irritation from the high levels of pool chlorine in her bronchial tubes, and there is a secondary danger of delayed pulmonary edema,” the doctor warned.
“Can I see her?” Marcus begged.
“Only for five minutes, Marcus; she needs absolute sensory deprivation and uninterrupted rest to prevent further contractions,” Dr. Vance-Kowalski instructed.
Marcus nodded eagerly, disappearing through the heavy swinging doors to be at his wife’s bedside.
Detective Miller turned to Maya, who was still shivering in her soaked clothes in the empty corridor.
“Miss Lin, I have a squad car downstairs waiting to transport you to the precinct for your official video statement,” Miller said.
“I also need you to review the rooftop surveillance footage we pulled before their corporate team could wipe the penthouse servers,” Miller added.
“I’m ready,” Maya replied, pulling her damp jacket tighter around her shoulders.
Twenty minutes later, Maya sat across from Detective Miller in a windowless interrogation room at the First Precinct.
A hot paper cup of black coffee sat between them, the steam warming her cold fingers.
On the split-screen monitor mounted against the wall, a second interrogation room was clearly visible through a closed-circuit feed.
Inside that room sat Victoria Vance.
The sister-in-law was still wearing her ruined crimson gown, its hem torn and smeared with gray dirt and red punch stains.
Her expensive blonde hair was tangled in greasy knots around her face, her heavy makeup smeared into dark, grotesque rings beneath her bloodshot eyes.
Sitting beside her was an elite criminal defense attorney who looked visibly uncomfortable beside his unhinged client.
“Watch her body language,” Detective Miller murmured, turning up the audio feed on the console.
On the screen, a female investigator, Detective Sarah Jenkins, placed a manila folder onto the metal table in front of Victoria.
“Miss Vance, we have retrieved the high-definition security footage from the terrace of the penthouse,” Jenkins stated calmly.
Victoria didn’t look at the folder; she crossed her bare, bruised arms over her chest and sneered.
“My brother pushed me into that table, Detective,” Victoria said, her voice high and nasal with trembling rage.
“He assaulted me! He should be in these handcuffs, not me!” she shrieked, slamming her handcuffed wrists onto the metal table.
“The camera shows you walking directly behind Clara Vance’s wheelchair at nineteen forty-four,” Jenkins continued, unfazed by the outburst.
“It shows you looking over your left shoulder to confirm the security guards had stepped into the banquet pantry,” Jenkins noted.
“It shows both of your hands gripping the wheelchair push-bars,” Jenkins said, flipping open the folder to reveal eight glossy still photographs.
“And at nineteen forty-five and twelve seconds, it clearly captures you lunging forward with sufficient kinetic force to launch the chair over the coping,” Jenkins said.
Victoria’s eyes darted wildly across the photographs, her breath coming in rapid, shallow gasps.
“The wheels caught on the stone coping! It was an uneven tile!” Victoria lied, her voice rising in pitch.
“I tried to grab her dress to pull her back, but the fabric was too slippery!” she claimed, staring directly into the camera lens with manic intensity.
In the observation room, Maya leaned forward, pointing a finger at the monitor.
“Look at her hands in photo number four, Detective Miller,” Maya said sharply.
Miller leaned in, zooming the image on his auxiliary tablet.
Photo number four showed Victoria’s hands at the exact moment the wheelchair tipped over the concrete ledge.
Her fingers were not reaching out to catch the handles or grab Clara’s dress.
Her palms were wide open, fingers spread flat, pushing forward with maximum extension.
“That is a textbook execution push,” Miller growled into his radio.
“Jenkins, look at her personal phone data,” Miller instructed through the earpiece.
Inside the interrogation room, Detective Jenkins pulled a clear plastic evidence bag containing Victoria’s rose-gold smartphone from her briefcase.
“Forty-eight hours ago, Miss Vance, you downloaded an encrypted messaging application called GhostProtocol,” Jenkins said.
Victoria froze, all color instantly draining from her lips.
“Our cyber-crimes unit managed to mirror the device before the remote self-destruct sequence could wipe the cache,” Jenkins revealed.
“At six-fifteen this evening, you received a message from an unlisted European account registered under the shell corporation 'Helios Holdings Zurich',” Jenkins continued.
Jenkins pushed a printed transcript across the table.
The message on the paper was short, clinical, and horrifyingly unambiguous.
'Market opens at eight a.m. Zurich time. The audit team arrives at nine. If the bloodline clause is active, we are completely insolvent. The wheelchair must enter the deep end before the fireworks display. Make it appear as a medical fainting episode.'
Victoria stared at the text transcript as if it were a venomous snake coiled on the metal tabletop.
“My father… my father promised me thirty percent of the offshore trust,” Victoria whimpered, her arrogant defiance suddenly crumbling into hysterical panic.
“He said Marcus would never suspect anything because Clara was already suffering from gestational vertigo!” she blurted out.
Her attorney immediately threw his hands over her mouth, his eyes bulging in professional terror.
“Victoria, stop talking right now! I am asserting her Fifth Amendment privilege!” the lawyer screamed at Detective Jenkins.
Victoria violently shoved her attorney’s hands away, tears streaming through her smeared mascara.
“He abandoned me!” Victoria screamed, her voice cracking into shrill hysteria.
“He’s leaving me here to take the fall while he flies back to Switzerland with the offshore accounts!” she wailed.
“Arthur Vance told me that if Clara survived, I would be disowned and left with nothing! He made me do it!” Victoria shrieked, clawing at her own face with her handcuffed fingers.
In the observation room, Detective Miller closed his eyes and let out a long, heavy breath of satisfaction.
“Full premeditated confession on audio and video, corroborated by digital forensic evidence,” Miller said, looking at Maya with profound respect.
“She just handed us Arthur Vance on a silver platter for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder,” Miller stated.
Before Maya could reply, Miller’s tactical radio crackled with an urgent, static-drenched dispatch from Saint Jude’s Hospital.
“Central to Unit Five, we have a Code Red security breach on the eighth-floor ICU at Saint Jude’s!”
The dispatcher’s voice was breathless with panic.
“Unidentified private security personnel attempting forced entry into the surgical wing! Shots reported fired in the hospital sub-basement!”
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Maya leaped to her feet, her chair scraping violently across the linoleum.
“Marcus and Clara,” Maya whispered, cold dread seizing her heart.
