Chapter 4 - The Interrogation Room
At the First District precinct downtown, the air smelled of stale coffee, burnt ozone from laser printers, and industrial floor wax. Through the two-way mirror of Interrogation Room B, Captain Reynolds and Assistant District Attorney Sarah Lin stood watching Martha Vance.
Martha sat with impeccable posture, her designer tweed jacket spotless, her silver-streaked hair still pinned in an elegant French twist. Only the heavy steel handcuffs linking her delicate wrists to the ring bolted in the center of the steel table betrayed her status as a felon.
"I demand my attorney," Martha said for the fourteenth time, her voice dripping with aristocratically chilled disdain. "Arthur has already retained Mr. Sterling. You have exceeded your legal authority by detaining me in this cesspool for six hours."
The door swung open, and Detective Miller walked in, carrying a thick binder and a steaming paper cup. He sat down opposite her, placing the binder flat between them.
"Your attorney, Mr. Sterling, withdrew his representation forty minutes ago, Mrs. Vance," Miller said calmly, taking a sip from the cup. "It seems your husband tried to pay his retainer with a cashier's check drawn from an escrow account that was frozen by federal regulators at two o'clock this afternoon."
Martha’s mouth twitched, a micro-expression of pure venom flitting across her porcelain features before smoothing back into icy indifference. "A temporary banking clerical error. Arthur will sort it out. And you will find yourself walking a beat in Dorchester by Tuesday morning, Detective."
"Let's talk about the glass balcony at 44 Commonwealth Avenue," Miller said, ignoring her threat completely. "We have the caterer's prep chef, a nineteen-year-old college student named Lucas. He was setting up the fruit platters near the pantry corridor right beneath the mezzanine. He had his phone propped up on the service cart, recording a time-lapse video of the fruit arrangements for his culinary portfolio."
Miller flipped the binder open, revealing eight sequential stills extracted from the video file.
In the first frame, Elizabeth was visible at the railing, her back turned, holding her purse. In the second frame, Martha’s silhouette approached from behind, both arms outstretched, fingers curled like talons. In the third, Martha’s hands made violent, deliberate impact between Elizabeth’s shoulder blades. The subsequent frames captured Elizabeth’s body tipping backward over the brass rail, tumbling into empty air, while Martha stood at the precipice, watching her daughter plummet without a single gesture of horror, her face completely composed.
Martha stared at the photographs. The color slowly drained from her rouged cheeks, leaving behind an ashen, sickly gray.
"She... she was dizzy," Martha stammered, her voice losing its aristocratic veneer, cracking at the edges. "Elizabeth was hysterical. She drank too much champagne. She was raving about her lost baby, making a vulgar scene in front of our guests. I went to comfort her. I reached out to steady her, and she lost her footing."
"You pushed her with an estimated force of seventy pounds of kinetic pressure, Mrs. Vance," Miller replied. "The state reconstruction unit analyzed the arc of her fall. If you were reaching to grab her, your fingers would have clamped on her clothing. Instead, your palms were flat, your elbows locked. You launched her."
"You don't understand what she was doing to this family!" Martha suddenly shrieked, the veneer shattering completely into feral rage. She slammed her cuffed hands onto the steel table, the metal ringing violently against the bolts. "She was going to destroy everything! She never cared about our legacy! She married that pathetic public defender, brought shame to our circle, and then she dared to get pregnant first—stealing what belonged to Chloe! Chloe was the dutiful daughter! Chloe stayed! Chloe obeyed!"
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"So you poisoned Elizabeth's child to give Chloe the crown," Miller said softly, leaning forward.
Martha glared at him, her eyes wide, wild, and entirely devoid of human empathy. "A cluster of cells is not a child, Detective. But an empire? An empire is forever."
