Chapter 16 - The Mirror of Deception
The interrogation room was cold,
and the air felt heavy with the scent of cheap coffee and old paper.
Elena Vance sat under the harsh,
unforgiving glare of the overhead lights,
her hands clasped so tightly together that her knuckles were the color of bone.
She looked up as the door opened,
and her eyes immediately filled with a burning,
visceral hatred when she saw Charles Fletcher enter behind Detective Morales.
“Why is he here?”
she hissed,
her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and fury.
“He’s the murderer!
He’s the reason my sister is a memory and not a person!”
Charles didn't look away.
He carried the black ledger like it was a holy relic,
or perhaps a cursed one.
He sat down across from her,
the table between them feeling like a vast,
unbridgeable canyon.
“Elena,”
he said,
his voice low and steady,
the voice of a man who had spent his life delivering bad news with precision.
“I need you to look at something.
I need you to look at the truth,
not the version Warren fed you while he was holding you in his bed.”
“Don't you dare speak his name!”
she screamed,
lunging forward until the handcuffs snapped against the metal bar of the table.
“He loved me!
He saved me from the poverty your hospital left me in!”
Detective Morales placed a hand on the table,
a silent command for silence.
“Elena,
just listen.
If we’re wrong,
the evidence will show it.
But if Warren was lying,
you’re the one who has been helping your sister’s killer.”
Charles opened the ledger to the page dated June 14,
1994.
The handwriting was unmistakably Warren’s,
neat and clinical,
recording the symptoms of a patient who wasn't listed in any official pharmacy record.
“Subject S,”
Charles read aloud,
the words feeling like shards of glass in his mouth.
“Age 18.
Dosage: 20mg of experimental sedative compound B-7.
Observations: Subject exhibits extreme disorientation,
loss of motor control,
and delayed respiratory response.”
Elena’s face went pale,
the anger draining out of her like water from a cracked vase.
“S?”
she whispered.
“Sarah,”
Charles said,
his eyes damp.
“He didn't just push her,
Elena.
He used her.
He gave her a drink at that party,
didn't he?
He was the one who always made the punch.”
Elena’s mind raced back to the stories her parents had told her,
to the tiny details she had ignored because she wanted to believe in Warren’s salvation.
“He told me...
he told me you gave it to her,”
she sobbed,
her head dropping to the table.
“He said you were trying to see how much she could take.”
“Look at the next entry,”
Morales urged,
turning the page.
“‘Subject S eliminated.
Variable: Water immersion.
Result: Success.
Chemical trace undetectable in standard autopsy.’”
The silence that followed was absolute.
It was the sound of a world shattering.
Elena began to wail,
a high,
thin sound that echoed through the police station.
She had been the lover of the man who had murdered her sister.
She had tried to kill Lillian,
the only other person who had truly suffered under Warren’s thumb.
“He’s a monster,”
she gasped between sobs.
“He’s a monster,
and I’m a monster too.”
“No,”
Charles said,
reaching across the table to touch her hand,
though he hesitated.
“You were a victim of a master chemist.
He knew how to alter your reality just as easily as he altered his formulas.”
Elena looked up at him,
her eyes searching his face for a sign of the killer she had been promised.
She found only a tired,
broken man who had been carrying a debt that wasn't his to pay.
“There’s more,”
she whispered,
her voice barely audible.
“The pharmacy.
The second location in St. Paul.
There’s a safe in the wall behind the refrigerator.
He kept the ‘leftovers’ there.”
“Leftovers?”
Morales asked.
“The samples,”
Elena said.
“The things he didn't want the inspectors to find.
The things he was going to use on you,
Charles,
if the insurance plan failed.”
Charles felt a chill run down his spine.
Even in death,
May you like
Warren was a threat.
The game wasn't over until every vial was accounted for.
