Chapter 5 - Greg’s Interrogation
Down in the precinct holding cells beneath the hospital annex, Greg Carter sat at a stainless steel table with his wrists cuffed to a bolted ring.
He didn't look scared. He looked supremely annoyed, tapping his right index finger against the metal surface in a rhythmic, impatient cadence.
The heavy steel door swung open, and Detective Miller walked in, slamming a thick manila folder onto the table.
"Your house on Route 10 has been searched, Greg," Miller said, pulling out a chair and sitting down directly across from him. "Hazmat teams are currently sweeping the perimeter, and your wife has already signed sworn statements detailing years of domestic intimidation and illegal animal smuggling."
Greg scoffed, leaning back in his chair with an arrogant smirk. "My wife is an exhausted, hysterical woman who doesn't know the first thing about my import-export business. And as for the shed, I have all my state permits filed with the Department of Agriculture. A few broken terrariums in a storm don't constitute a crime, Detective."
"Smuggling venomous arachnids and bio-engineered parasites across state lines without quarantine certification is a federal felony, Greg," Miller replied smoothly. "Add child endangerment, chemical restraint, and physical abuse, and you're looking at a minimum of twenty-five years in a maximum-security penitentiary."
The smirk vanished from Greg’s face. His eyes narrowed, turning cold and calculating.
"You can't prove I touched the kid," Greg spat out. "He tripped in the woods. He fell face-first into a rotting stump. Kids are clumsy. If my stepson managed to get infected by some local bug while playing outside my supervision, that’s an accident, not a crime."
"An accident?" Miller leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. "So your stepson accidentally ended up with a synthetic, lab-grown parasitic vector embedded in his zygomatic arch? Because our pathology team just ran a preliminary genetic marker scan on the tissue sample Dr. Thomas extracted from the boy's face. That organism doesn't exist naturally in the Pacific Northwest, Greg. It’s an undocumented bio-sample originating from a research facility in Southeast Asia—the exact facility listed on the shipping manifests found in your home office."
Greg went completely rigid. The color drained from his face, leaving his skin a sickly, ash-gray tone.
"You... you don't know what you're dealing with," Greg whispered, his voice losing its arrogant edge. "That project... it was supposed to be contained. I was holding it for a buyer. The kid wandered into the shed because I forgot to lock the latch last Tuesday. He knocked over a specimen jar. It wasn't my fault!"
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"You locked a nine-year-old child in an unventilated shed with biohazardous smuggling cargo because you were too lazy to watch him," Miller said, his voice dropping into a lethal register. "And then you brought him to an emergency room demanding a Z-Pak because you were worried the infection would start showing before your shift at the docks started."
Greg opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He slumped forward, his forehead hitting the cold steel table as the reality of his prison sentence finally crashed down around him.
