Chapter 6 - The Interrogation and the Coward's Collapse
In the sterile, fluorescent-lit interrogation room at the TBI regional headquarters in Franklin, Daniel Vance looked like a completely different man.
The arrogant, bourbon-sipping bully who had smirked at me across the kitchen counter twelve hours earlier was gone. In his place sat a sweaty, shaking middle-aged man in a wrinkled orange jumpsuit, staring blankly at the metal table between us.
I sat across from him, flanked by Marcus Thorne and a court stenographer. I didn’t wear my investigator badge today; I wore my sister’s face in my mind—the swollen bruises, the taped nose, the terrified eyes.
“Look at the monitor, Daniel,” I instructed quietly, tapping a remote control on the table.
The wall-mounted screen flickered to life, playing the high-definition security and audio files recovered from his home office server—files that documented not only the financial theft from Maya’s trust, but also months of recorded voice memos where Daniel openly mocked Maya’s disability, referred to her as a “useless burden,” and discussed ways to intimidate her into silence if she ever complained.
Daniel swallowed hard, his throat dry. “Where... where did you get those?”
“Your cloud storage backup,” I said calmly. “You forgot to disable automatic syncing when you bought your new tablet last year. Every hateful thing you ever said, every dollar you stole, and every threat you made against my sister has been permanently cataloged and authenticated.”
“I was stressed!” Daniel blurted out, his voice cracking with desperate self-pity. “You don’t know what it’s like living with someone like that! Always needing help, always slowing things down! It was too much!”
“Then you should have walked away,” I replied, my voice dropping an octave, carrying the weight of absolute steel. “You didn’t have to stay. But you chose to stay, you chose to isolate her, you chose to steal her money, and you chose to break her face because she asked for a glass of water while you were watching television.”
“Please, Claire... talk to the District Attorney,” Daniel begged, leaning forward across the table, tears finally spilling over his lower eyelids. “Drop the felony assault charges. We can settle this privately—I’ll sign over the car, I’ll pay back the trust fund—”
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“There is nothing to settle,” Marcus Thorne interrupted coldly, standing up from his chair. “Your wife is singing a very different tune down in interrogation room B, Mr. Vance. She’s already told our investigators that you masterminded the financial embezzlement and coerced her into silence. You’re looking at ten to fifteen years in a state penitentiary with no probation eligibility.”
Daniel buried his face in his cuffed hands, letting out a long, ragged sob of absolute defeat. The coward had finally met his reckoning.
