Chapter 7 - The Confrontation at the Station
The interrogation wing of the County Sheriff’s Department was a sterile, windowless labyrinth of gray walls, concrete floors, and heavy steel doors.
Inside Interrogation Room B, Christopher sat at a metal table, wearing an orange orange county jumpsuit. His hair was messy, his face pale, dark circles carved deep beneath his bloodshot eyes. Across the two-way mirror in the observation room stood Linda, flanked by Marcus Vance and Prosecutor Sarah Jenkins.
On the other side of the hallway, in Interrogation Room C, Savannah sat weeping hysterically, her designer clothes replaced by a gray detention sweat-suit, screaming at her court-appointed public defender that her father had ruined her life.
Prosecutor Jenkins hit the intercom button, connecting the audio between the two rooms so Christopher could hear his daughter's voice.
"It was all my dad's idea!" Savannah’s recorded voice shrieked through the speaker inside Christopher's room. "He told us Linda was losing her mind! He told us Linda was going to be put in a home and that the estate belonged to us! I didn't forge anything! Derek and my dad did everything!"
Christopher winced as if struck, burying his face in his cuffed hands, letting out a ragged, pathetic sob.
Prosecutor Jenkins stepped into Interrogation Room B, accompanied by Detective Miller. She laid three thick folders flat on the metal table in front of Christopher.
"Mr. Miller," Prosecutor Jenkins said coldly. "Your daughter has officially signed a state witness proffer. She is currently testifying that you instructed her to move into the house, occupy the rooms, and treat your wife with extreme hostility to force Mrs. Miller into leaving the property voluntarily."
"She's lying!" Christopher wept, looking up through bloodshot eyes. "I did it for her! Everything I did was to clear Derek’s debt so Savannah wouldn't be left broke!"
"And the Scopolamine in your wife's tea?" Detective Miller asked, leaning down until his face was inches from Christopher’s. "Did you do that for Savannah too?"
Christopher’s jaw locked. He swallowed hard, his eyes darting frantically toward the corner of the room. "I... I don't know what you're talking about. It was just a sleeping aid... she was stressed..."
"It is a controlled chemical substance administered without consent over eight months," Prosecutor Jenkins stated flatly. "That carries a mandatory minimum sentence of twenty years in state prison on the poison charge alone, consecutive to the grand larceny and forgery counts."
In the observation room behind the two-way glass, Linda watched the man she had loved for eighteen years collapse into a weeping, pathetic heap on the concrete floor, begging for a plea deal, offering to testify against Derek, offering to surrender everything he owned just to avoid dying in a prison cell.
Marcus Vance looked at Linda. "Do you want to step inside, Linda? The prosecutor can give you five minutes."
Linda looked at Christopher through the glass for a long, quiet moment.
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"No," Linda said softly, her voice steady and peaceful. "He spent eighteen years pretending to be a man he wasn't. I have nothing left to say to a ghost."
She turned her back on the glass, pulled her coat around her shoulders, and walked out of the police station into the crisp, clean afternoon air.
