Chapter 14 - The Verdict and Retribution
The jury deliberation took less time than it took for Julian, Elena, and Detective Thorne to walk across the street to a diner and order three cups of black coffee.
Forty-five minutes after the bailiff led the twelve men and women into the deliberation room, the buzzer sounded on the courtroom door, signaling that a unanimous verdict had been reached on all eighteen felony counts.
When the court clerk stood up to read the verdict sheets, her voice was loud, clear, and devoid of any procedural monotony:
“On Count One: First-Degree Premeditated Murder of Sarah Vance... we find the defendant, Valerie Sterling... Guilty.” “On Count Two: Attempted Premeditated Murder of Chloe Vance... we find the defendant... Guilty.” “On Count Three: Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Identity Theft... we find the defendant... Guilty.” “On Count Four: Child Endangerment with Intent to Cause Great Bodily Injury... we find the defendant... Guilty.”
As the word Guilty echoed through the courtroom for the eighteenth consecutive time, Valerie Sterling didn’t weep. She didn’t collapse onto the defense table.
She stood up so violently her wooden chair toppled backward onto the carpet, her hands straining against the steel cuffs around her wrists as she lunged toward the prosecution table, her eyes fixed entirely on eleven-year-old Chloe Vance sitting safely between her father and Elena.
“YOU RUINED MY LIFE!” Valerie screamed, her voice cracking into a guttural, animalistic shriek that made the court reporter flinch away from her stenograph machine. “That money was mine! I earned every single cent of that estate! I survived Sarah! I survived you! You little wretch! I should have put the Warfarin in your breakfast cereal the day I moved in!”
Before she could take a second step toward the prosecution table, four county sheriff’s deputies swarmed over her, grabbing her by her arms, her collar, and the waist of her orange jumpsuit, slamming her face-down onto the defense table with enough force to crack the wood.
Judge Harrison—the same judge who had signed Arthur’s temporary restraining order six months ago without reading the toxicology reports—banged his gavel against the sounding block with enough force to split the mallet.
“Remove the defendant from this courtroom immediately!” the judge roared, his face crimson with rage as he pointed his gavel toward the holding cell doors. “And let the record reflect that this court finds the defendant’s conduct throughout this trial to be the most heinous, calculated, and sociopathically remorse-free exhibition of violence against a child and a spouse that I have witnessed in my thirty years on the bench!”
As the deputies dragged the screaming, cursing woman backward out of the courtroom through the heavy steel holding doors, the judge didn’t wait for a formal sentencing hearing date. He looked down at his docket, signed his name across the bottom of the eighteen guilty verdicts with a sharp, decisive stroke of his fountain pen, and looked directly at the gallery.
“Valerie Sterling is hereby sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, to be served at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla,” Judge Harrison declared, his voice ringing with absolute, irreversible finality. “She is stripped of all administrative rights, title, and interest in the Vance family estate, and her assets are hereby frozen and transferred to the Sarah Vance Memorial Victim’s Restitution Fund. Court is adjourned.”
The bang of the gavel sounded like a gunshot ending a two-year war.
In the gallery, fifty reporters rushed for the exits to file their breaking news alerts, while Julian sat in his chair at the prosecution table, his arms wrapped tightly around his daughter’s shoulders as she buried her face in his coat, not weeping with fear, but crying the soft, cleansing tears of a child who knew the darkness would never come back to her bedroom again.
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“We did it, Daddy,” Chloe whispered against his chest, her small hands holding onto his lapels with quiet strength. “We didn’t let her win.”
“No, baby,” Julian said, kissing the top of her dark hair as he looked across the table at Elena, who was wiping tears of relief from her own eyes with a trembling smile. “She’s gone forever. And we’re going home.”
