Chapter 18 - The Interrogation
Three days after the rescue in the abandoned silver mine, I sat in the observation room of the FBI’s high-security federal detention center in downtown Denver.
My hands were wrapped in warm bandages where the freezing mountain air and the iron hammer had blistered my skin, but my mind was completely clear.
Through the thick, soundproof one-way glass, I watched Gregory Alan Miller sitting at a stainless steel interrogation table, cuffed to the floor loop.
His right arm was bound in a heavy medical sling from the shoulder fracture I had given him, and his face looked old, haggard, and defeated.
Sitting across the metal table from him were Special Agent Harrison and Agent Chen, carrying three massive cardboard binders filled with forensic evidence.
“Let’s talk about Portland, Oregon, in the summer of 2001, Gregory,” Agent Harrison said, opening the first binder and placing a photograph on the metal table.
It was a school portrait of seven-year-old Chloe Monroe, smiling brightly with two missing front teeth and a red ribbon in her blonde hair.
“We recovered your notebook from the ceiling of the Jenkins residence in Denver, and we executed a search warrant on your storage unit in Cheyenne yesterday.”
Agent Chen pulled a small, clear evidence bag from her briefcase and dropped it onto the metal table directly in front of Miller’s bloodshot eyes.
Inside the bag was a small, faded plastic red ribbon—the exact same ribbon Chloe had been wearing on the day she vanished from the fairgrounds.
Miller stared down at the ribbon, his chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths as his fifteen-year wall of silence began to crumble.
“We found the GPS coordinates written on the back cover of your 2001 work diary, Gregory,” Agent Harrison said, his voice hard as steel.
“The forensic excavation team is currently digging at an abandoned timber site twenty miles east of Portland right now; they already found her boots.”
“You can save yourself from the federal death penalty today if you give us the exact burial locations for the other five girls on this list.”
Miller slowly lifted his head, bypassing the two federal agents to look directly at the dark, mirrored glass of the observation window where I was sitting.
He couldn't see me through the specialized one-way glass, but his predatory intuition knew that I was sitting on the other side watching his downfall.
“She broke my wing,” Miller whispered, his voice a raspy, broken rasp of its former menacing growl.
“I saved her life at that bus depot twenty years ago... I built a cage to keep her safe... and she turned around and broke me with a rock.”
“She didn't break you, Miller; she survived you,” Agent Harrison replied coldly, closing the binder with a sharp, definitive snap.
“You are going to spend the rest of your miserable, pathetic life in a subterranean concrete cell at ADX Florence where the sun never shines.”
“You will never see a tree, you will never hear a music box, and you will never look at another photograph of a child again as long as you breathe.”
David reached out and took my bandaged hand in his, squeezing my fingers gently as we watched two federal marshals haul Miller out of the interrogation room.
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As the heavy steel door slammed shut behind the serial killer, locking him away from the civilized world forever, I felt a physical weight lift from my shoulders.
The shadowy figure who had haunted the background of my entire life was finally gone, erased from the frame for good.
