Chapter 7 - The Smear Campaign
By Tuesday, Mark was out on bail, confined to a luxury hotel suite while the trial loomed. And Richard Vance didn't waste a single second launching his offensive.
I was sitting in Sarah's hospital room when my phone exploded with notifications. A prominent local gossip blog and a Facebook community page had just published a "bombshell" anonymous expose.
“Local Executive Falsely Accused by Hysterical Mother-in-Law to Cover Up Wife's Addiction Crisis.”
The article painted Sarah as an unstable, prescription-pill addict who had locked herself in the basement in a paranoid frenzy. It claimed Mark was a devoted husband desperately trying to arrange an intervention, and that I was a bitter, retired cop who framed him to secure a divorce settlement.
"Mom, what is this?" Sarah asked, staring at the article on her iPad, her heart monitor beeping faster. The comments section was a bloodbath. Thousands of people were tearing my daughter apart, calling her a spoiled brat and praising Mark for his patience.
"It's a classic defense strategy," I said, snatching the iPad away and turning it off. "They are poisoning the jury pool. They want the public to think you're crazy so that when we go to trial, reasonable doubt is already planted."
"It's working," she cried. "Even my friends from college are sharing it. They think I made it all up."
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"Let them," I said, my voice hardening into steel. "Mark is playing the PR game because he knows he's losing the evidence game. But he made a fatal mistake, Sarah. He thinks he can out-investigate a woman who spent thirty years putting away monsters far smarter than him."
I pulled out my phone and dialed an old contact. A forensic accountant who owed me his career. It was time to stop playing defense and start destroying Mark’s entire life.
