Chapter 6 - Interrogating the Brother
I instructed Agent Chen to bring Julian into Interrogation Room 3—a small, windowless concrete room at the end of the hall. I ordered that Chloe be kept in a separate holding cell at the opposite end of the building, ensuring they had zero opportunity to coordinate their stories or align their defense.
When I walked into the interrogation room, Julian was sitting at the stainless-steel table, his head buried in his hands. He looked up as the heavy door clicked shut, his face streaked with tears of self-pity and cowardice.
"Vera, please," Julian choked out, reaching his hands across the table toward me. "You have to believe me! I didn't know Chloe was going to hit her! It all happened so fast! She just snapped when Mom said she was going to call the bank!"
I didn't sit down. I stood at the head of the table, looking down at the brother I had grown up with, feeling nothing but profound, analytical disgust. "Do not lie to me, Julian. You didn't just watch it happen. You stood by the front door and locked the deadbolt so she couldn't run out into the driveway when she screamed for help."
Julian froze, his mouth opening and closing silently as the color drained completely from his face. "How... how could you know that?"
"Because I know how Chloe operates, and I know your spine is made of wet paper," I said, leaning my palms against the cool steel table. "You let your wife strike our sixty-eight-year-old mother across the chest with a solid iron bar. And when she fell to the floor bleeding, instead of calling 911 for an ambulance, you called Lieutenant Marcus Vance on his personal cell phone."
Julian began to tremble violently, his breathing turning ragged and shallow. "Chloe told me that if we called the real police, we would go to prison for wire fraud! She said her father knew Vance, that Vance was on their payroll for zoning clearances! She said Vance would fix it if we gave him five thousand dollars in cash from the home safe!"
"So you paid a dirty cop to arrest our bleeding mother and frame her as a mentally unstable aggressor," I stated, my voice devoid of any familial warmth. "You traded our mother’s life and dignity for five thousand dollars and a cover-up."
May you like
"I was terrified, Vera!" Julian sobbed, collapsing forward onto the table. "Chloe said if I didn't back up her story, she would tell the police that I was the one who hit her! She said no one would believe a son over a crying daughter-in-law!"
"You made your choice, Julian," I said, turning my back on him and reaching for the door handle. "Now you get to live with the federal sentencing guidelines that accompany it."
