Chapter 6 - The Digital Evidence
When the police officers marched into the dining room, Julian was already shoving the forged real estate documents back into his leather briefcase, while Elena stood frozen against the sideboard, trembling from head to toe.
“What is the meaning of this? Who let you in here?” Julian demanded, puffing out his chest in a pathetic attempt to intimidate five armed police officers. “I am a licensed real estate consultant, and we are in the middle of a private family transaction! This is an illegal entry!”
Inspector Vance ignored him completely. He walked to the head of the table, his eyes scanning the spilled wine and the guilty, panicked expressions of my wife and her cousin. He turned to me. “Mr. Vance, you mentioned in your report that you possessed visual and audio documentation of the alleged felony abuse and financial fraud?”
“I do,” I said. I pulled my smartphone from my pocket and tapped a few commands into my home automation app. “In fact, let’s make it easy for everyone to see.”
I linked my phone to the sixty-five-inch smart TV mounted on the living room wall, visible directly from the dining room archway. The screen flickered to life, displaying the high-definition security dashboard of my home network.
Elena gasped, taking a step toward me. “Marcus... what is that? What did you do?”
“When you told me Mom was falling downstairs three years ago, Elena, I didn't just buy better lighting,” I said, my voice echoing coldly in the quiet room. “I hardwired a micro-surveillance grid into the automated thermostats. Ten cameras. Ten audio receivers. Powered independently. And streaming directly to a secure server in Dubai.”
I pressed play.
The television screen lit up with footage from Tuesday afternoon. The high-definition video showed Elena standing over my mother’s bed, slapping her viciously across the face before pulling the nylon straps tight around her bleeding wrists. The audio was crystal clear through the surround-sound speakers: “Shut up, you useless old burden. If you complain to Marcus again, I won't feed you for two days.”
May you like
I clicked to the next clip. It showed Julian and Elena at the kitchen counter, laughing as Julian used a light box to trace my mother’s signature onto the quitclaim deed.
Then came the final clip. Elena’s face, looming over my mother in the dark, hissing the words that sealed her doom: “As soon as Marcus signs over the deed, we won’t need to keep you breathing anymore.”
