Chapter 7 - The Interrogation Room
The interrogation room at the downtown precinct smelled of stale black coffee, cheap disinfectant, and decades of human despair. The walls were painted a depressing institutional gray, scarred by scuff marks and the faint impressions where desperate hands had slammed against the drywall over the years. A massive two-way mirror occupied the entire length of the far wall, reflecting the harsh fluorescent glare of the overhead panel.
David sat at the center of the heavy metal table, his hands cuffed to a steel loop bolted directly into the center wood grain. He had long since abandoned his green button-down shirt; it was crumpled now, stained with sweat and grease from the squad car. His dark hair stood up in tufts where he had frantically pulled at it during the twenty-minute drive downtown.
Across the metal table sat Detective Harris, a weathered man in his late fifties with a permanent scowl etched into his face and a half-empty paper cup of lukewarm coffee clutched in his thick fingers.
"Let's go over it one more time, David," Harris said, his voice level, completely devoid of emotion or theatrical anger. He flipped open a manila folder, revealing page after page of photocopied bank statements, corporate filings, and cashier's checks bearing forged signatures. "According to these records, over the past six years, you systematically funneled nearly eight hundred thousand dollars in ghost-consulting fees through three distinct shell corporations registered right here in the township."
David stared down at his cuffed hands, his lips moving silently without producing a single coherent sound. His mind was completely blank, stripped of all the clever accounting jargon, the rehearsed corporate euphemisms, and the polished suburban confidence that had insulated him from reality for twenty years.
"And the best part?" Detective Harris leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. "The primary asset holding company for all three of these shell corporations—the legal entity holding the deeds to your suburban home, your luxury sedan, and your offshore investment portfolios—is registered under a single residential address."
Harris tapped his finger against the top document in the folder.
"44 Rice Street. Owned outright by one Margaret Vance."
David’s head snapped up, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "She didn't know," he gasped, his voice raspy and cracked. "My mother... she didn't have anything to do with the shell companies. She signed the original deed transfer back in 2002 to cover an old debt, but she didn't know about the new accounts! You can't drag her into this!"
"Oh, she didn't know?" Harris raised a heavy eyebrow, a cynical smile touching the corner of his mouth. "That's funny, David. Because an hour ago, while you were sitting in this very room shitting your pants, your mother's attorney walked into the federal prosecutor's office downtown with a complete, itemized audit trail of every single fraudulent transaction you've made since 2018."
David’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at the detective as if he had spoken in a foreign language. "Her... her attorney? My mother doesn't have an attorney. She lives on a pension and a social security check!"
"She used to," Harris said, tossing a thick legal brief onto the table right in front of the cuffs. "Turns out, forty years ago, before your father walked out and left her with nothing, Margaret Vance worked as a senior legal secretary for the district attorney's office in Cook County. She forgot more about white-collar crime and asset structuring before you learned how to balance a checkbook."
The door behind Detective Harris clicked open, and a junior officer leaned in, whispering something urgently into the detective's ear. Harris nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving David’s terrified face.
"Well, Mr. Vance," Harris said, standing up and smoothing down his jacket. "It appears your Thanksgiving dinner is officially over. Your wife is downstairs screaming at the front desk because her credit cards have all been frozen under a federal asset seizure warrant. And your children... well, your children made a very interesting phone call from the precinct lobby twenty minutes ago."
David tried to stand, the heavy steel cuffs rattling violently against the table bolt. "What call? Where are Maya and Leo?"
Harris paused at the door, turning back with a cold, unimpressed glare.
May you like
"They went home, David. Back to Rice Street. And they weren't alone. They had a moving truck waiting in the driveway to pick up the rest of your mother's furniture."
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