Chapter 6 - The Badge in the Kitchen
The cold steel of Detective Jenkins’s service pistol was uncomfortably close to David’s sternum. The moonlight caught the silver gleam of her badge clipped securely to her belt, casting an unflattering, stark illumination across her weathered, forty-something face. Her short dark hair was damp from the midnight drizzle outside, and her eyes were hard, fixed with the grim determination of an officer who had just stumbled onto a crime scene she never wanted to see.
"Drop the poker, Miller," Jenkins commanded, her voice terrifyingly steady. "Or Vance, or whatever your real name is tonight. Drop it right now, or I will put a round through your shoulder."
David slowly lowered the brass fireplace poker, letting it clatter loudly against the linoleum tiles. His chest heaved as he raised his hands slowly to shoulder height. From the doorway behind him, Marcus watched the standoff with cool detachment, keeping his own concealed firearm tucked safely out of the detective's line of sight inside his trench coat pocket.
"Detective Jenkins," David managed to say, his voice strained. "What are you doing breaking into my house in the middle of the night? Do you have any idea how terrified my wife and children are?"
"Your wife?" Jenkins let out a harsh, bitter laugh. She glanced past David toward the darkened dining room where Elena stood trembling with Lily in her arms, while Leo peered cautiously from behind her skirt. "Yeah, I spoke to your wife about twenty minutes ago, David. Or rather, she called the precinct after she found the digital archive of the Greenfield crash on your laptop and your spare phone."
David winced. He had underestimated Elena’s resourcefulness. While he had been out at the hardware store earlier that evening, she must have accessed his locked cloud storage.
"Detective, please," Elena pleaded, stepping forward into the kitchen light, her face stained with tears. "He told me he was an engineer. He told me our life was real. But this man... this man who just walked through our front door claims David stole his life. Is any of this true?"
Jenkins kept her gun trained on David, but her eyes softened slightly as she looked at Elena. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Miller. Or Mrs. Vance, depending on how the court sorts this out. Most of it is true. Three years ago, David—whose real name is actually Thomas Gable—was an accountant for a corrupt real estate conglomerate in Albany. When the feds started rounding up his bosses for embezzlement, Thomas decided to vanish. He stole Marcus Vance’s identity, staged a fiery car wreck using a corpse from the county morgue, and skipped town with two hundred grand in embezzled cash."
Marcus stepped out of the shadows, clapping his hands slowly in mock applause. "Brilliant recap, Detective. You've been doing your homework. But you missed one tiny, insignificant detail."
Jenkins snapped her weapon toward Marcus, her eyes narrowing. "And who the hell are you? Hands where I can see them!"
"Relax, officer," Marcus said smoothly, raising his empty hands slowly while keeping his trench coat open. "I'm the guy whose life he stole. And as it turns out, I'm also the only person who knows where the remaining one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of that embezzled money is hidden."
David stared at Marcus in sheer disbelief. "You spent all that money years ago on your gambling debts in Atlantic City! That's why I had to run in the first place—to keep you from dragging me down with you!"
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"That's where you're wrong, Tommy," Marcus smiled, his teeth flashing in the moonlight. "I left a little nest egg behind. And someone else has already found it."
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