Chapter 7 - The Interrogation Room
The Cook County Sheriff’s Department interrogation building was a cold, windowless concrete structure that smelled of old floor wax and stale coffee.
I walked down the long, linoleum-tiled hallway alongside Detective Miller, a seasoned lead investigator with tired eyes and a heavy badge pinned to his leather jacket.
“She’s been demanding to speak to her attorney every ten minutes,” Detective Miller said as we stopped outside Observation Room 4. “And she’s been insisting that this is all a 'family misunderstanding' that her son will clear up the moment he arrives.”
I peered through the one-way glass mirror into the small interrogation room.
Sitting at a cold metal table was Beatrice Sterling.
The glamorous burgundy silk dress she had worn at the Drake Hotel was rumpled and stained. Her elaborate hairstyle had fallen apart, strands of grey-painted hair hanging loosely around her pale, unpowdered face. The multi-million-dollar diamond-and-emerald necklace was gone, replaced by a cheap plastic property bag sitting on the corner of the table.
She looked small, old, and utterly stripped of her socialite grandeur.
“Give me ten minutes with her, Detective,” I said softly.
Detective Miller nodded, unlocking the heavy door and letting me step inside before closing it securely behind me.
The heavy steel lock clicked shut.
Beatrice snapped her head up. When she saw me standing there in my tailored wool coat, a sudden, desperate flash of hope lit up her eyes. She scrambled out of her metal chair, her hands reaching toward me across the table.
“Richard! Thank God you’re here!” she cried out, her voice raspy and desperate. “Tell these terrible people to release me immediately! They locked me in a dirty holding cell with common criminals! It’s an outrage!”
I didn't answer. I pulled out the metal chair across from her, sat down slowly, and folded my hands on the table.
My mother blinked, her frantic smile faltering when she saw the complete, icy absence of emotion in my eyes.
“Richard?” she whispered, taking a step back. “Darling… you’re going to drop these ridiculous charges, aren't you? You know I only did what was necessary for the family name! Elena was trash! She was dragging down our social standing! I had to protect our legacy!”
“Legacy?” I echoed, my voice chillingly soft. “You locked an eight-year-old girl in a lawnmower shed with a bucket over her head, Mom. Is that the Sterling legacy?”
“I didn't lock her in there every night!” Beatrice protested defensively, waving her hands wildly. “Only when she was disruptive! Only when she kept asking for her mother! She was unruly, Richard! She needed discipline!”
“She was hungry,” I corrected her, every word dropping like a lead weight. “She was hungry because you were stealing ten thousand dollars a month to pay for Victoria’s bankruptcy and your country club dues.”
Beatrice set her jaw, her aristocratic arrogance flaring up one last time like a dying flame.
“Victoria is your sister!” she hissed, leaning over the table. “She has a reputation to uphold! She belongs in high society! That little girl is half-Morales—she doesn't need luxury! She’s tough! She survived, didn't she?”
I stared at the woman who had raised me, feeling a profound, terrifying pity for the utter void where her soul should have been.
“She survived despite you,” I said flatly. “And now, you are going to pay for every single second she suffered.”
I pulled a crisp set of legal papers from my coat pocket and slid them across the cold metal table toward her.
“What is this?” Beatrice asked, her hands trembling as she looked down at the top page.
“That is a complete asset forfeiture agreement,” I explained. “You and Victoria are surrendering all claims to the Sterling Estate, the Lake Forest house, and all remaining family trust accounts. In exchange, I won't press secondary federal banking fraud charges that would guarantee you both spend twenty years in a maximum-security prison.”
Beatrice gasped, staring at the document in sheer horror. “You… you are stripping me of everything? My house? My money? My standing?”
“You stripped my daughter of her mother, her dignity, and her food,” I told her, standing up from the chair. “You’re lucky I’m leaving you with a public defender.”
“Richard! Please!” Beatrice shrieked, dropping to her knees on the cold concrete floor, clutching at the hem of my trousers. “I’m your mother! You can't leave me here! What will people say?! What will the newspapers write?!”
I pulled my leg away from her grip, looking down at her one last time.
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“They’ll write the truth, Mom,” I said coldly. “That the great Beatrice Sterling ended up exactly where she belongs.”
I turned, knocked on the heavy steel door, and walked out, leaving my mother’s desperate, hysterical screams echoing off the cold concrete walls behind me.
