Chapter 2 - What Lies Upstairs
The arrival of Sheriff Miller and two deputies turned the mourning living room into an official crime scene within minutes.
My mother tried to bar the staircase, weeping loudly about disrespecting the dead, but Sheriff Miller—a stern man who had known our family for two decades—brushed past her without hesitation.
"Alex," Miller said, looking me dead in the eye as I held Lily tightly against my chest. "Show me what your father was pointing at."
I walked over to my father's wheelchair. Dad was breathing heavily, his eyes fixed on the left cushion of his chair. I gently lifted him slightly and reached beneath the vinyl padding. My fingers brushed against a small, hard plastic object.
It was a hidden dashcam memory card—the kind my father used to keep on his motorized scooter before his second stroke.
I handed it directly to Sheriff Miller. "He hid this for a reason."
Aunt Beatrice stepped forward, her face tight and pale. "Sheriff, my brother-in-law suffers from dementia following his vascular stroke. Anything on that card is completely irrelevant. Clara's death was a clear case of suicide by asphyxiation. I performed the preliminary prep at my funeral home myself."
"You performed the prep before the coroner arrived?" Miller asked, his eyes narrowing sharply. "Beatrice, you've been in the mortuary business long enough to know that an unattended death at home requires a mandatory county autopsy."
"It was an act of mercy for my sister's family!" Teresa interjected hysterically, wringing her hands. "We wanted to spare Alex the horror of an autopsy!"
"Take everyone into the kitchen," Sheriff Miller ordered his deputy, his voice dropping an octave. "Alex, come upstairs with me."
Leaving Lily in the safe hands of her maternal grandmother, who had just arrived frantically after receiving my text, I followed Miller and Deputy Hayes up the narrow, creaking wooden stairs to the second floor.
The hallway smelled faintly of lavender bleach—a harsh, unnatural cover-up scent that stung my nose.
When we stepped into the master bedroom, my breath hitched. The bed was stripped down to the bare mattress. The carpet near the nightstand had been scrubbed so hard that the dark beige fibers were damp and frayed.
"Someone tried to clean this room in a hurry," Deputy Hayes noted, kneeling down to shine a tactical flashlight across the floor. "Look here—chemical bleaching agents."
I walked over to Clara's vanity table. Her favorite silver hairbrush was gone. Her jewelry box was lying open, empty. But what caught my attention was the door frame of our adjoining closet.
The wooden latch was splintered outward, as if someone had violently kicked it in from the outside.
"Look at the door frame, Sheriff," I said, my voice cracking with suppressed rage. "Clara didn't lock herself in. Someone kicked this door open to get to her."
Sheriff Miller knelt near the closet baseboard. Using a gloved finger, he pulled a small object out from beneath the trim. It was a torn brass button from a dark blue work jacket—the exact uniform jacket issued to drivers at Vance Logistics, the company where both my brother Derek and I worked.
"Hayes, bag this," Miller commanded. "And call the State Crime Lab. I want a full forensic sweep of this entire floor, including Luminol testing for blood traces."
Downstairs, a loud crashing noise echoed from the kitchen, followed by my brother's terrified scream.
We sprinted down the stairs to find my father standing up from his wheelchair—a physical impossibility according to his doctors—holding a heavy glass pitcher in his left hand, having shattered it across the floor right at Derek's feet.
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Dad couldn't speak words, but the gutteral, roaring sound escaping his throat was pure, unadulterated fury as he pointed his shaking finger directly at my brother's face.
"He... he..." Dad gasped out, straining every muscle in his vocal cords. "...murdered... her!"
