Chapter 6 - The Interrogation
The interrogation room at the Greenwich Police Department was small, windowless, and smelled of industrial floor cleaner and cold fear. A single fluorescent fixture hummed overhead, casting harsh shadows across the stainless-steel table.
Cole sat on one side of the table, his wrists bound in steel handcuffs. He had stripped off his cashmere coat; his white dress shirt was wrinkled and stained with dried tears.
Across from him sat Detective Miller and a female prosecutor named Andrea Ramos. She had a file three inches thick sitting in front of her, its edges bristling with colorful adhesive tabs.
“Let’s review the timeline, Mr. Sterling,” Ramos said, her voice smooth, rhythmic, and utterly devoid of mercy. “At 8:15 PM, the fatal injury occurs. At 8:30 PM, your mother kicks the victim’s foot while she lies bleeding on the floor. At 8:45 PM, you and Ms. Vance exit the premises, leaving the victim and your daughter behind. At 12:14 AM, your daughter calls you. You tell her, and I quote from the carrier transcript, ‘Tell your mother this is the lowest, most pathetic stunt she has ever pulled.’”
Cole buried his face in his shackled hands, his broad shoulders shaking violently. “I didn't know,” he wept, the words muffled through his fingers. “I swear to God, I thought Mara was faking it. She was always so sensitive about Brooke. I thought she was throwing a tantrum to ruin my birthday party.”
“Your wife’s skull was fractured in two places, Mr. Sterling,” Ramos fired back, slamming a crime scene photograph onto the metal table.
Cole flinched, pulling his hands back. The photograph showed the back of my head, the cracked barrette, the dark halo of blood.
“Look at it!” Ramos commanded, her voice rising with righteous fury. “That is the woman you promised to protect! She lay dying for forty minutes while you drank forty-year-old scotch! And then you left your three-year-old child to watch her mother bleed to death in the dark!”
“I didn't know!” Cole screamed, his voice cracking into a ragged, broken sob. “If I had known... if I had just looked at her... my God, what have I done? What have I done to my baby?”
“What you’ve done,” Detective Miller intervened, leaning over the table, “is make yourself an accessory after the fact to criminally negligent homicide, child endangerment, and failure to provide aid to a person in fatal distress. But your girlfriend? Ms. Vance is looking at Manslaughter in the First Degree.”
In the adjacent interrogation room, separated by a soundproof two-way mirror, Brooke Vance was experiencing a complete psychological breakdown.
Her high-priced defense attorney, hired an hour ago by her wealthy father, was whispering frantically into her ear, but Brooke was no longer listening. She was staring at the video monitor mounted on the wall.
Detective Miller entered the room a moment later, holding a tablet computer.
He didn't sit down. He set the tablet on the table and pressed play.
The screen illuminated with crystal-clear, high-definition footage captured by the dining room’s hidden nanny cam—a camera I had installed six months earlier when I first suspected Cole was bringing Brooke into our home while I was out.
The video played with excruciating clarity.
The room saw me standing with Maisie on my hip, smiling softly at a guest.
They saw Brooke approach from behind, her eyes locking onto the chair spindles.
They saw the wicked, spiteful smirk curling the corners of Brooke’s lips as she reached out with both hands, bracing her feet, and deliberately yanked the chair backward with immense, violent force.
They saw me drop like a stone.
They saw my body twist mid-air to protect Maisie.
They heard the sickening, explosive CRACK of my skull against the oak planks.
And then, most damning of all, the microphone picked up Brooke’s clear, mocking voice: “Well, that was graceful. I think she needs a little practice sitting down.”
Brooke’s attorney closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew it was over. No jury in the state of Connecticut, or anywhere on planet Earth, would watch that footage and see an accident. They would see a cruel, petty, vicious woman whose malicious practical joke had directly snuffed out a human life.
“The State of Connecticut is filing formal charges,” Detective Miller said, switching off the tablet. “Manslaughter in the First Degree with extreme indifference to human life. Bail is set at five million dollars, cash only. Hand over your passport, Ms. Vance.”
Brooke began to hyperventilate. Her manicured hands clawed at her own throat, tearing off her pearl necklace, the beads scattering across the linoleum floor like hail.
“It was Cole!” she shrieked, pointing wildly at the two-way mirror. “Cole hated her! Cole wanted her gone! He told me he wished she would disappear so we could have the money and the house! He made me hate her! He’s the one who should go to prison!”
From the corner of the room, my phantom form drifted toward her.
I leaned down, bringing my spectral face inches from Brooke’s trembling ear.
A freezing, arctic chill wrapped around her neck, raising goosebumps along her bare arms.
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“You pulled the chair, Brooke,” I whispered, pouring all the frost of the grave into her mind. “And now you will sit in the dark forever.”
Brooke shrieked, swatting at the empty air beside her neck, her eyes wide with terror as she scrambled backward, knocking her chair over—the exact way she had knocked mine.
