Chapter 2 - The Digital Vault
Detective Vance carefully took the phone from my trembling hands, sliding it immediately into a sterile evidence bag. He signaled for a forensics technician who had just entered through the front door.
"Get this to the mobile lab unit immediately," Vance instructed. "I want a complete dump of the local storage, cloud backups, recent call logs, and encrypted messaging apps. Find out what's on this device before the remote wipe protocols can engage."
Across the room, Aunt Beatrice’s face drained of every trace of color. She fumbled in her handbag, her fingers clawing frantically for her own phone.
"You're making a catastrophic mistake," Beatrice hissed, though her voice lacked its earlier authority. "This is a private family tragedy. Clara had a history of... of mental instability. She was overwhelmed by Alex's long absences. She simply... she made a tragic choice."
"A choice?" I stood up slowly, the grief in my chest hardening into an icy, unyielding wrath. I stepped toward my aunt, my height towering over her. "Lily saw Derek break into her room. My father risked his health to hide her phone. You were trying to rush her body into a sealed casket before I even walked through the front door. You call that a choice?"
"Alex, calm down," Derek interjected, backing away toward the kitchen entrance. He tried to project a casual indifference, but his left hand was trembling violently, and the fresh bruise on his jaw—the one half-hidden by his collar—spoke volumes. "We were just trying to help. Clara was screaming, she slipped on the stairs—"
"You weren't even supposed to be living here," I snapped, wheeling around to face my brother. "You lost your apartment six months ago. Dad and Mom brought you in. But Clara told me on my last phone call—before my comms mysteriously went dead—that she wanted you out. She said you were snooping through my office files, asking questions about my shipping manifests with Apex Global."
Derek swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward the front door where two police officers now stood blocking the exit. "She's lying. She was paranoid."
"She's dead, Derek," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "And you're going to tell us exactly why."
Before Derek could formulate a reply, Detective Vance’s radio squawked to life. The static cleared, revealing the breathless voice of the lead forensics tech stationed in the van parked outside.
“Detective Vance? We've got an initial read on the encrypted partition of the victim's phone. There’s an un-synced cloud draft saved about twenty minutes before the estimated time of death. And... Detective, you need to see this file path. It’s tied directly to an enterprise server domain belonging to Apex Global Logistics.”
May you like
The living room went dead silent. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway sounded like a sledgehammer.
I stared at Vance. The corporate entity that paid my salary, the company that had locked me in an isolated transport run for three days under the guise of national security, was somehow digitally intertwined with the murder of my wife.
