Chapter 7 - The Interrogation Room
At 3:45 AM, inside the subterranean holding cells of the Suffolk County House of Correction, Preston Vance sat at a steel table bolted directly to the concrete floor. His tuxedo jacket had been confiscated, leaving him in a sweat-stained white shirt missing half its mother-of-pearl buttons.
Detective Vance sat across from him, accompanied by Assistant District Attorney Mark Walsh.
"Preston," Detective Vance said, placing a cold can of soda on the table. "You've been weeping for three hours. The time for tears was before you swung a wooden board at an eight-year-old child."
Preston flinched, pulling his arms against his chest. "I didn't want to hurt her! You have to believe me! Mom told me that if I made a big scene—if I yelled and knocked things over—everyone would be looking at me and Sophie. She said the hotel guards would immediately search Sophie's dress pockets to prove her innocence, and when they pulled out my phone, they’d find the pouch!"
"Why didn't you just keep the brooch yourself?" ADA Walsh asked, his voice dripping with skepticism. "Why involve the child at all?"
Preston buried his head in his hands, his fingers digging into his scalp. "Because Victor Thorne was tracking my phone! He had people watching my apartment! If I walked into that hotel carrying an uninsured, stolen two-million-dollar jewel, Thorne’s guys would have jumped me in the lobby parking garage! They would have taken the stone and killed me anyway!"
"So you used your niece as a safe deposit box," Detective Vance remarked coldly.
"Mom said... Mom said if Sophie had it, nobody would suspect anything until we were inside the private suites," Preston sobbed. "Mom was going to pretend she found it in Sophie’s bag later that night. She was going to tell Evelyn that Sophie stole it from her jewelry box at home! She said we’d threaten Evelyn with CPS unless Evelyn signed over her remaining inheritance claims right there in the hotel room! It was supposed to fix everything!"
"And what about Victor Thorne?" ADA Walsh asked. "How were you going to get out of the hotel alive?"
"Thorne promised..." Preston choked on his own words, his face contorting in pathetic agony. "Thorne promised that once he verified the Cartier certificate on the micro-SD card, his men would smuggle me out through the kitchen loading docks in a laundry truck. He was going to fly me to Lisbon on a private cargo plane. I was supposed to start over!"
Detective Vance leaned back in his steel chair, looking at the broken man before him with unadulterated contempt.
"You really are that stupid, aren't you, Preston?"
Preston looked up, blinking through swollen, red eyelids. "What?"
"Victor Thorne didn't have a private cargo plane waiting in Lisbon," Vance said flatly. "We searched the satellite phone recovered from Suite 1402. Thorne had two one-way tickets to Zurich booked for himself and Roman. Do you know what was scheduled for you, Preston?"
Preston’s breath hitched in his throat.
"A rental van was parked in the lower basement of this hotel," Vance continued, pointing a finger downward. "Inside that van, State Police found three rolls of industrial plastic sheeting, two fifty-pound bags of quicklime, and an unregistered .22 caliber pistol with an integral suppressor."
Preston froze. Every drop of color drained from his face until his skin looked like chalk.
"They weren't taking you to Portugal, Preston," Vance said quietly. "The second you handed over that micro-SD card and the brooch in Suite 1402, Roman was instructed to put two rounds into the back of your skull, wrap you in plastic, and dump you forty miles off the coast of Gloucester. Your mother would have spent the rest of her life thinking you ran away to South America, and Thorne would have collected two million dollars from his Swiss buyer."
Preston stared at the detective, his mouth hanging open in sheer, paralyzed horror. His chest began heaving in rapid, shallow spasms.
"They... they were going to kill me?" he whispered.
"Your sister saved your miserable life," Vance said, standing up from the table. "If Evelyn hadn't tackled you in that ballroom, if she hadn't ripped that menu board out of your hands, and if security hadn't called us to the scene, you’d be floating at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean right now."
Vance turned toward the heavy steel door of the interrogation cell.
"Officer," Vance called out. "We're done here. Book him into general population."
"No! Wait!" Preston screamed, lunging toward the door as the heavy steel latch clanged shut. "Don't put me in general population! Victor Thorne’s people are in here! They’ll know I talked! EVELYN! TELL EVELYN TO HELP ME!"
May you like
His desperate, terrified screams echoed down the cold concrete corridor of the jail, fading only when the heavy iron security gates slammed shut behind them.
***
