Chapter 7 - The Cell Beneath the Courthouse
The Oakhaven police substation was built in the basement annex of the county courthouse back in 1968.
It was a damp, subterranean maze of painted cinderblock walls, flickering fluorescent tubes, and heavy steel-mesh gates.
They separated us immediately upon arrival.
They placed me in a small interrogation room near the administrative desks, leaving the heavy wooden door cracked open just wide enough to hear the precinct noise.
Marcus was taken all the way down the end of the holding corridor to Cell 4—the isolation tank with no exterior windows.
Chief Vance took his time, hanging his soaked campaign hat on the coat rack and meticulously drying his service weapon with a clean microfiber rag.
He pulled a metal folding chair up to the small laminate table across from me and sat down heavily.
"You have no idea what you've stepped into, Clara," Vance began, resting his forearms flat on the wood.
"I know that Donald Vance hit Sarah Miller with his cruiser or abducted her from the bus stop," I countered, looking him dead in the eyes.
"And I know you used your brother's salvage lot to hide the vehicle."
Vance let out a dry, mirthless laugh that didn't reach his cold eyes.
"You're a clever archivist, Clara, but you don't know a damn thing about the summer of 2004."
"Then enlighten me, Chief," I challenged.
"Tell me why a seventeen-year-old girl’s blood is in your father’s floorboards."
Vance leaned forward, his face inches from mine, his breath smelling of bitter black coffee and spearmint gum.
"Because my father didn't abduct her," Vance whispered.
"My father found her bleeding to death on the side of Quarry Road at six-forty in the morning."
I stopped breathing.
"She was already dying when he put her in the back of that Crown Vic," Vance continued, his voice tight and hoarse.
"She had been struck by a hit-and-run vehicle on the blind curve near the old timber bridge."
"If that were true, Donald would have driven her straight to the county hospital on Elm Street," I said.
"He would have called an ambulance over the radio."
"He couldn't," Vance said, his eyes shifting toward the closed security door behind him.
"Why couldn't he?"
"Because the car that hit her on that bridge belonged to Mayor Richard Sterling," Vance revealed, dropping the name like an anvil onto the metal table.
My stomach plummeted into freefall.
Richard Sterling wasn't just the former mayor; he was the wealthiest land developer in the state and the man who funded every municipal pension in Oakhaven.
His family owned the timber reserves, the water utility contracts, and the commercial banks holding the notes on half the homes in the county.
"Sterling was driving home from the country club drunk as a skunk at dawn," Vance murmured.
"He called my father on his personal landline before the sun was even up."
"He told my dad that if the police arrested him for vehicular manslaughter, he would pull every private bond funding the county sheriff's department."
"He would have bankrupted our town overnight and put fifty deputies out of work."
"So your father let an innocent teenager die to save a politician's budget?" I asked, a wave of profound disgust rising in my throat.
"She was already gone before my father reached the quarry road, Clara!" Vance yelled, slamming his open palm against the table.
The metallic bang echoed down the concrete hallway.
"Her injuries were non-survivable. Donald panicked. He put her in his back seat to keep the scene quiet until he could figure out what to do."
"And then Sterling showed up with a checkbook and a promise of lifetime protection for our family."
"Where did you bury her, Thomas?" I asked, my voice trembling with cold rage.
May you like
Before Vance could answer, the heavy steel security door at the front of the booking area slammed open with immense force.
The loud, unmistakable squeak of little rubber boots echoed across the polished linoleum floor.
