Chapter 5 - Unraveling the Fraud
The next three weeks were a whirlwind of aggressive litigation and relentless investigation. While Mom slowly regained her strength, eating proper meals and seeing a trauma therapist, I went to war.
My first target was the notary public, Mr. Vuong. I found him in a dingy little office located behind a strip mall. He was a nervous, sweaty man who looked like he hadn't slept in days. News of the police raid on Julian's temporary apartment had clearly reached him.
I walked into his office, closing the door firmly behind me and locking it.
"Ms. Vance? I... I don't think you should be here," he stammered, shuffling papers on his desk.
"Mr. Vuong, I'm not here as Elena Vance, the daughter. I'm here as the Assistant Attorney General," I lied smoothly—technically, I was off this case officially, acting as a private citizen, but he didn't need to know the bureaucratic details. "I have a sworn statement from my mother stating you notarized a Last Will and Testament without verifying her consent, while she was being physically restrained. That is accessory to fraud. That is prison time."
He swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead. "I didn't know! Julian told me she was confused. He said she agreed to it earlier and just needed a firm hand to sign."
"A firm hand?" I slammed my hand onto his desk, making him jump. "He held her down by her throat, Vuong! And you stamped the paper!"
He buried his face in his hands, trembling. "He paid me ten thousand dollars. I needed the money. Please, I have kids."
"If you want to see them grow up outside of a visitation room, you will give a full, recorded deposition to Detective Harris tomorrow morning. You will testify that Julian Vance bribed you, and that you witnessed him physically coercing an elderly woman. If you do that, I will talk to the DA about immunity. If you don't, I will personally make sure you share a cell block with him."
He nodded frantically, a broken man.
The second domino to fall was Dr. Tran. When Detective Harris confronted him with his forged medical evaluations and the threat of losing his medical license, he immediately folded. He admitted he had never formally examined my mother for dementia; he had simply taken Julian's word for it over drinks at the club and signed the paperwork as a "favor."
Julian and Chloe's defense was crumbling before it even reached a courtroom. Their high-priced defense attorney, a slick man named Richard Sterling, filed motion after motion to suppress evidence, but it was like trying to stop a flood with a paper towel.
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The final piece of the puzzle came from Chloe's own confiscated phone. In deleted text messages recovered by police forensics, she had written to her brother: "The old bat is being stubborn today. Julian had to tie her up again so we could get the bank routing numbers. Once the cabin is in your name, we're putting her in the cheap nursing home and taking our vacation."
When I read that text message in the police precinct, my blood ran cold, but a fierce smile spread across my face. It was over. They had handed me the murder weapon with their own fingerprints all over it. There was no more gray area, no more "he said, she said." It was premeditated, documented malice.
