Chapter 12 - THE PLEA OF A PARASITE
By Tuesday afternoon, the visitors' room at the Century Regional Detention Facility smelled of disinfectant, sweat, and despair.
Brenda Vance sat behind the scratched plexiglass partition, clutching the black plastic telephone receiver with bruised, trembling hands.
The glamour of the Peninsula red carpet had been completely stripped away, leaving only an exhausted, gaunt woman in an orange inmate jumpsuit.
Her dark circles were sunken and purple; her skin was dull and flaky under the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead.
I sat on the opposite side of the glass, dressed in an immaculate navy trench coat, resting my forearms calmly on the stainless-steel counter.
I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear, waiting in total silence for her to speak.
Brenda began weeping immediately, her tears leaving dirty streaks across her cheeks as she pressed her face close to the partition.
"Vivian... Vivian, thank God you came... I begged the guards every hour to give you my written message!"
"You know me, Vivian... we were sisters for twenty years... we shared everything in college!"
"You cannot let them keep me in here! The other women... they know what I did... they steal my food, they won't let me sleep!"
I listened to her hysterical panting without a flicker of emotion, my eyes resting on her bare, ringless hands.
"You took my dress, Brenda."
"You took my grandmother’s gold bracelet."
"You took my wedding ring, and you stood beside my husband while reporters called you Mrs. Albright."
"Did you remember that we were sisters when you watched me drink that poisoned broth in my bedroom?"
Brenda flinched violently, pulling her face back from the glass as if she had been slapped across the mouth.
"Christopher made me do it!" she shrieked into the phone, her voice crackling through the cheap speaker wire.
"He told me he would leave me on the street with nothing if I didn't help him get your signatures!"
"He said you were holding him hostage with your father’s patents! He said he built Grand Horizon and you were just an obstacle!"
"He promised we would be happy, Vivian! He bought the villa in Lake Como in both our names!"
"Christopher never loved you, Brenda," I replied, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that silenced her instantly.
"Christopher loved the lifestyle that my father's patents bought for him."
"When he realized the police were closing in at Table One, the very first words out of his mouth were an attempt to blame you entirely."
"He told Detective Cruz that you were a psychotic blackmailer who forced your way into our family."
Brenda’s jaw dropped, her tear-filled eyes widening in horrified disbelief.
"He... he said that about me? After everything I gave up for him?"
"He signed a sworn affidavit this morning attempting to cooperate with the prosecution in exchange for dropping his attempted murder charge to reckless endangerment."
"He offered to testify that you obtained the scopolamine independently from an unlicensed pharmacy in Tijuana."
Brenda let out a ragged, choking scream of absolute betrayal, slamming the plastic receiver repeatedly against the metal shelf.
Two armed corrections officers stepped up behind her, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her back into the metal chair.
She grabbed the receiver again, her fingernails digging frantically into the plastic casing.
"He’s lying! I have the text messages, Vivian! I have the emails where he told me the exact pharmacy to contact!"
"I have the voice notes where he instructed me to make sure you were unconscious before seven o’clock so we could take the car!"
"I will give you everything! I will testify against him in federal court! Just please, talk to the district attorney!"
"Tell them to lower my bail! I can't survive ten years in state prison, Vivian! Please!"
I looked at the woman who had lived under my roof, consumed my hospitality, and plotted my psychological murder.
"You won't survive ten years, Brenda," I said with absolute, unyielding coldness.
"Because the district attorney is seeking twenty-five years with no possibility of parole."
"And as for your testimony against Christopher?"
I tapped the glass gently with the face of my wristwatch.
"Luke already obtained every single server log, deleted text, and voice recording from Christopher’s private cloud storage three days ago."
"We don't need your cooperation, Brenda."
"You are not a witness; you are an accomplice, and you will serve every single day of your sentence in the dark."
I hung the receiver up, setting it firmly back onto its metal cradle.
Brenda screamed behind the glass, beating her fists against the scratched barrier as the guards dragged her backward through the iron doorway.
May you like
Her manicured nails clawed desperately at the air, her voice lost behind the soundproof partition, vanishing into the abyss of her own making.
I rose from the stool, smoothed the lapels of my coat, and walked out into the corridor without looking back once.
