Chapter 3 - The Babysitter's Confession
By 4:30 in the morning, I was sitting in an observation room behind a one-way mirror at the Baltimore City Police Headquarters.
Through the tinted glass, I watched Chloe Martin sitting at a cold metal table in Interrogation Room B. Her bright yellow hoodie looked ridiculously out of place against the gray concrete walls. She was weeping hysterically, her head buried in her arms, while her mother paced back and forth near the door, screaming at the officers about police harassment.
Detective Miller stepped into the interrogation room, throwing a heavy blue folder onto the table directly in front of the girl.
"Fifty thousand dollars, Chloe," Miller said smoothly, leaning his hands on the metal table. "Wired from a shell company in St. Kitts registered to Margot Hunt. Do you want to tell us about your summer vacation fund, or should we wait for the federal bank fraud indictments to be read in court?"
Chloe’s mother stopped pacing, her mouth dropping open. "What? What is he talking about, Chloe?"
"I... I didn't know!" Chloe sobbed, pulling at her fingernails until her skin bled. "I swear I didn't know they were going to die!"
"You didn't know two six-year-old children would die when you drove a car with intentionally loosened brake lines down a steep mountain road during a rainstorm?!" Miller slammed his hand on the table, the sharp CRACK making the girl jump out of her seat.
"He told me it was just a scam!" Chloe screamed, her voice cracking into a high-pitched shriek. "Silas told me it was an insurance simulation! He said he just needed the car to slide off the road into the soft embankment at low speed so he could claim a total loss on the vehicle! He said he'd be right behind us in his car to pull us out!"
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the observation mirror, my eyes closed as her words sliced through my chest like jagged razor blades.
An insurance simulation.
The utter, sociopathic simplicity of it. Silas had convinced a naive, greedy teenager that she was helping him fake a minor traffic collision for an auto insurance settlement, never telling her that he had personally cut the brake fluid line completely through half an hour before she drove off—ensuring that when she hit the mountain curve at forty miles per hour, there would be no stopping, no soft embankment, and no survivors.
"What about the fifty thousand?" Miller pressed, his eyes narrowing.
"He... he said twenty-five thousand was for me to keep quiet about the staging," Chloe wept, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "And twenty-five thousand was supposed to be handed to the state trooper who arrived at the scene! Silas gave me an envelope before we left the house and told me to leave it in the glove compartment!"
"Did you see Margot Hunt at the house that morning?" Miller asked.
Chloe nodded frantically. "Yes! She was in the driveway! She was the one who handed me the keys! She checked the backseat to make sure... to make sure Leo and Rose were buckled into their booster seats so they couldn't jump out!"
Behind the glass, my breathing stopped.
Margot hadn't just approved the papers from a comfortable office desk. She had stood in my driveway, looked into the eyes of my six-year-old twins, made sure they were trapped in their seats, and handed the keys to a girl driving a death trap.
Detective Miller stepped out of the interrogation room moments later, shutting the heavy steel door behind him. He walked into the observation space, his face solemn as he looked at me.
"We have enough for a grand jury indictment on two counts of Capital Murder against Silas, Margot, and Chloe," Miller said softly. "The state prosecutor is filing the paperwork at 8:00 AM."
I turned away from the glass, my hands folded tightly in front of my coat.
"Not enough, Detective," I said, my voice dropping into a low, lethal register.
Miller frowned. "Clara, this is a slam-dunk case. They are looking at death or life without parole."
"Silas has a private bank account in Switzerland holding six hundred thousand dollars that he siphoned from my late father's estate three years ago," I revealed, pulling a printed ledger from my coat pocket and handing it to him. "And Margot Hunt’s brother owns a private charter jet service based out of Martin State Airport. They weren't planning to stay for the trial, Detective. Even in handcuffs, Silas’s legal team is going to apply for emergency bail at the preliminary hearing tomorrow afternoon using his mother's property as collateral."
"No judge in Maryland will grant bail on a double child murder charge," Miller argued.
"They will if Silas’s attorney successfully argues that the financial evidence was obtained through illegal searches of his private computer," I countered, looking Miller straight in the eye. "His defense lawyer is Arthur Vance—the most expensive criminal defense attorney in the state. He's already filing a motion to suppress everything I pulled from Silas’s study tonight."
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Miller’s jaw tightened. "So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying," I whispered, "we don't just rely on the crash. We hit them with the entire financial empire they built on blood. Tomorrow morning, I'm taking the stand myself."
