Chapter 3 - The Conspiracy Unmasked
As Day Sixty of the seventy-four-day countdown arrived, the investigation expanded far beyond the walls of my suburban house.
Detective Bennett had leveraged the financial evidence provided by Charles to obtain federal wiretaps on Beatrice and Trevor Vance. What we heard over those recorded lines chilled the blood of every officer on the task force.
I sat in the police precinct’s wiretap room, wearing headphones, listening to a recorded phone call between Jason—calling from the cruise ship’s satellite line near Fiji—and his mother, Beatrice, who was staying at a high-end resort in Honolulu.
[AUDIO RECORDING – TRANSCRIPT]
BEATRICE: “Jason? Is everything clear? Has your attorney filed the preliminary probate motions?”
JASON: “Not yet, Mom. I told him to wait until Day Seventy-Five. If we file too early, it looks suspicious. I have to play the shocked, broken husband who returned from a dark ocean cruise to find his poor, frail wife had passed away in her sleep.”
BEATRICE: “Smart boy. Did you make sure the medication bottles were completely disposed of? We can't have forensic pathology finding traces of negligence.”
JASON: “Mom, I drove three hours into the desert and burned them in a steel drum before I boarded the flight. There isn't a trace left. By the time the coroner gets inside that house, the heat and humidity will have done their work. They'll rule it natural causes secondary to her systemic lupus. It’s ironclad.”
TREVOR (Background): “Tell him to hurry up with the insurance advance! My offshore creditors are threatening to file a lien against the Miami warehouse by the end of October!”
JASON: “Tell Trevor to hold his shirt on! He'll get his three hundred thousand the second the policy clears. Just enjoy the cruise. Evelyn is gone. She’s been gone since the day we sailed.”
Inside the monitoring room, Detective Bennett slammed her hand against the desk.
"That's it," Bennett declared, turning to the assistant district attorney sitting beside her. "We have explicit pre-meditation, financial conspiracy, and destruction of evidence on federal wiretaps. We can pick up Beatrice and Trevor right now in Hawaii."
"No," I interjected, standing up from my chair.
Everyone in the room turned to look at me. I was wearing a sharp black suit, my dark hair pulled back into a sleek tail. I looked nothing like the sickly, frail woman Jason had left on that kitchen floor two months ago.
"If you arrest Beatrice and Trevor now, they will warn Jason," I pointed out. "He'll stay in international waters or flee to a non-extradition country. He has to step foot inside that house. He has to execute the final stage of his plan."
"Evelyn is right," Assistant District Attorney Thomas Hayes agreed. "If Jason enters that house expecting to find a scene of death, and takes active steps to alter the crime scene before calling $911$, we have him on absolute First-Degree Attempted Murder with Special Circumstances. That carries a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole."
"What do you want to do, Evelyn?" Detective Bennett asked.
I looked at the digital countdown clock on the wall.
DAYS REMAINING: 14.
"I want to be inside that house when he opens the door," I said softly.
May you like
Bennett frowned, her instincts kicking in. "Evelyn, that’s far too dangerous. He’s a desperate man facing decades in prison. If he realizes you're alive, he could become physically violent."
"I won't be alone," I replied, a calm, terrifying smile spreading across my face. "Your SWAT team will be inside the hidden annex room behind the study. Your cameras will be recording every angle. But I want him to look into my eyes. I want him to realize that his seventy-four days of celebrating my death were just the prelude to his own execution."
