Chapter 5 - The Counter-Strike
The fluorescent lights of the precinct waiting room hummed with a low, miserable buzz.
Elias sat beside me on the hard plastic bench, his arm wrapped firmly around my shoulders. Across from us, Mom sat with her hands clutched around a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm water that she hadn't touched.
We hadn't gone down to the station under arrest; we had gone voluntarily, carrying both manila folders and David’s box of historical ledgers straight to the desk sergeant.
Within twenty minutes of walking through the doors, the dynamic in the investigation had shifted completely.
The detective handling our case, a seasoned investigator named Miller with sharp eyes and an unlit cigar tucked behind his ear, sat across from us in a small, glass-walled conference room. He had spent the last hour reviewing Arthur’s audit, David’s box of decade-old checkbooks, and the quitclaim deed.
Now, he tossed a printed police report onto the center of the table.
“Your sister was here about forty minutes before you walked in,” Detective Miller said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. “She filed a counter-affidavit claiming that you—Mrs. Hayes—forged the hospice checks and coerced your father into signing documents while he was incapacitated, using her name as an alias to cover your tracks.”
I let out a dry, incredulous laugh. “That’s physically impossible. I was on strict medical bed rest for the final three months of my pregnancy during the hospice period. My medical records prove I couldn't even leave my house.”
“We know,” Detective Miller said calmly. “Which is why her timeline falls apart the moment we look at hospital logs. But here’s the problem: she also filed an emergency injunction freezing the entire estate, including your mother’s home and your father’s remaining bank assets, pending a full forensic audit.”
Mom let out a soft gasp, her hands flying to her mouth.
“My house?” Mom whispered. “She froze my house?”
“Everything is locked down, Mrs. Hayes,” Detective Miller said gently. “Until this is sorted out in probate court, nobody touches anything.”
I looked across the table at the detective, feeling a cold, hard resolve settle deep in my chest. Marlo had thought she could checkmate us by preemptively crying victim to the police. She had assumed we would crumble under the threat of a counter-accusation.
She didn't know about David’s box.
She didn't know we had fifteen years of financial paper trail proving a systematic pattern of embezzlement stretching back long before Dad got sick.
“Detective,” I said, leaning forward and resting my hands on the table. “If Marlo filed an emergency injunction, that means she’s submitting her financial disclosures to the court today, right?”
“That’s correct,” Miller replied, raising an eyebrow. “Her lawyer submitted a full accounting of her personal and estate-related assets about an hour ago.”
I reached over and tapped the top folder containing David’s historical checkbooks.
“Then she just perjured herself,” I said quietly. “Because her court-submitted financial disclosure claims she has never held a joint account with our father prior to 2023. And these ledgers prove she’s been draining accounts bearing both their names since 2008.”
Detective Miller stared at me for three long seconds. Slowly, a very faint, appreciative smile touched the corner of his mouth. He reached out, pulled David’s box closer to his side of the table, and flipped open the top binder.
“Well,” Detective Miller murmured, picking up a pen. “It looks like your sister just handed us a federal perjury charge to go along with the grand larceny.”
He stood up, buttoning his jacket.
“Wait here,” he said. “I need to make a phone call to the district attorney’s office. Don't leave the building.”
As the detective stepped out of the glass room, Elias squeezed my shoulder tighter.
“We got her,” Elias whispered, his voice full of quiet vindication.
“Not yet,” I said, watching Detective Miller through the glass as he picked up his desk phone, talking rapidly with an expression of intense focus. “Marlo is cornered now. And an animal in a corner doesn't surrender—it strikes out at everything within reach.”
“What else could she possibly do?” Mom asked, her voice trembling. “She’s out of moves.”
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed in my lap.
It wasn't a text message this time. It was an alert from our home security system app.
May you like
I unlocked the screen, watching the live camera feed from our front porch at home.
The screen showed a local news van parked right in our driveway, its satellite dish raised toward the sky. And standing on our front step, talking animatedly into a reporter’s microphone while holding a framed photograph of Ren, was Marlo.
