Chapter 5 - The Snake's Confession
Two days later, I received a phone call from the Fayette County Detention Center.
Daniel’s lead defense attorney, Marcus Thorne, requested an emergency private meeting in the attorney conference room. Daniel was offering a full confession and testimony against his mother in exchange for a reduction of his charge from Capital Murder to Second-Degree Murder, which would allow for the possibility of parole after thirty years.
Arthur advised me against going, but I needed to look Daniel in the eye one last time without the courtroom circus around us.
At 2:00 PM, I sat behind a thick reinforced glass divider in the visitation room.
Daniel was led in by two guards. He looked hollowed out, his eyes sunken, his skin yellow under the flickering tube lights. He sat down heavily, picking up the black plastic telephone receiver with trembling hands.
I picked up my receiver.
"Claire..." Daniel’s voice came through the earpiece, thin, broken, and desperate. "Thank you for coming. Please... you have to listen to me."
"I’m listening, Daniel," I said, my voice dead and cold.
"It was Mom," Daniel sobbed, leaning his forehead against the glass divider. "She’s been controlling my life since Dad died. She found out about my debts... she found out about your father's trust... she told me if I didn't help her, she would leak my genetic records to the bank and have me fired from the firm."
"You knew about your genetic heart condition before we even got married, Daniel," I said, every word hitting the glass like a stone. "You let me believe for seven years that my father's memory was a curse. You let your mother berate me at every family dinner about 'bad blood.'"
Daniel flinched as if I had struck him. "I was terrified, Claire! If the board found out about my heart condition, I would have lost my insurance! I would have lost my position!"
"And what about Evan?" I asked, my voice dropping an octave. "What was his crime, Daniel? He was eleven days old. He was your son."
Daniel buried his face in his hands, weeping uncontrollably. "Mom said... Mom said if Evan survived, doctors would run deep genetic sequencing on him. They would discover the marker came from my side of the family, not yours. It would ruin the Sterling name. It would prove Dad died of a genetic defect, not a 'peaceful heart attack.' She brought the digitoxin from Dad's old stash... she told me to put it in the front of the cart..."
"And you did it," I said. "You picked up the bottle with your own hands and set it down where the nurse would reach it."
"I was weak!" Daniel shrieked through the phone, pressing his hands against the glass. "I was a coward! But I didn't want him to die, Claire! I thought... I thought it would just make him sick enough that they would transfer him to another facility!"
"You're lying," I said softly. "The toxicology report showed four times the lethal dose. You wanted him dead so you could take my twenty-four million dollars to pay off your Atlantic City bookies."
Daniel went completely still. The pathetic, weeping mask faltered for a fraction of a second, revealing the cold, selfish core underneath.
"Claire... please," he whimpered again. "Sign the affidavit supporting my plea deal. If I go to a maximum-security prison on a Capital Murder charge, I won't survive five years. My heart... my heart can't take the stress."
I looked at him—at his pathetic, sniveling posture, at his total lack of genuine remorse for the child he had helped murder.
I stood up slowly, hanging the telephone receiver back on its metal hook.
I leaned close to the glass divider, looking straight into his wide, terrified eyes.
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"Then I hope your heart breaks in there, Daniel," I whispered.
I turned around and walked out of the room, leaving him screaming my name against the reinforced glass until the heavy steel door slammed shut behind me.
