Chapter 5 - The Unraveling of Carol
With David securely in custody at the Clarke County Jail held without bond, the criminal investigation turned its focus toward how a thirty-two-year-old corporate accountant had obtained liquid thallium sulfate—a strictly regulated chemical substance banned from commercial sale in the United States since 1972.
On Thursday morning, Detective Ramsey called me back to the police station.
I sat beside Jennifer and Michael Chen in an observation room behind a two-way mirror, looking into an interrogation room.
Sitting at the metal table inside was my ex-wife, Carol.
She looked frantic, clutching a paper coffee cup, her makeup smudged, while a state police investigator laid out a series of printed shipping receipts and digital bank records in front of her.
"Mrs. Morrison," the investigator said calmly. "We executed a search warrant on your home on Baxter Street yesterday afternoon. In your basement workshop, under a pile of old gardening supplies, state forensics located a glass bottle containing two hundred milliliters of industrial thallium sulfate."
Carol gasped, her hands shaking so violently coffee spilled onto her lap. "That's not mine! I don't know how that got there! David must have put it there!"
"We also pulled your personal credit card records from six weeks ago," the investigator continued, sliding a highlighted document across the table. "You purchased three bottles of antique rat pesticide from an unregulated online seller based in Eastern Europe, shipped directly to a P.O. Box registered in your name."
Through the two-way glass, I felt a wave of cold, sickening fury wash over me.
Jennifer gripped my hand tight, her knuckles white. "She helped him," Jennifer whispered in absolute horror. "Bill... his own mother helped him get the poison."
In the interrogation room, Carol buried her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
"He told me he just needed a little bit!" Carol wailed through her fingers. "David came to me two months ago screaming that loan sharks were going to break his legs! He said Bill had hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in savings that he refused to share! David said... he said if Bill had a mild, sudden illness, he could step in as power of attorney and transfer the money before Bill died!"
"You knew he was going to poison your ex-husband?" the investigator asked coldly.
"I didn't think he’d use enough to kill him!" Carol shrieked. "I thought it would just make Bill sick enough to go to a nursing home! I didn't know about the chocolates! I swear to God, I didn't know he was going to put it in chocolates!"
"Mrs. Carol Morrison," the investigator said, standing up and pulling out a pair of handcuffs. "You are under arrest for Conspiracy to Commit Capital Murder and Facilitating Financial Exploitation of an Elderly Adult."
As the female officer stepped forward to cuff Carol, she looked directly toward the two-way mirror, as if knowing I was standing right behind it.
"Bill!" Carol screamed toward the glass, her voice echoing through the speaker system. "Bill, help me! He's your son! I did it for our boy! Bill, please!"
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I stared at the woman I had once married, the woman who had walked out on a three-year-old child, only to return twenty-nine years later to help that child murder his father for money.
I didn't say a word. I turned my back to the glass, took Jennifer by the arm, and walked out of the police station into the clean, untainted air.
