Chapter 8 - The Cornered Matriarch
The rain over the Kitsap Peninsula had turned into a relentless, slate-gray deluge by the time Daniel’s SUV crossed the Agate Pass Bridge.
The Port Orchard detention facility was a squat, brutalist concrete block set back from the highway, surrounded by double perimeter fences topped with coiled razor wire.
Daniel did not enter as a grieving son. He walked through the metal detectors with the cold, measured stride of an executioner.
Because of the high-profile nature of the Sterling family and the gravity of the child abuse charges, the Kitsap County Sheriff, a weathered fifty-year-old veteran named Marcus Vance (no relation to Julian), had granted Daniel a private conference in the high-security visitation suite prior to the arraignment.
The door buzzed open.
Evelyn was seated at the stainless steel table, her wrists secured to an iron ring in the center of the surface by a heavy chain. The cream cashmere sweater had been confiscated; she was wearing an oversized orange corrections jumpsuit that seemed to swallow her slender frame. Her silver hair was unpinned, hanging in stringy locks around her gaunt face.
Sitting beside her was Julian Vance, dressed in an ill-fitting charcoal suit, looking nervously through a stack of bail petitions.
When Daniel entered, Julian immediately stood up, raising his hands in a placating gesture.
"Daniel, look, we need to handle this with discretion. I’ve spoken with the deputy prosecutor. If we can agree to a diversionary program—a residential psychiatric facility for your mother—we can keep this out of the Seattle papers—"
"Julian," Daniel said without looking at him. "Leave the room."
"Daniel, as her counsel, I have a right to be present—"
"Leave the room," Daniel repeated, his voice dropping an octave, "or the Kitsap County Sheriff will unseal the audio recording from the private study where you explicitly discuss the reversionary codicil and the liquidation of the Prescott Trust. You will be disbarred by noon and indicted as an unindicted co-conspirator to attempted murder by two o'clock."
Julian’s face drained of color. He looked at Evelyn, who stared at him with cold fury, then grabbed his leather briefcase and bolted through the security door without uttering another syllable.
The heavy steel door slammed shut. The magnetic lock engaged with an industrial thud.
Mother and son were alone.
Evelyn looked up at him through her disheveled silver hair. A slow, bitter smile crept across her thin lips.
"So," she whispered. "The prodigal son arrives. Have you come to watch your mother grovel, Daniel? Have you come to extract some pathetic apology so you can feel righteous while you play the martyr?"
Daniel pulled out the metal chair across from her. He did not sit down. He rested his hands on the back of the chair, leaning forward until he was within two feet of her face.
"Digitoxin," Daniel said.
The smile on Evelyn’s face did not merely vanish; it collapsed into a terrifying, rigid paralysis.
"I don't know what that means," she said, her voice dropping into a flat, defensive monotone.
"Clara sent the tea to Zurich, Mother," Daniel said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "The laboratory finished the high-performance liquid chromatography analysis. They found the digitalis extract. The unpurified foxglove from your greenhouse."
Evelyn didn't move. A single bead of sweat broke near her hairline, tracking down through her heavy foundation, cutting a groove through the powder.
"You killed her," Daniel whispered. "For twenty-six days, you sat beside her bed. You watched her hold my daughter. You watched her struggle for breath. And you handed her a cup of poison every single afternoon at four o'clock."
Evelyn’s eyes began to dart around the small, windowless interrogation room, looking at the two-way mirror, the ventilation grate, anywhere except Daniel’s eyes.
"She was an obstacle," Evelyn hissed, the venom finally breaking through the stone facade, her voice dropping into a ragged, guttural whisper that made the hair on Daniel’s arms stand up. "She was an arrogant, self-righteous little interloper who looked at me like I was a beggar at her table! I was a Sterling before she was born! I gave this family its standing! And she dared to tell me I had to surrender my name and move to Italy? She dared to hold forty million dollars over my head?"
"She was the mother of my child!" Daniel roared, slamming both palms down onto the steel table with a force that made the chains rattle violently against the iron ring.
"She was nothing!" Evelyn spat, lunging forward as far as the chains would allow, her face contorted in an ecstasy of pure malice. "She was weak! Her heart was defective! I merely accelerated what nature would have done eventually! And that baby—that miserable, sniveling little girl—she looked at me every day with Clara’s eyes! Every time she cried, I heard Clara laughing at me! I should have dropped her out the window the day she was born!"
The door to the interrogation room clicked open.
Sheriff Marcus Vance stepped inside, holding a digital audio recorder that was glowing with an active red recording light. Behind him stood two armed deputies and Detective Sarah Lin, the lead investigator from the Washington State Police Major Crimes Division.
"Evelyn Sterling," Detective Lin said, unholstering a second pair of heavy transport cuffs. "You are officially under arrest for the premeditated first-degree murder of Clara Prescott Sterling. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
Evelyn froze. She looked at the recorder in the Sheriff’s hand, then at the detectives, and finally back at Daniel.
Daniel looked down at her with no anger left in his eyes. There was only an infinite, barren wasteland of disgust.
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"You won't be going to a private psychiatric facility, Mother," Daniel said softly as the deputies unchained her from the table and pulled her roughly to her feet. "You will die in the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor. And no one will ever bring you tea."
***
