Chapter 7 - The Interrogation of Carter Whitmore
In the interrogation room of the Central Precinct, the fluorescent lighting hummed with an irritating, low-frequency buzz that made Carter Whitmore’s head throb behind his eyes.
He had been stripped of his belt, his shoelaces, and his varsity jacket. He sat shivering in a thin white t-shirt, his face pale, his eyes swollen and bloodshot from crying. Across the metal table sat Detective Vance and Assistant District Attorney Marcus Cole.
A digital video camera pointed straight at Carter’s face, its small red LED glowing like an accusation.
"Your father’s lawyers are outside, Carter," ADA Cole said, sliding a stack of printed color stills from the bus footage across the cold steel surface. "They’re filing every emergency writ they can think of. But right now, you're in this room with us. And the charges we're looking at carry a mandatory minimum of seven years in state custody."
"Seven... seven years?" Carter choked out, his voice trembling so hard his teeth clicked together. "I’m a minor! You can't send me to prison! I go to Hawthorne!"
"You turn eighteen in three weeks, Carter," Detective Vance said, leaning forward, her voice devoid of pity. "And under state law, an assault involving this level of pre-meditated brutality and hate-speech enhancements allows the prosecution to charge you as an adult. You aren't going to a juvenile boot camp. You’re going to Cedar Hill State Penitentiary."
Carter buried his face in his cuffed hands, his shoulders shaking with violent, ragged sobs. "It wasn't my idea... I swear to God it wasn't my idea!"
"Whose idea was it, Carter?" ADA Cole pressed, his voice dropping into a hypnotic, steady rhythm. "The video shows you waiting by that gate for twenty minutes before Henry Lin even arrived. How did you know he was coming?"
Carter looked up, snot running down his upper lip, all the aristocratic poise stripped away until nothing was left but terrified weakness.
"Dylan... Dylan got a text from someone in the main office," Carter stammered, the words tumbling out of him in a desperate torrent. "They said Maya had called her parents in tears because she forgot her portfolio. Dylan said... Dylan said it would be hilarious to intercept the old man, take the folder, and throw it in the storm drain so she’d miss her interview."
Detective Vance’s eyes narrowed. "Who in the main office sent the text?"
"Sloane's administrative assistant," Carter sobbed, not hesitating for a fraction of a second to throw everyone he knew under the bus. "Her name is Miller. Sloane told her to alert us if Maya tried to leave campus. Dr. Sloane knew everything! She said if Maya missed the interview, the Columbia slot would automatically revert to Reese Sterling! Reese was the alternate!"
ADA Cole exchanged a razor-sharp glance with Detective Vance.
That was the missing link.
This hadn't been a random act of bullying. It was a calculated, criminal conspiracy designed to sabotage a merit scholar from a working-class background in order to hand an Ivy League fellowship to the son of the Deputy Attorney General.
"And the punch, Carter?" Detective Vance asked, tapping the photograph of my father collapsing against the iron post. "Was that Reese’s idea, too?"
"The old man wouldn't back down!" Carter cried, his voice pitching into a defensive shriek. "He looked at me... he looked at me like I was nothing! Nobody looks at me like that! He was just a bus driver! He was supposed to get scared and run away! But he stood there, and when Dylan kicked the woman's phone, the old man moved toward Dylan, and I... I panicked! I hit him!"
"You panicked?" Detective Vance scoffed, leaning in until her face was inches from Carter’s. "You said, and I quote, *‘Watch this, I’m gonna put this old bum to sleep.’* Does that sound like panic to you, Carter? Or does that sound like an arrogant little sadist who thought his daddy’s checkbook made him bulletproof?"
Carter shrank back against his chair, unable to answer, tears dripping from his chin onto the cold steel table.
"Here's the deal, Carter," ADA Cole said, closing the folder with a sharp snap. "Dylan Vance and Reese Sterling are currently in the holding cells down the hall. Their lawyers are trying to claim you were the sole aggressor, that they were innocent bystanders trying to de-escalate the situation."
"What?!" Carter gasped, his eyes wild with betrayal. "They’re lying! Dylan kicked the mother! Reese was filming it and screaming at me to knock him out!"
"Then you better sign this sworn confession before Reese’s father figures out a way to pin the entire conspiracy on you," Cole said, sliding a document and a pen across the table.
Carter didn't ask for his father. He didn't ask for Harrison Vance.
May you like
With shaking, ink-stained fingers, he grabbed the pen and began writing down every single name, every single secret, and every single crime that had festered behind the ivy-covered walls of Hawthorne Academy.
***
