Chapter 2: The House of Cards
The interrogation room smelled of stale coffee, industrial floor cleaner, and arrogant cologne. I closed the door slowly, the metallic click of the latch echoing in the small, cinderblock space.
“You have a lot of nerve, Graham,” I said, staying near the door, keeping my posture relaxed but ready. “Laying hands on my son. You think your money buys you immunity in this city?”
Graham chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. He smoothed the lapels of his expensive Italian jacket. “You cops are all the same. You see a bruise and you think it’s about a messy divorce or a rebellious teenager. You think I hit Blake because he gave me lip? Please, David. Give me more credit than that.”
I narrowed my eyes. What is he playing at? “Enlighten me.”
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the metal table, steepling his fingers. “Your son is a little snoop. A real chip off the old block, always digging where he shouldn’t. He broke into my home office this afternoon. He managed to crack the safe behind my bookshelf.”
A cold dread began to coil in my gut. Blake was brilliant with computers, far smarter than his age suggested. “And?”
“And he found a USB drive,” Graham whispered, his eyes gleaming with malicious delight. “A drive that contains the last five years of my company’s… unofficial bookkeeping. Every bribe paid to city officials, every offshore account, every dime laundered through my construction projects. He took it, David.”
The pieces fell into place with sickening clarity. Graham didn’t hit Blake in a fit of domestic rage; he hit him to get the drive back. He dragged him to the precinct to silence him, to control the narrative before Blake could go to the authorities.
“You’re confessing to grand-scale fraud and money laundering,” I said, my voice dangerously soft. “Right in a police precinct.”
“I’m not confessing to anything,” Graham smiled, showing his teeth. “Because you’re not going to arrest me.”
“Watch me.” I reached for the cuffs at my belt.
“Touch those, and Sarah goes to federal prison for a minimum of ten years,” Graham stated, his voice devoid of all emotion.
My hand stopped hovering over my belt. “What did you say?”
Graham leaned back, savoring his victory. “Who do you think has been signing off on all my shell company transfers for the past two years? Who do you think is listed as the primary financial director of my offshore holdings? Your lovely ex-wife, Sarah. I’ve spent twenty-four months carefully, meticulously burying her signature on every fraudulent document. I told her they were standard tax forms for the business. She signed them without looking.”
It felt as if a fault line had cracked open right through my chest. Sarah was naive about business, too trusting for her own good. If Graham went down, he had rigged the system so she would take the fall. Blake would lose his mother to a federal penitentiary.
“You’re a monster,” I breathed, the realization of his depravity washing over me.
“I’m a survivor, Captain,” Graham corrected. “If you try to use whatever is on that USB, the FBI will trace it right back to Sarah. I’ll claim I was a victim of a rogue employee. She’ll take the bullet. So, here’s how this goes. You are going to walk out of here, take your son home, and he is going to hand over that drive. And we will never speak of this night again.”
He had me cornered. Checkmate. I felt a suffocating pressure in my throat, a desperate need to find a way out where none existed. I stared at him, my mind racing through protocols, legal loopholes, anything.
Before I could formulate a response, the heavy metal door behind me slammed shut with a violent BANG.
I spun around. The deadbolt engaged with a heavy, mechanical clunk that resonated in my bones. I grabbed the handle and yanked. It was locked from the outside.
I turned back to Graham, my hand instinctively dropping to my service weapon. But Graham wasn’t looking at me. He was looking up at the security camera in the corner of the room. Its little red light, which had been off when I entered, was now glowing brightly.
“Like I said, Captain,” Graham whispered, his smile turning into a feral grimace. “I’m a survivor.”
