Chapter 9 - The Long Fall
The arrest did not happen in the quiet shadows of a private office. It happened on the rain-slicked pavement outside the downtown television studio where Ethan had just finished giving his tearful interview.
Ethan and Chloe Davies were walking toward a yellow taxi cab, having been forced to walk six blocks in the drizzling rain after the coffee shop manager kicked them out for loitering. Chloe was clutching her designer handbag over her head to protect her blowout, screaming at Ethan at the top of her lungs.
“You told me you were a multimillionaire!” Chloe shrieked, her voice audible over the city traffic. “You told me your family owned the entire North Shore! Now my apartment locks are changed, my car was towed, and you can’t even afford an Uber black car! You’re a pathetic fraud, Ethan!”
“Chloe, shut up! Just shut up for five minutes!” Ethan yelled back, his hair plastered to his forehead by the rain, his eyes wild with stress. “My lawyers are handling it! As soon as the public pressure builds, Claire will have to settle! She can’t take the bad PR! She’ll give me five million just to sign an NDA, I promise you!”
Before Chloe could answer, two unmarked black Dodge Chargers and three marked county cruiser units jumped the curb, their sirens wailing in deafening unison, boxing the taxi cab and the two pedestrians in against the brick facade of a department store.
Bystanders on the sidewalk stopped, pulling out their phones as a dozen officers in tactical vests with pistols drawn spilled out of the vehicles.
“Ethan Vance!” Detective Kowalski’s voice boomed through a megaphone. “Keep your hands where we can see them! Turn around and lace your fingers behind your head!”
Ethan froze, his eyes bulging with terror. He looked wildly to his left and right, like a rat caught in the headlights of a semi-truck. “Wait! What is this? I haven't done anything! I’m a respected business owner!”
“Down on your knees! Now!” Kowalski roared.
Two officers moved in with ruthless efficiency. One kicked Ethan’s legs out from under him, sending him crashing face-first into the filthy, oil-slicked puddles on the concrete. The second officer drove a heavy knee into the small of his back, wrenching his arms behind him with enough force that Ethan let out a sharp, high-pitched scream.
*Click-clack.*
The steel handcuffs clamped tightly around his wrists.
Chloe screamed, backing away with her hands raised. “I don't know him! I’m just an employee! Don’t touch me!”
“Miss Davies,” an officer said, stepping into her path and holding up a blue folder. “We have an asset-recovery seizure warrant for all property currently in your possession, including that three-thousand-dollar Chanel handbag and the platinum watch on your wrist. Both were purchased with stolen funds. Hand them over, or you’ll be booked for accessory to grand larceny.”
Chloe gasped, instantly tearing the watch off her wrist and thrusting the handbag toward the officer, her tears washing away her foundation. “Take it! Take everything! Just don’t arrest me!”
Ethan turned his muddy, bruised face up toward Kowalski as he was hauled to his feet.
“What are the charges?” Ethan sobbed, snot and rainwater dripping from his nose. “Tell me the charges!”
Kowalski pulled a laminated sheet from his breast pocket and began reading with cold, bureaucratic efficiency:
“Ethan Vance, you are under arrest for Aggravated Domestic Endangerment of an Incapacitated Person, Felony Assault in the Second Degree, Grand Larceny in Excess of One Million Dollars, Forty-Two Counts of Forgery, Identity Theft, and Criminal Embezzlement.”
“No… no, that’s impossible,” Ethan blubbered, his legs turning to jelly as the two deputies dragged him toward the back of the cruiser. “Where’s my mother? What did you do to my mother?”
“Your mother was picked up forty minutes ago at the airport motel,” Kowalski said, shoving Ethan into the hard plastic back seat of the patrol car. “She tried to bite a female deputy while resisting arrest. She’s currently being booked into the maximum-security holding annex on assault on a peace officer and felony theft charges.”
Ethan looked out through the reinforced metal cage of the cruiser window.
Standing on the opposite side of the street, sheltered beneath a wide black umbrella held by Thomas Cole, was Marcus Vance.
Marcus didn't wave. He didn't smile. He simply stood there, an immovable monument of absolute, dynastic justice, watching Ethan being shoved into the cage like a stray animal.
The cruiser door slammed shut with a heavy, final thud.
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The sirens wailed again as the convoy accelerated into the grey, rainy afternoon, carrying Ethan Vance toward the cold concrete walls and steel bars of his new reality.
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