Chapter 8 - The Interrogation of Eleanor
The observation room behind Interview Room 3 was dark, illuminated only by the gray-green glow of two video monitors and the amber indicator light on the digital recording console.
Through the one-way glass, Eleanor Keene sat at a stainless-steel table bolted to the floor.
She had been stripped of her jewelry. The diamond rings, the pearl choker, the Cartier watch with the alligator strap—all of it sat in three small, clear plastic evidence bags on the administrative desk outside. She was wearing an oversized gray county sweatshirt that had been issued to her after her ostrich-skin handbag and cream wool coat were seized for forensic particulate testing.
Her silver hair was coming down in thin, wispy strands around her ears. Her face looked ninety years old beneath the fluorescent strip, the skin dry, yellowed, and sagging along her jawline where the cosmetic fillers had begun to collapse under the stress of six hours of continuous detention.
Across the table from her sat Detective Clara Miller.
Clara hadn't unbuttoned her jacket. She sat with her elbows on the steel table, a yellow legal pad resting between her forearms, her ballpoint pen clicking with a slow, rhythmic cadence that was designed to drive an anxious subject out of her skin.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
"I had nothing to do with the contracts," Eleanor’s voice came through the overhead speaker, thin, shrill, and vibrating with eighty years of wounded class privilege. "I am a retired school board trustee! I have never signed a corporate check in my life! Brett handled the family investments! If he made an error in judgment regarding the evacuation protocol, that is a matter for the civil courts, not a police precinct!"
Clara didn't stop clicking the pen.
Click. Clack.
"We pulled the cellular tower data from the repeater on Chelan Butte, Eleanor," Clara said, her voice dropping into that conversational, deadly monotone that detectives use when the trap has already sprung. "Between three-fifteen and four-ten on the afternoon of August fourteenth, while the fire was moving across the south ridge, your phone connected to the tower six times."
Eleanor shifted her shoulders, her hands clutching the sleeves of her gray sweatshirt. "I was calling my sister in Portland. I was terrified. Any normal woman would have been calling her family."
"You didn't call your sister in Portland, Eleanor," Clara said, not looking up from her pad. "You called the regional office of the First National Bank in Wenatchee three times. You spoke to the senior vice president of the private wealth division—a man named Henderson, who happens to be your second cousin."
Eleanor’s mouth opened slightly. Her tongue touched her upper lip, leaving a thin, gray smear of dry saliva.
"And do you know what Mr. Henderson told the state investigators forty minutes ago when they showed him the grand jury subpoena?" Clara asked.
Silence filled the small room. Through the glass, I could see Eleanor’s throat working, her breath becoming shallow and rapid.
"He told them that at three-forty-five," Clara continued, her eyes finally lifting to pin Eleanor against the steel chair, "while Natalie was standing on the porch screaming for her car keys, you were asking him whether a wire transfer of five hundred thousand dollars from a joint spousal account required two signatures if one of the signatories was 'presumed incapacitated by an environmental catastrophe.'"
"That's a lie," Eleanor whispered.
"It’s on the recorded compliance line of the bank, Eleanor," Clara said. "Every commercial call over ten thousand dollars is archived under federal banking regulations. We have your voice. We have you asking if the probate court would accept a death certificate issued by a county coroner without a physical body if three witnesses testified to the incineration of the residence."
Eleanor’s hands began to shake. She pulled them under the table, pressing her wrists against her thighs, but the vibration was visible through the loose cotton of her sleeves.
"He was my son," she whimpered, the arrogance finally peeling away to reveal the cold, rotting core of her survival instinct. "He was my only boy. Everything I had was tied up in those river parcels. If the bank called the note, they were going to take the house in Bellevue! They were going to take my car! I would have had to live on three thousand dollars a month from my husband’s pension!"
"So you left a girl who was carrying your grandchild to burn to death in a kitchen," Clara said.
"She wasn't one of us!" Eleanor shrieked, her voice suddenly spiking into a feral, desperate rage that made the speaker cone rattle against the wall. "She was a carpenter's granddaughter from the lower valley! She walked into my house with her muddy boots and her state college manners, and she thought she could tell my son how to manage his grandfather’s inheritance! She had no right to that land! None!"
In the observation room, Assistant Attorney General Thorne turned his head to look at me.
"That's the malice element, Natalie," Thorne said quietly. "Right there on the audio track. That takes it out of involuntary manslaughter and drops it square into second-degree murder under the accomplice liability statutes."
I looked through the glass at the old woman who had spent four years telling me that my family didn't understand the responsibilities of wealth.
She looked small.
May you like
Infinitesimal.
Like a beetle pinned to a piece of cork board, kicking its six tiny legs against the light, entirely unaware that the hand holding the pin had already moved on to the next specimen.
