Chapter 4 - The Dead Man Walking
I stared at the photograph of my burning car as my entire world stopped spinning.
I told Marcus that I had parked the car at the police station when I came in to file my report.
Marcus shook his head and explained that the police impound lot was completely empty.
Someone had stolen the car from the police parking lot while I was locked in the holding cell.
The body found inside the wreckage was tentatively identified as Mark, my sister's ex-husband.
My family had told the police that I had been violently stalking Mark for months out of jealousy.
They claimed I murdered him, burned the car to destroy the evidence, and then came to the station to create an alibi.
Marcus leaned forward and told me that this was a highly sophisticated, premeditated frame job.
I realized that my brother, who worked in cybersecurity, must have hacked the police security cameras.
He erased the footage of me arriving at the station in the new car.
I asked Marcus how we could possibly prove my innocence against a mountain of fabricated evidence.
Marcus smiled fiercely and said that arrogant criminals always make one fatal mistake.
He pulled out his sleek tablet and played an audio recording for me.
The voice on the recording belonged to Mark, the man who was supposedly burned to death in my car.
Mark was screaming at my sister over the phone, demanding his share of the eighty thousand dollars.
Marcus explained that he had placed a legal wiretap on Mark's phone weeks ago for a completely unrelated corporate espionage case.
The wiretap proved that Mark was currently alive and hiding in a cheap motel across town.
The body in the car was a stolen medical cadaver intended to close the fake murder case.
Marcus stood up and told the detective to release me immediately based on the exculpatory wiretap evidence.
The detective listened to the audio and begrudgingly unlocked my handcuffs.
I walked out of the police station a free woman, but my bank accounts were still entirely empty.
Marcus drove me to a secure hotel downtown and handed me a burner phone.
He told me to get some sleep because tomorrow we were going on the offensive.
I locked the hotel room door and turned on the small television in the corner.
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The breaking news ticker at the bottom of the screen made my blood run completely cold.
My parents had just been found unconscious in their home, and the police were searching for me again as the prime suspect.
