Chapter 3 - The Cloned Phone
The emergency room waiting area smelled like bleach and stale coffee.
It had been four agonizing hours since the paramedics carried Mark out of our kitchen.
Lily was still in the pediatric intensive care unit, fighting the severe allergic reaction that had nearly stopped her heart.
Now, my husband was on a ventilator two floors below her, battling a massive chemical overdose.
I sat in a hard plastic chair, staring blankly at the television screen playing a muted holiday parade.
Detective Miller walked through the sliding glass doors and sat in the empty chair directly across from me.
He held a clear evidence bag containing a familiar black smartphone with a cracked screen.
"We found your father-in-law's car abandoned at the edge of the county lines," Miller said quietly.
"Gary is gone, but he left his cell phone sitting on the passenger seat," the detective continued.
I leaned forward, desperate for any information that could explain why my father-in-law was trying to murder my family.
"Did you find anything on it?" I asked, my voice barely above a raspy whisper.
Miller hesitated, looking at me with a mixture of pity and deep suspicion.
"We extracted the data, and we found hundreds of encrypted text messages," Miller explained.
He placed a printed stack of paper on the small table between us.
"Gary wasn't working alone, Sarah," the detective said, his tone turning cold.
I looked down at the printed transcripts of the text messages.
The messages discussed the exact doses of poison required to make a grown woman appear chronically ill.
They also discussed the financial payout from my life insurance policy.
I felt a sickening wave of nausea as I read the contact name receiving all of Gary's messages.
May you like
The accomplice's phone number belonged to Mark.
My own husband had been texting his father about how to slowly poison me to death.
