Chapter 3 - THE INTERROGATION OF JOANNE
Two hours later, in a sterile, windowless interrogation room at the Oakhaven police substation, Joanne Vance sat with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her silver hair was neatly styled, and she wore her Sunday church blouse, looking every bit the picture of an aggrieved, misunderstood matriarch.
The door swung open, and Detective Vance walked in, tossing a heavy leather file onto the metal table. Behind him stood Lena, her eyes burning with an icy, terrifying intensity.
Joanne flinched when she saw her daughter, but quickly recovered her composure, raising her chin defensively.
"Lena! Thank goodness," Joanne began, her voice dripping with practiced self-pity. "Your father has completely lost his mind. He’s been violent, erratic—he threatened me with a knife this afternoon! I had to flee for my safety. I was coming to get help for you and the children!"
Lena walked slowly around the table, stopping just inches from her mother’s chair. She didn't yell. She didn't cry. She simply looked down at the woman who had birthed her, raised her, and then willingly left her grandchildren to bake in a locked car while she ran off with blood money.
"You left a seven-year-old and a fifteen-month-old baby locked in a car in ninety-degree heat while you looted my father's accounts," Lena said, her voice terrifyingly quiet. "Then you watched my father stagger into the woods after them, and you drove away."
"That’s a lie!" Joanne shrieked, slamming her hand on the table. "Curtis was unstable! He’s the one who put those children in danger! I am a victim here!"
Detective Vance slid a printed transcript across the table. It was a digital extraction from Joanne’s personal cell phone—a text message thread sent to an out-of-state real estate broker less than two hours before she fled:
“The old man is interfering with the wire transfer. I’m clearing the accounts now. Meet me in Oakhaven with the final deed papers. Leave the kids at the house, they’ll deal with it.”
Joanne stared at the paper, the color instantly draining from her face. Her arrogant facade cracked, revealing the desperate, shivering coward beneath.
"You wrote that," Lena said, her voice breaking with raw agony. "You traded my children's lives for real estate cash. You looked at Maisy and Theo, and you decided they were disposable."
"I needed that money, Lena!" Joanne sobbed, finally breaking down as she clutched her face in her hands. "Your father was ruining everything with his medical bills! We had no choice!"
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"You always had a choice," Detective Vance stated coldly, pulling out a pair of steel handcuffs. "Joanne Vance, you are under arrest for felony child abandonment, custodial interference, financial fraud, and reckless endangerment resulting in severe physical harm."
As the cuffs clicked shut around her wrists, Joanne screamed curses and frantic denials, but the deputies hauled her away without an ounce of sympathy. The monster who had hidden behind the mask of a loving grandmother was finally exposed for the world to see.
