Chapter 14: Chain of Custody

Two officers took my arms before I could lower the badge.

A third pulled the dish towel out of my hand, with the ring and the bracelet still inside it.

"That's evidence," I said. "That's from a dead woman's drawer. Write down that I handed it to you."

"Stand still, miss."

"Write it down!"

The cameras followed me across the stage, and the red lights stayed on.

The audience was on its feet, and a few people shouted words I will not repeat.

My mother had both hands over her face.

My father stood behind her wheelchair with his arms hanging, and he did not look up.

"She's my sister!"

Kari's voice cut over all of it.

She was standing on her chair in the front row with her jacket in her fist.

"She's my sister, and you're not even asking what she ate! Somebody ask her what she ate!"

An usher reached for her.

She shook him off, and then she was crying too hard to talk.

The usher took her elbow gently and sat her down.

That was the last I saw of her.

They put me in the back of a squad car with my hands behind me, over the splint, and the pain went white up my arm.

At the station a woman took my phone and my shoelaces and asked me to spell my name.

I spelled it.

She asked if I wanted a lawyer.

"Yes."

"The court will assign one. Next."

They locked me in a cell with a steel bench and a drain in the floor.

I sat for what felt like two hours.

Then a detective came and stood at the bars with a clipboard.

She was tired, middle-aged, with a coffee stain on her cuff.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Parents Begged for My Execution on Live TV from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.