Chapter 8 - The Interrogation Of The Coward Father
Inside Interrogation Room 3 at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center, Taylor Bennett sat alone beneath the flickering fluorescent light.
He was stripped of his tailored suit, wearing standard orange inmate scrubs, his wrists shackled to the heavy metal table.
Detective Amanda Hayes walked into the room, followed by Colonel Sarah Bennett.
Taylor looked up, his bloodshot eyes swimming with tears of pathetic, desperate self-pity.
“Sarah... please,” Taylor sobbed, reaching his shackled hands across the table. “You know my mother! She’s domineering! She controlled me my whole life! She told me that if I interfered, she would cut me out of the family estate! I was terrified of her!”
I pulled out the metal chair across from him and sat down.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry.
I looked at the man I had once shared a bed with—a man who had stood outside a locked freezer listening to his daughter’s muffled cries while sipping morning coffee.
“You weren't terrified of her, Taylor,” I said, my voice cutting through the room like a cold scalpel. “You were terrified of losing twenty-five thousand dollars a month. You traded your daughter’s flesh and blood for a luxury car lease and country club memberships.”
Taylor broke down into hysterical, gut-wrenching wails, burying his face in his shackled hands.
“I’ll testify against my mother!” Taylor wept, looking up with tears streaming down his flushed face. “I’ll tell the prosecutors everything! I’ll plead guilty to child neglect! Just please... tell them not to send me to a maximum-security prison! I won't survive in there, Sarah!”
Detective Hayes slid a legal confession form across the table.
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“Sign the full confession, Taylor,” Hayes said coldly. “And maybe the judge will give you a cell with a window.”
With trembling, dirty fingers, Taylor gripped the pen and signed away his freedom, his career, and his name forever.
