Chapter 12 - The Cell Was Empty: The Dead Nurse and the Silver Wig
The local sheriff, a thick-set man named Miller who ironically shared no kinship with the pharmaceutical dynasty, stood in the center of Leah’s kitchen, scratching his bristled neck while two state troopers dusted the silver tray for latent prints.
"Look, Mr. Miller—sorry, Mr. David," the sheriff sighed, tucking his thumbs into his heavy gun belt. "Bedford Correctional is maximum security. Psychiatric Wing Block D is underground. She’s ninety pounds, seventy-two years old, and walks with an aluminum cane. There is no physical way she crossed three state lines and walked up your driveway."
"Then who put Julian's teething ring on my kitchen table?!" David roared, his face mottled red, veins standing out like cords on his neck. "Call the warden! Call Warden Hayes right now on speakerphone, or I swear to God I’ll drive down to Bedford and kick the gates down myself!"
Leah sat in the rocking chair in the corner of the room, clutching Noah with both arms until her knuckles turned ivory. She refused to let the deputies touch the baby. She refused to even put him down in his bassinet. Every floorboard creak in the house made her muscles lock up into rigid armor.
Sheriff Miller grimaced, visibly annoyed by the hysteria, but he unclipped his radio, dialed a direct line on his encrypted cell phone, and set it on the counter, pressing the speaker icon.
After four grueling rings, a woman answered. Her voice was strained, breathless, and surrounded by the blare of background sirens.
"Hayes," the warden barked over the static. "Make it quick, Sheriff. We have a Code Crimson in sector four."
The air in the kitchen instantly turned freezing.
"Warden Hayes, this is Sheriff Miller out in Waldo County, Maine," the sheriff said, suddenly straightening his spine. "I’m standing in the residence of David Miller. He claims his mother, Victoria Miller, made a direct breach of his residence—"
"Victoria Miller is dead," Hayes interrupted coldly.
Leah let out a ragged gasp. David’s eyes went wide. "Dead?" David choked out. "How? When?!"
"Ten minutes ago, our tactical sweeps confirmed it," Warden Hayes continued, her voice trembling slightly beneath her professional veneer. "At approximately 0300 hours during morning rounds, Nurse Sarah Collins entered Cell 104 to administer Victoria’s daily antipsychotics. Victoria choked her from behind with an IV cord, dragged the body into the blind spot behind the concrete partition, and dressed the nurse in her prison jumpsuit. She placed her own silver-gray wig on the nurse’s shaved head, tucked her under the blanket, and slipped out wearing the nurse’s scrubs and security badge."
Silence crashed over the kitchen like a tidal wave.
"Wait..." Leah whispered, the words tearing from her throat like broken glass. "You said Victoria was dead!"
"No, Mrs. Miller," Hayes responded, her voice dropping into an icy abyss. "Nurse Sarah Collins is dead. Her throat was crushed from the inside out. As for Victoria Miller... her vehicle was discovered abandoned at an interstate rest stop near Portsmouth three hours ago. She has two million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds, a network of private security contractors who still believe she is God Almighty, and she is heading north."
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The phone clicked dead.
Outside, the first tendrils of evening fog began to swallow the Maine pine trees, turning the driveway into a wall of impenetrable white.
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