Chapter 5 - The Shadow of Greed
Detective Reyes exchanged a grim glance with her partner. "Officer Miller, put an alert out on Mark Carter’s vehicle. Gray Ford Explorer. If he suspects anything, he might flee—or he might come looking for her."
"Why would he do this?" I collapsed onto a plastic chair in the waiting room, burying my face in my hands. "Why would a father poison his own daughter? It doesn't make any sense!"
"Usually, in cases like this, there are two primary motives," Detective Reyes said calmly, pulling up a chair opposite me. "Control, or money. Does your husband have debts?"
"Mark handles all the finances," I admitted, a sickening realization beginning to take shape. "He always insisted on keeping our bank accounts strictly separated. He told me it was better for tax purposes. Whenever I asked about our savings, he told me not to worry my pretty head about it."
"Give me your phone," Detective Reyes instructed. "If you share an iCloud or family cloud account, we can pull recent search histories, document backups, or digital mail."
I unlocked my phone and handed it to her, providing the passwords. Detective Reyes opened the shared cloud drive that Mark had synced between his home desktop and his tablet. For months, I had never bothered to open the folder labeled 'Home Insurance & Policies.'
Detective Reyes tapped the folder. Her eyes widened slightly as she scrolled through the files.
"Mrs. Carter, look at this."
She turned the screen toward me. My eyes scanned a PDF document dated sixty days ago. It was an individual supplementary life insurance policy on Hailey Carter. Total payout value: one point five million dollars.
And the sole primary beneficiary was Mark Carter.
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There was a specific rider attached to the policy: accidental poisoning or toxic exposure covered at double indemnity. Three million dollars.
My heart felt as though it had stopped beating entirely. The puzzle pieces clicked together with horrifying precision. Mark hadn't just neglected her; he had calculated her slow, agonizing death. He was dosing her with a toxic capsule designed to break down slowly, ensuring the medical examiner would conclude she suffered from an undiagnosed chronic illness or an accidental environmental ingestion.
