Chapter 21 - The Court of Public Opinion
Sheriff Higgins reached instinctively for his service holster, but before his hand could clear the leather, three federal Marshals tackled him to the pavement, pinning his face against the wet asphalt and cuffing his wrists with titanium zip-ties.
"Don't move, Higgins!" Inspector Cross barked, stepping over him with her weapon drawn. "You're under arrest for federal conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and treasonous falsification of military records!"
Panic erupted across the plaza. Reporters shoved microphones toward Hannah and me, live-streaming the confrontation to millions of households across the nation.
I marched up the granite steps, the crowd parting like the Red Sea before my boots. I stopped three feet from Evelyn.
The mother who had looked me in the eye five years ago and told me I was dead to the world now shrank back against the locked courthouse doors like a cornered animal.
"Rebecca," she stammered, her voice a desperate, frantic hiss. "Becca, darling... please. Think of the family name. Think of what this will do to us!"
"The family died the day you forged a criminal docket under my name," I said, my voice carrying clear and steady over the whirring cameras and live broadcasts. "You buried six hundred barrels of neurotoxins on our land. You poisoned the groundwater of this entire valley for thirty years. And when I came home from war, you paid your corrupt cronies to turn my identity into a federal prison record so you could steal the deed."
Hannah stepped beside me, opening the dossier and thrusting the printed bank manifests directly into the glare of the television cameras.
"Twelve million dollars a year," Hannah proclaimed to the nation, her voice ringing with absolute moral authority. "Siphoned into offshore accounts held by Evelyn Sinclair-Vance, while three dozen children in the southern district developed leukemia from the poisoned wells. Here are the wire transfers. Here are the signatures. Here is the truth."
The journalists went wild. The live broadcast was already trending across every major social media platform, millions of viewers watching the grand matriarch of the county crumble into complete ruins.
"Arrest her," I said to the Marshals.
May you like
Evelyn threw her hands out in wild desperation. "You don't understand! I did it for the family! The corporation... they would have killed us all if I didn't take the barrels! I had no choice!"
"You had a choice to love your daughters," I whispered coldly as cold steel cuffs clamped around her wrists. "And you chose blood money."