My Fingerprint Was on the Bottle, but I Wasn’t on the Hook Chapter 06

My Fingerprint Was on the Bottle, but I Wasn’t on the Hook Chapter 06

At the station, they put me in an interview room with a cup of water. Through the wall, I could hear Derek going off—yelling. “I didn’t switch anything! That footage is fake! She edited it herself!”

Detective Harris walked in and sat across from me. “Mrs. Foster, we’ve completed our initial review of the security footage.”

I looked up.

“The person who entered grandmother’s house is Derek Foster. Time stamp on the footage is 4:17 p.m.—roughly forty minutes after you left.”

“He let himself in with a key, walked straight to the coffee table, opened the new prescription bottle you’d just bought, and spent about two minutes doing something to the pills before he walked out.”

I nodded. I didn’t speak.

Detective Harris paused. “Just to confirm—you installed this camera about three months ago?”

“Yes. She was living alone. I needed a way to keep an eye on her.”

“Did Derek Foster know about it?”

“No.” I said. “The camera was hidden in the fake plant on top of the TV stand. Very small. Easy to miss.”

He wrote that down.

Then he added, “You also filed a report the day before Grandma died,

—

correct? You brought the original tampered bottle to us.”

“Yes. I went straight to the station the second I got the lab results. The officer I spoke with told me to sit tight and not say a word to anyone until they finished confirming everything on their end.”

“Did you consider just moving your grandmother out of the house?”

I gripped the cup tighter. “I did. But she twisted her knee last week. She couldn’t handle being moved.”

“And if I suddenly pulled her out, Derek would’ve known I was onto him. I was scared he’d do something even faster.”

My voice broke. “I thought just telling her to only take the new pills would be enough. I didn’t think Derek would go back in and swap them himself.”

Detective Harris nodded and gave me a moment.

He went on, “The footage shows Derek letting himself in with his spare key about forty minutes after you left. He walked straight to the coffee table, opened the bottle you’d just bought, and swapped out every single pill. The whole thing took less than two minutes.”

My nails dug into my palms.

He knew that house too well. He knew where the pills were, he knew Grandma’s routine, he knew how to leave no trace.

“So Grandma thought she was still taking the safe pills I bought,” I said, voice barely there. “But they weren’t mine anymore.”

“Exactly.”

—

My voice was barely there. “She trusted me. So she only took the pills from that bottle on the coffee table. Except by then, it wasn’t my bottle anymore.”

Detective Harris didn’t say anything for a long moment.

A commotion erupted outside the room. A woman’s voice, sharp and unfamiliar. “Derek! Where is he? Why was he arrested?”

Through the window of the interview room I saw a young woman in the station lobby. Loose dress. Belly gently rounded.

Five or six months pregnant.

She was frantic, tugging on the front desk officer’s sleeve. “He’s my husband! You can’t just arrest him!”

I studied her face.

The mistress from the text overlay.

So that’s what she looked like.