Chapter 4 - The Digital Trail of Destruction
The conference room upstairs was quieter, dominated by a wall-mounted monitor displaying a sprawling spreadsheet of digital files recovered from Evan’s laptop. A forensic cyber-investigator named Miller—a young man with thick glasses and a permanent slouch—stood by the keyboard, clicking through a series of saved video files and chat logs.
"It wasn't a one-off, Ms. Bennett," Miller said without looking up from his screen. "Your brother didn't just wake up yesterday and decide to rig a birthday cake. Look at this."
He hit the spacebar on his keyboard.
A video popped up on the large monitor, recorded six months earlier in what looked like the breakroom of a commercial office building. The camera angle was low, hidden behind a coffee machine, pointed directly at a communal box of gourmet doughnuts sitting on a breakroom table.
In the video, Evan could be seen standing near the counter, leaning over the open pastry box. With quick, practiced movements, he pulled a small tube from his jacket pocket, squeezed a thick line of what looked like clear, industrial-grade superglue across the cream-filled centers of three different éclairs, and then carefully closed the lid before walking away whistling.
Twenty minutes later, another employee—an older woman with graying hair—walked in, selected one of the poisoned pastries, and took a bite. The video captured the sickening sound of her teeth gluing themselves shut, her sudden, panicked choking, and the chaotic scramble of coworkers rushing to help her while Evan stood in the doorway filming it on his phone, doubled over with silent laughter.
Rachel clutched the edge of the table, her stomach heaving. "He... he actually did this before?"
"Three separate incidents in the last eighteen months," Detective Kim said, pulling a stack of printed police incident reports from the folder. "A batch of brownies laced with strong prescription laxatives given to an entire accounting department. A rigged desk chair in his previous office that collapsed and caused a coworker to suffer a severe compression fracture in her tailbone. And now this."
Kim laid the reports out across the table like tarot cards of malice.
"In the eyes of the law, this crosses the line from reckless endangerment straight into aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, coupled with premeditation," Kim continued. "Because he documented his methods, searched online for industrial staple dimensions, and specifically prepared the item beforehand, the defense of 'it was just a prank' is going to evaporate the second this hits a prosecutor's desk."
Daniel, who had arrived at the precinct twenty minutes earlier to support Rachel, placed a heavy, grounding hand on her shoulder. "What happens now, Detective?"
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"Now, we lock him up without bail pending arraignment," Kim said firmly. "And Ms. Bennett—you need to secure legal representation for yourself, because civil litigation against your brother's remaining assets is going to be the only way to cover your medical expenses, reconstructive scar therapy, and psychological damages."
Rachel stared at the monitor, where Evan’s grinning face was frozen in mid-laugh on a thumbnail icon. The boy she had defended, protected, and forgiven time and time again wasn't just immature. He was broken in a way that no family loyalty could ever fix.
