Page 43 of The Birthday Girl
“You have the right to remain silent…” Vega turned his attention to her and read her rights, not because he expected her to cooperate but because he knew if he skipped the procedure, things could get messy for someone with the type of money Tahlia had at her disposal.
Attorneys would crawl over broken glass on bare knees to argue a technicality on her behalf, and he refused to give them the satisfaction.
The medics arrived in a flurry. One of them hissed a curse as they leaned in, rolling Danielle onto a portable board and packing the wound with clamps and gauze. A second medic worked a bag-valve mask over her mouth, forcing breath into her lungs as they rattled and fought for air.
Vega stepped back and let them work, his hands finally coming away sticky and red, and the moment he let go, Danielle convulsed under the pressure of their efforts. Her body bucked, her limbs jerking as the room spun around the frantic motions of the crew.
“Keep compressions going. Airway’s patent, but she’s decompensating,” the lead medic snapped, voice taut.
They moved like a single machine, hands slick, and faces set.
Vega tracked the carotid again, fingers searching. He felt the pulse flutter and then thin. The medic checked and swore under his breath. “Pulse dropping—weak—faint.”
They pushed every tool they had, but Danielle’s body didn’t answer. Her chest made a final, shuddering breath, and the medic’s expression changed from urgent to sorrowful when he rechecked the carotid.
He shook his head and pressed the radio. “Medical control, patient remains unresponsive. No pulse.” A clipped voice came back through the static, giving them the words no one else wanted to say. “Cease resuscitation. Time of death, 21:47.”
When the medic confirmed the time of death, Tahlia shifted on the mattress, her cuffed arms pulling tight behind her. She leaned forward and pressed her cheek to the bloodied sheet, then laughed into the fabric.
“Finally,” she whispered. “Finally, she’s quiet.”
Her smile was small and full of triumph. She leaned forward as if to watch the aftereffects of a scene she had staged. “Make sure you say my name,” she added. “Put it in the report. I want everyone to know who did it.”
Vega didn’t answer her celebration. He listened to the medics catalogue the pronouncement and hand off the body.
He tightened the cuffs another notch out of habit, hoping to break her wrists.
Ramirez handed the infant, Tyricka, to a social worker waiting in the doorway, then straightened and met Vega’s eyes with a look that needed no words.
****
Vega’s coffee left a ring on the metal table, the liquid gone cold hours ago.
The overhead light flickered, casting momentary shadows across the manila folders stacked at his elbow.
Behind him, Ramirez shifted his weight, his leather holster creaking against the cinder block wall as he recrossed his arms.
Across from him sat Tahlia Banks, wearing a grin so wide her lips almost touched her ears. She lounged in the chair as if it were a velvet throne, rather than bolted steel, as her cuffed wrists rested on the table, the chain dragging faintly whenever she shifted.
Vega opened the folder and slid the first photo across the table.
Mercedes lay splayed on the floor of the abandoned house, chest split and crudely sewn back together, her torso grotesquely swollen.
Her organs sat in a pile beside her, and cash was stuffed where her eyes, nose, and mouth should have been, the bills distorting her face into a grotesque mask of wealth.
Ramirez dropped his head, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “What kind of monster...” he whispered, the words trailing off as his eyes caught the horror captured in the glossy prints.
Tahlia’s eyes lit in reverence as she leaned forward as far as the cuffs would let her.
“Beautiful, isn’t she? All her life, she wanted to shine and drown herself in wealth, so I gave it to her.
I stuffed her full of everything she worshiped until it spilled back out.
Even made her smile for it.” She giggled, high and fractured.
“Like a piggy bank bursting at the seams.”
Her head tilted, eyes lingering on the ruined face. “I did her a favor, really. She got to die with more money than she ever held in her hands.”
Ramirez’s eye twitched, but Vega betrayed nothing as he slid over the next photo.
“Oh, Tremaine,” Tahlia whispered, speaking his name as if he were a lover. “He always thought he was a man. How funny.” She leaned forward, conspiratorial, her voice dropping to a hush. “He cried when the end came. Big men always do. They crumble so easily.”
Vega studied her across the table, expression unreadable. “So you’re saying you killed him.”
Tahlia’s lips curved, not quite a smile. “Did I?” She tilted her head, eyes wide and gleaming. “Maybe I only watched. Maybe I only whispered the right words in the right ear. Either way, he’s dead. Isn’t that what matters?”
She let the silence stretch between them, savoring the uncertainty. Then she laughed, sudden and sharp, a sound that bounced off the steel walls.
“Write it down, Detective. Put my name in bold. I like the way it looks next to his.”
Vega turned the photo and replaced it with another.
“Jimmy was such a sweet boy when we were kids,” Tahlia crooned, tilting her head with mock tenderness. “But I always thought he had sugar in his tank, if you know what I mean.” She winked, the gesture grotesquely playful.
Her tone dropped into a lilting, sing-song cadence.
“He thought it was a game. Thought he could outsmart me. Poor Jimmy.” She leaned forward until the chain of her cuffs scraped across the table, the sound grating in the silence.
“His biggest mistake was trailing after that worthless sister of his. He was always loyal. Always blind. And in the end?” She shook her head slowly, almost pityingly. “She cost him everything.”
“You’re sick.” Ramirez pushed off the wall, and Tahlia tilted her head, beaming.
“Finally. Someone understands.”
Vega gathered the picture and slid another across the table. The image showed what was left of Shanice and her two children after the fire had occurred. Their shapes were curled and blackened, and their bodies were reduced to fragile outlines amid the rubble.
Tahlia’s lips parted in something like delight.
“Ah, the fire. Beautiful, wasn’t it? Flames are honest. They don’t pretend.
They consume everything—the pretty, the ugly, and the innocent.
Shanice thought she could fuck with me and walk away scot-free, but I gave her the hottest truth there is.
” She giggled, breathlessly. “Even her babies couldn’t save her.
The fire didn’t spare them either. Isn’t that purity, Detective? To burn together as a family?”
Stiff as a statue, Vega gathered the photo and slid it back into the folder, his focus shifting. This time, he didn’t reach for another picture. Instead, he pulled out a report stamped with the Coast Guard’s seal and placed it between them.
“No bodies this time,” he said evenly. “Just wreckage. The boat exploded twenty miles off the coast. They found pieces of the hull, some charred life vests, and nothing else.”
Tahlia’s smile sharpened, and she leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Of course, they didn’t find bodies. That’s the point of fire, Detective. It eats, devours, and leaves nothing but smoke and questions.”
Ramirez shifted against the wall, his arms crossing tighter. “So you’re saying you sank your own parents?”
Tahlia’s laugh rang high and brittle. “Sank? No. I freed them. I gave them the ocean for a coffin and the sky for a shroud. It was… poetic, really.” She tilted her head, a manic gleam in her eye. “Don’t you think it’s better than rotting in the ground like everyone else?”
Vega felt the familiar weight of exhaustion settling behind his eyes. He had interrogated killers before, but never one who spoke of murder like an art critic discussing a masterpiece.
Across the table, Tahlia’s fingers drummed the metal surface of the table in a rhythm that matched nothing but her fractured thoughts.
Vega sat in silence until the hum of the overhead light became a roar in his ears. He pushed the Coast Guard report back into the folder and folded his hands on top of the table.
“Last one,” he said, his tone even. “Tyriq Lawson. He vanished. We have no body, and there have been no reports of him turning up anywhere. Do you know where he is?”
Tahlia’s face lit like a stage lamp, her eyes wide and fever bright. “Tyriq.” She rolled his name on her tongue like candy. “He thought the world bent for him. Thought I bent for him.” Her giggle cracked the air. “But even gods can be humbled.”
Vega held her gaze. “So he’s dead?”
Her smile widened, obscene in its calm. “Dead? Alive? Buried? Breathing? You want me to spoil the ending?” She tilted her head, then whispered like she was about to tell him a secret. “Detective, the beauty of a disappearing act is the applause lasts forever.”
She threw her head back and laughed, loud and ragged, until the sound scraped the cinderblock walls. Then, just as suddenly, she slammed her cuffed wrists against the table so hard the chain rattled, and hissed through her teeth.
“Write everything down. Every name. Every flame. Every scream. This is my legacy.”
Ramirez flinched at the violence of her words, but Vega didn’t move. He simply gathered the folder, stacked it neatly, and slid it aside.
“Legacy?” he repeated, voice flat. “Or the death penalty? Only one of those carries your name past the grave.”
Tahlia grinned like a queen accepting her crown. “Either way, Detective… they’ll all be clapping for me when I take my place in hell.”