“Are you prepared to authorize the exhumation of your father’s body?”
Kate signed the document with a shaking hand. The thought of disturbing her father’s final resting place was agonizing. But it was the only way to prove he’d been murdered.
“They’re going to come after you,” Miller warned. “They have money and influence. Are you ready for that?”
“I’m ready,” Kate answered, her voice firm.
A week later, a team of state investigators arrived in town. They began questioning neighbors and reviewing medical records. Tamara threw a hysterical fit in her front yard for the whole street to see.
“What are you doing?! Disturbing my poor, dead husband! It’s her, that monster, she set this all up! Prison made her evil!”
The mother-in-law stormed around the yard, waving her arms and screaming. “I’ll sue you! I’ll destroy all of you! I have connections! You have no idea who you’re dealing with!”
Neighbors watched from their windows, but no one intervened. They were all afraid of Tamara. She immediately called Andy, who sped to the county seat in his SUV and barged into the prosecutor’s office. He tried to negotiate, offered money, then made veiled threats, but DA Miller was incorruptible.
“Get out of my office before I have you arrested for attempting to bribe an officer of the court,” he said coldly.
Andy left, pale and shaken. He fumbled for his phone and dialed a number. “It didn’t work. The prosecutor is clean, he won’t take a bribe. Get the money ready for good lawyers. A lot of money.”
His voice trembled. For the first time in five years, he felt real fear.
The exhumation was carried out quietly, early one morning. Kate stood by the gravesite and wept as the casket was raised from the earth.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” she whispered. “But there’s no other way. They have to answer for what they did to you.”
The toxicology report came back two weeks later. Frank Peterson’s tissues contained a concentration of blood pressure medication ten times the lethal dose. That amount could only have been administered externally, through food or drink.
DA Miller called Kate. “We got the results,” he said. “We are officially opening a criminal investigation into the murder of your father.”
Tamara was summoned for questioning. She arrived with a lawyer, shouting and waving her hands. “This is a setup! Kate must have poisoned him herself before she went to prison!”
But Kate’s alibi was ironclad: five years in a state facility, with hundreds of witnesses. Tamara’s lawyer—a slick young man in an expensive suit—tried to find loopholes, citing the time that had passed and a lack of direct evidence. The prosecutor silently showed him the bank statements, the witness testimonies, and the toxicology report.
“Your client can help herself by telling the truth,” Miller said flatly.
Tamara held out until the very end, insisting she was innocent and that Kate had fabricated everything. But when they showed her the video of the homeless man identifying her from a photograph, her face turned ashen.
“I need to speak with my lawyer. Alone,” she whispered.
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