Page 71 of The Birthday Girl
Tyricka wailed louder, her sobs raw and choking, and Ramirez rocked her gently, murmuring under his breath, “You’re safe now, baby girl. I’ve got you.”
Beside him, Tahlia giggled and prayed in the same breath, the words breaking apart as though madness itself was speaking through her.
“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.
