Envy

 

I was so busy the entire day that when I got home, I went straight to bed. The next morning, I found five missed calls from the night before. They were from my sister, Samantha. I called her back, but there was no answer. I tried several times, but it kept going to her voicemail.

I called Samantha’s office and spoke to her boss, Jeffrey Solomon. He said that she didn’t turn up for work. It wasn’t like her to miss work, so I drove over to her house right away. I had a strange feeling course through my body when I parked the car and walked up to her door. I hoped she was alright. When I tapped on her door, there was no answer.

Samantha had given me a spare key to her house, so I used it to get in. Nothing seemed out of place. I looked around, but she wasn’t there. I called out to her, but there was no answer. But when I walked into her bedroom, my heart sank and my knees grew weak. Samantha was lying unconscious on the floor, and a bottle of pills was next to her. I rushed to her side and tried to resuscitate her, but she was gone.

When the paramedics took her away, I was still seated on the bedroom floor. I couldn’t move, or even think. The police had questions for me, but their words just faded away into a haze. Hours later, I was told by the ME that Samantha died of a methamphetamine overdose. I couldn’t believe it. Samantha had never tried drugs, let alone been addicted to them. She was also progressing at a quick pace in her cancer drug research, so I could never picture her doing that. I asked the ME whether they could check to see if there was any foul play. She said she’ll look into it.

The next day, I was called to the police station. Two detectives told me that Samantha had bruises on the back of her neck and skin under her nails. Samantha had died somewhere between 12:00 and 01:00 a.m. I checked my phone; Samantha had called me between 12:00 and 12:06 a.m. My hands began to shake; I felt a knot twist in my stomach. If I had only answered my damn phone…

“Miss Morgan, do you know anyone who’d want to hurt her?”

“I can’t think of anyone, detective.”

That same evening, I went back to Samantha’s house. I was looking around when I remembered that Samantha had a secret safe behind her cupboard. I pulled the cupboard to a side; the safe was closed, but it wasn’t locked. I called the police right away. The detectives weren’t happy with what I had done.

“Miss Morgan, you are tampering with the crime scene.”

“If it weren’t for me, you would never find that.”

“Maybe so, but you’re not a detective. I suggest you not do this again.”

“Fine. Did you find anything on the CCTV footage, by the way?”

“No, the killer avoided them.”

I asked them if they had found her diary, but they said no. Samantha was really good at hiding things, so unless the killer snatched the diary and escaped, it would be lying somewhere in the house for us to find it. With the detectives’ permission, I searched for Samantha’s diary. I stumbled across a pot with an artificial plant in her work room. Samantha didn’t like artificial plants, so I inspected it. There was a hidden compartment at the bottom of the pot; her diary, along with some other research papers, was in it.

We could only assume that someone was after her for her work. The detectives took the diary and told me the next day that they had a prime suspect: John Solomon, Jeffrey Solomon’s son. Samantha had mentioned in her diary that John had tried to force her to give him part of the credit for her research, even though he had not helped her in the slightest. He had been seeking praise from his father.

John and Jeffrey were both interrogated the same day. They took a sample of John’s DNA, and it matched that of the skin they found under Samantha’s nails. Following that, and another long interrogation, John finally admitted to killing Samantha. He was later sentenced to life in prison.