Chapter 6 - The Sacramento Deposition
Three weeks later, the sky over Sacramento was gray, flat, and suffocatingly hot, a heavy Central Valley heat wave that made the asphalt on Fulton Avenue smell of old oil and melted rubber.
I sat in the second-floor conference room of the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, sitting beside Marcus Thorne and Savannah, who was now eight months pregnant, her hands rested comfortably over her enlarged stomach.
Across the long glass table sat two state prosecutors, a court reporter with a steno machine, and two defense attorneys provided by the Sacramento Public Defender’s Office.
Bernice Miller sat in the far corner of the room.
She was no longer wearing her tailored knit suits or her gold-plated jewelry from Sacramento’s upper-middle-class boutiques.
She wore a gray, oversized county jail jumpsuit, her white hair unwashed and pinned back with two plastic safety clips, her small hands secured at her waist by a thin belly chain that clinked softly every time she shifted in her vinyl chair.
She looked small, old, and surprisingly frail—a tiny, bitter woman stripped of her stage props, sitting beneath the humming fluorescent lights of a government building.
She refused to look at me. She kept her eyes fixed on the blank surface of the glass table, her lower lip pulled tight against her teeth in a permanent, sour pout.
Her brother, Richard Vance, sat three chairs down from her, wearing his own orange jumpsuit, his hands similarly cuffed. His theatrical confidence was completely gone, replaced by the hollow, gray exhaustion of a lawyer who realized that forty years of legal tricks had ended in a secondary felony indictment that carried a mandatory minimum sentence of twelve years in state prison.
"This is a pre-trial deposition," the senior state prosecutor, a woman named Karen Vance (no relation to Richard), said, clicking open a thick blue folder. "For the record, Defendant Bernice Miller and Defendant Richard Vance have indicated through counsel a desire to explore a negotiated plea structure regarding Counts One through Eighteen."
She looked up at Savannah.
"Mrs. Miller," the prosecutor said gently. "Before we discuss any plea terms presented by the defense, the State requires your formal statement regarding the disposition of the assets recovered from the Nevada shell accounts."
Savannah leaned forward, her voice clear, calm, and completely unhurried.
"Every dollar stolen from my father’s trust—two hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars—has been fully traced and frozen by the court receiver," Savannah said. "The six hundred and fifty thousand dollar equity line drawn against our apartment has been formally voided by the lender following the filing of the void ab initio declaration by the State Bar."
She turned her head slowly to look directly at my mother for the first time since that Wednesday afternoon in San Diego.
"We are not seeking financial restitution beyond the return of what was taken," Savannah added. "We do not want her money. We do not want her house in Sacramento."
Bernice’s head snapped up. Her small, dark eyes flicked toward Savannah with a sudden, vicious flash of her old anger.
"I don't want your pity, girl!" Bernice spat, her belly chain rattling against the armrest of her chair as her public defender reached out to grab her elbow. "You stole my son! You turned him against his own blood! You think you’re better than us because your father had a fancy government job?!"
"Quiet, Bernice!" her public defender hissed under his breath.
"No!" Bernice sneered, her face twisting into a hideous, purple mask of rage. "Let him hear it! Look at him sitting there like a puppet while that woman pulls his strings! I raised him! I fed him! I paid for his clothes when his father left us in the dirt!"
I looked at her.
For thirty-four years, that voice, that specific tone of theatrical rage, had been the primary controlling force of my life. It was the voice that had made me double-check my school grades, the voice that had made me feel guilty for moving to Southern California for my career, the voice that had convinced me that my mother was a saint who had sacrificed her entire existence for her only son.
Now, sitting five feet away from her in a government deposition room, listening to her scream at my pregnant wife while wearing a gray county jail jumpsuit... I felt nothing.
No anger. No shame. No instinct to comfort her or smooth things over.
Just a profound, cold clarity.
"You didn't raise me to be a son, Mom," I said, my voice low and quiet, easily cutting through her screams. "You raised me to be an insurance policy."
Bernice froze mid-sentence, her mouth remaining open for a second before she snapped it shut.
"You brought me up," I continued, "to believe that the world was dangerous, that everyone outside our house was an enemy, and that I owed you my life because my father left. And when I found a woman who actually loved me, a woman who showed me what a real home looked like... you tried to destroy her because you couldn't stand the thought of losing control of the bank account."
I stood up from my chair, taking Savannah’s hand in mine and helping her stand beside me.
"We're done here, Ms. Vance," I said to the state prosecutor. "The State can proceed with the prosecution to the fullest extent of the law. My wife and I will not sign any private settlement, nor will we testify in mitigation at their sentencing hearing."
"Christopher!" my mother screamed as we turned toward the double doors of the conference room. "Christopher, look at me! I’m your mother! You can't leave me here! You're my son!"
May you like
I didn't turn back.
I held my wife’s hand, feeling the warm, strong pulse of her skin against mine, and walked out of the room into the bright, sunlit corridor of the Sacramento courthouse, leaving the sound of my mother’s voice echoing behind us against the cold concrete walls.
