7
Ivan was arrested, along with his wife. I had recorded his confession on my phone, which was enough to put him away for good.
Both he and Grace Palmer were charged with murder and assault. Ivan was the mastermind, and Grace, the accomplice.
Grace, it turned out, was Melanie’s twin sister. Their parents had divorced early on, and while Melanie took their father’s last name, Grace kept her mother’s name, Palmer. When Melanie was murdered, the police had no idea she had a sister who looked so similar.
Ivan had set up the perfect frame job, dressing up in Steven’s clothes and imitating his movements on camera to make it look like Steven had
done it.
<
Steven’s death had been staged, too. Grace had used a spare key to enter our home, dressed in her sister’s clothes to torment Steven. He’d been on diazepam, and she must have looked like Melanie’s ghost, pushing him to the breaking point.
The murder weapon for both killings had been a scalpel, fitting since Ivan worked at Riverdale Medical Center. He and Grace had tried to create alibis by claiming they were together at home during both murders. But as suspects, they weren’t allowed to vouch for each other, and their defense crumbled.
I had the recorded confession, and the court dismissed every appeal. Ivan and Grace’s fate was sealed.
I lost the baby. The house, car, and all of Steven’s accounts were seized when the fraud and embezzlement charges came to light.
For a while, I was left with nothing.
But, as I’d discovered, there was one card Steven hadn’t registered under his own name. He must have opened it in a relative’s name, stashing away around a hundred and fifty thousand.
Six months later, after the dust settled, I gradually transferred the money to myself, used it to buy a small house on the city’s outskirts, and took to Tik Tok, where I became a makeup artist specializing in transformations.
I’d once worked in makeup for a studio, and I’d mastered the art of disguise. The transformations I did on Tik Tok were almost flawless, and I even learned to mimic male faces.
I quickly gained millions of followers. But one day, I saw a comment on one of my videos that stirred my emotions
The comment read, “This is so realistic. If someone used this skill to impersonate others, they could fool anyone–even the cops.”
Curious, I checked the profile and saw a photo. It was Detective Hannah Shaw.
Her latest video showed flowers, captioned: “Could someone really sleep through a murder downstairs? Amazing how disguises can be almost perfect.”
