Epilogue
Unreleased Recording – Guest: Dr. Lila Jennings, Forensics Professor
LILA:
I don’t know if there’s a right way to talk about a case when your own name ends up in the evidence log.
Or when the line between victim, perpetrator, and bystander blurred so much you stopped being able to tell who deserved your sympathy and who deserved prison time.
But I do know this: the presented facts don’t always tell the truth.
Sometimes they just tell the version that was left behind.
Blood dries. Motives get buried. People lie—to each other, to themselves.
And sometimes the only way to uncover what really happened is to get a little dirt under your nails.
THEO (off mic):
Or break into a locked lab. Don’t forget that part.
LILA:
It was barely locked.
[Pause]
LILA:
Victoria Mayfair destroyed people. She framed Peter. And we couldn’t let her go down as the victim in a story she authored in blood. Peter deserves the truth. And sometimes… The only justice people find is the kind they deliver to themselves.
BARYN:
So what now, Professor?
LILA:
Now? I go back to teaching first-years how to assess behavior for signs of intent versus reflex. I write my lecture notes. I put the case files away. And I try to forget what it feels like to realize that justice isn’t always about punishment. Sometimes, it’s just about knowing.
BARYN:
Knowing what?
LILA:
That you survived. Even if it didn’t leave your hands clean. And that sometimes, surviving means carrying the people you’ve lost with you. Laurel would’ve hated most of this, by the way. It would have soooo stressed her out.
[brief laughter]
But I think she’d be proud of how it all ended.
[Audio distortion – faint rustling of paper.]
BARYN (formal):
Thanks for joining me on this edition of Casket Case, where the family skeletons weren’t just in the closet—they were alphabetized, cross-referenced, and sealed in evidence bags.
I’ll be back next month with someone else’s trauma.
Until then, stay detached. It helps. And maybe don’t trust your relatives.