AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I could hear my mother’s advice in my head. Don’t talk. Get a lawyer. It didn’t matter that we were innocent—in fact, that made it even more important.
But Eddie and I couldn’t afford a lawyer, even if we knew one in this town. There was no chance we could get high-quality legal representation at three o’clock in the morning with no money to pay the bill.
“I don’t know where the knife is, because my wife and I didn’t murder that girl,” Eddie said, unfazed by Quentin’s question. “We found her at the side of the road and brought her to the hospital. Can we go now?”
Detective Quentin just stared at him with those uncanny eyes. Behind him, Detective Beam was motionless, watching and listening. He only glanced briefly at Eddie and me. Then his gaze went back to Quentin and stayed there, fixed and blank.
“You cannot leave town,” Quentin said slowly, as if he was just now making a decision. “Not yet. We have some things to sort out here. We want to question you in daylight and have you show us where you picked this young girl up. Was it on Atticus Line that you found her?”
“What?” Eddie said.
“Atticus Line. The road.”
“I have no idea what road it was. We were lost.”
“I see,” Quentin said calmly. “These are the things we’re going to get to the bottom of, Mr.Carter. I’m going to have officers drive you to a place nearby where you can get a few hours’ rest. I’m afraid we’re obliged to keep your car for now.”
He was polite now, because he wanted us to do something. He wanted minimal argument.
We had no choice. I could see it, and so could Eddie.
“Fine, then,” Eddie said, speaking for both of us. “We’ll go.”
—
We were driven in a squad car to a neighborhood in the dark center of town. We were told that the house we pulled up to was a local bed-and-breakfast, and that we could have a room. We were given our suitcases from Eddie’s car. By then I was too exhausted to ask many questions.
The woman who came to the door was somewhere in her forties, with brownish-blond hair in a short haircut and glasses that took up most of her face.
“This is stupid,” she said without preamble to the officers who dropped us off. “You all can’t keep them yourself? They could be murderers.”
“Detective Quentin’s orders, Rose. Right now they’re just witnesses,” one of the cops replied, as if Eddie and I weren’t standing there.
Rose looked at our bloody clothes. “Sure. Witnesses. I get a call from Detective Quentin at three in the morning about witnesses.” She pointed behind her to a doorway off her dark, overdecorated living room. “Your bedroom’s in there. Bathroom is down the hall. Don’t get blood on my linens or I’ll bill you for it.”
“They’ll get picked up at seven,” one of the cops said. “In the meantime, there’ll be a squad car keeping watch outside.” He was saying this for our information as much as for hers. The message: Don’t run.
“A squad car with one of you sleeping in it, more like,” Rose said dismissively. “Like I wasn’t married to a policeman for ten years.”
Their bickering was giving me a headache. I picked up my suitcase and walked to the bedroom Rose had directed us to, Eddie following.
The bedroom was lined with shelves filled with decorations: figurines, dolls, pots of fabric flowers, doilies, china rabbits and cats. The curtains on the single window were sky blue and puffy, the bedding sky blue to match. The comforter was quilted with a fringe like the hem of a prom dress, and the throw pillows were covered in white lace. Above the headboard hung a gilt-framed photo of Princess Diana wearing a formal white dress, a crown placed in her hair.
Normally, Eddie and I would make jokes about a room like this, but not tonight. Within ten silent minutes we were changed, our bloody clothes dropped into a heap in the corner of the room. I got into the ridiculous bed and Eddie got in behind me, his chest against my back and his knees drawn up against the backs of mine. I remembered that we fit like this, that he was becoming achingly familiar to me.
“April,” he said softly against the back of my neck when we were settled. “We need to talk.”
If we hadn’t picked up Rhonda Jean, if we’d continued on, we’d be at the Five Pines right now, drifting off after our first round of official honeymoon sex.
But if we hadn’t picked up Rhonda Jean, she would have died by the side of the road. She wouldn’t have had anyone to hold her hand, even briefly. She’d be lying abandoned and unknown in the dark, alone. Going cold.
“I suppose we do,” I said to Eddie.
I wondered what he would bring up first. The fact that we were in trouble, maybe. The fact that a girl we didn’t know was dead. The fact that we hadn’t told anyone about the truck that followed us down Atticus Line. The fact that the police had said they were coming to pick us up again at seven o’clock, only a few hours away.
“Thank you for not telling them about the truck,” Eddie said.
“Okay. But I don’t know why.”
