Page 60 of Dirty

“Sure.”

He stepped into the living room and immediately made eye contact with me. He was muscular, and had short hair like many of the Marines in town. “Hi. I’m detective Watson.”

I nodded. “Hi.”

He turned toward my mother. “You filed a missing person’s report about your daughter, Alexandra. She was abducted at the 7-Eleven, and…”

“She turned up,” she said. “She’s right there.”

He didn’t act surprised. He simply glanced at me, nodded, and then looked at my mother. “I suspected that might be the case.”

“Okay. Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

“Well. As you may imagine, I’ve got some questions about her disappearance, and about her reappearance, for that matter.”

He looked at me. “Have you got a few minutes to answer some simple questions?”

“Do I have to?”

He shrugged. “You sure don’t. But, if you don’t, I may have to draw something up for interfering with a murder investigation. Then, I’ll have to arrest you, take you in, and you’ll be forced to answer questions in an interview, or in a court of law. I’ll let you think about that for a minute.”

“Murder!” My mother gasped.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Murder.”

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“Everything,” he said. “Who abducted you? Where’d they take you? How’d you get free? How’d you get home? I need descriptions of the abductors, and of any and all events that transpired during your time in captivity.”

He looked at my mother. “And, Miss Hart, I have a few for you as well.”

She returned a worried look. “Like what?”

“Why didn’t you report that your daughter had been found?”

“Some guys in a truck took me,” I blurted, hoping to get him to shift his focus to me.

He turned toward me and pulled a notepad from his back pocket.

“They blindfolded me, and took me somewhere, but I don’t know where. They kept me and some other girls locked in a room. Then, one night, the door opened, and they blindfolded us and led us outside. The next thing I knew, we were on the back of a bunch of motorcycles leaving. It was weird, really.”

As I spoke, he scribbled notes onto the pad. When I stopped, he looked up. “That’s it? That’s your story?”

“Uh huh.”

He lowered the notepad and stared. “You were gone for what? A week?”

I nodded. “Yeah, probably.”

“And that’s your entire story?”

“Yep.”

“So, let me get this straight. Blindfolded, driven somewhere, and then taken in a room. Kept captive in the dark. Then, blindfolded, loaded on the back of a motorcycle, and hauled out?”

I nodded. “That’s pretty much it.”

“Get a look at any of the men who abducted you?”