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“Mrs. Baker, she told you to call Mona Sherman?”
“Yes, well, really, my father. Mary said I needed somewhere safe to go. Mona answered the phone.”
“And who is Mona in relation to you?”
“She’s my father’s caretaker. He’s sick.”
“So what happened next is…” he glances down at his pad of paper. “Mr. Miller arrived home, and Mrs. Baker confronted him about the abuse?”
“He wanted her to leave,” I say, and this is not a lie.
“She refused to leave, so he shot her?”
I suck my bottom lip between my teeth and I nod.
“And where were you?”
“Where was I?”
“When the shooting took place?”
“Oh, I was in the living room on the telephone.”
He jots something down on the notepad. “With your father?”
“Yes. Or with Mona. I don’t know. I spoke to the both of them, I think.”
“And then what happened?”
“I was worried that my husb—that Joel would hurt me again. I thought he might kill me.”
“You didn’t see him shoot Mrs. Baker, though, correct?”
“I heard the shots. And then I ran to the barn and hid.”
“You say you didn’t see your husband shoot officer Baker either?”
I shake my head. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.
“But you came running when you heard the shot.”
“There were two shots.”
“Why would you come out of hiding? I mean, why,then?”
“I don’t know.”
He furrows his brow. “You don’t know?”
“I didn’t want anyone to die.”
This back and forth, it goes on for hours. Days actually, and then it turns into weeks. I undergo rounds and rounds of interviews; I field hundreds of questions and finally a deposition. In the end, the only story the investigators have to go on is mine. Everyone else that was there that day was dead. Detectives were either too lazy or too inept to piece together the truth, so no charges were filed.
I might just make it in Hollywood after all.
