Page 29 of Mender

He didn’t say anything a moment. Only looked at me, eyes narrowed, brows creased. “You know,” he said after a little while. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you people during the last few days, it’s that you watch out for each other.”

I shrugged, feeling I may as well have been in the interrogation room.

“Watch out for each other to an insane degree, I think.” He sat back a little in his chair. “It struck me as odd at the time,” he continued. “Mr. Miller seemed like a regular man. Some run-ins with a few of the officers now and then, but nothing on him, really. And then he’s caught for a B&E and for assaulting a woman in her home.” He paused giving me a chance to add something if I chose to, I supposed. I kept my mouth shut.

“And then this elaborate escape from the transport to Ashdale, just before they arrived in the city.”

I looked at him, trying to keep my face in check. That woman had not been assaulted by Freddy, but by her boyfriend, who had terrible problems controlling his ability. She’d never seen it coming. She’d actually thought it was Freddy, and he’d protected the guilty party who we’d managed to get help after that. He’d gotten better. Why would I wreck that by saying something? And Freddy was safe. Not here, unfortunately, but safe.

“You misspoke,” Hansen continued. “You and Liz. You both knew him. Knew about this. Didn’t you?”

Hansen didn’t even sound angry now. That was almost worse. At least you knew where you had him when he was angry. He was right, though. I’m not denying that. He had a knack for collecting odd pieces of information and connecting them. But I couldn’t tell him anything. It would put others in jeopardy. Those who had helped Freddy escape.

“I can tell you this,” I said, keeping my voice level. “If I go across the street and rob the deli…I will have to face that.” No one would help me out if I committed a crime like that. The Community would be okay with the police dealing with it. “But if…say…little Eloise kills someone by literally scaring them to death because she can’t control herself…well, that’s a different matter altogether.” We would do everything we could to help her. If she was an adult and did it on purpose? Not so much. We might actually have to stop her ourselves. Not a type of job I appreciated.

Hansen sat still, drumming his fingers on the desk while thinking. He did not look happy. Seemed he couldn’t get the answers he most wanted about us. It dawned on me that if it turned out we couldn’t trust him, then he might become a job like that himself. I also realized that I didn’t want that to happen. Nothing so asinine as my attraction to him being the reason. No. He wasn’t a bad person despite us all hating his job. He was trying to help. It was only that he went about it in a different way.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m trying to make some sense of this. And Mr. Miller here”—he indicated Freddy’s photo with his thumb—“he was like you, wasn’t he?”

I kinda saw where he was going. At least, I thought I did. It didn’t seem like he was out to gather evidence, more like he wanted to understand. But I couldn’t know that for sure.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said instead of giving a proper answer. I got a bad feeling in my gut, but I’d said it now. Him looking let down didn’t sway me. He shook his head, then glanced to my right and pressed the escape key, Freddy’s file and photo vanished from the screen.

I turned to see Chief Mulligan descending on us, her long dark hair gathered in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, making her look more severe than she was. Still, the look on her face didn’t exactly radiate daffodils and bunnies.

“Good to see I’m not two detectives down,” she said by way of greeting Hansen. “Routledge found your car parked in a random street last night…oh, and no phone.” She folded her arms and looked expectantly at him. Apparently, they’d tried calling him.

“Well, you told me to go investigate her,” he said and pointed at me as if she didn’t see me sitting right next to her. “Didn’t turn out like expected.”

I looked up at her, which made us both uncomfortable, and smiled. “I broke his phone,” I lied. “Dropped it in my coffee.”

For some reason, she could believe that. “Okay,” she said. Hansen did not contradict me. That was something after our interrupted conversation. Or interrogation. Whatever that had been.

“Well,” she continued, “since she’s sitting here I guess I was right and you were wrong?”

An almost invisible twitch fluttered across his mouth. “She wasn’t involved, no…she was the intended target.”

Mulligan looked down at me and then averted her eyes. Like Hansen, she had assumed I listened in all the time. I had never corrected her. I had helped with her kid, and to do that I’d had to convince her I could. After that, she had managed what the FBI could not–make use of me.

Still, she didn’t trust me, nor I her, for that matter. She was a cop after all. I wasn’t surprised that she had told Hansen to investigate my involvement in the kidnapping. What had surprised me was that she’d kept this away from the detectives who were actually on Andrea’s case.

“Why was she the target?” the chief asked.

Hansen looked at me, and I shrugged. “She knows.”

“Because of the…thought thing,” he told Mulligan, looking like he couldn’t believe he was saying those words to his boss, let alone to any other human being.

“Oh,” was Mulligan’s answer. Very eloquent. Funny the effect you have on people sometimes. Making the police uncomfortable has to be considered a bonus, though.

“Okay,” I said, impatient to be out of the station. This conversation was going too slow. “They’re after me because they want to use me.” I deliberately looked at Mulligan at that. She was, after all, doing the same thing. “They took Andrea by mistake.”

“How are Mel and Rick getting on with the case?” Hansen asked.

Mulligan shook her head. “They’re not. No traces other than what was found on the farm. Nothing. It’s like they disappeared from the face of the earth. And that FBI agent doesn’t seem very invested in the case, either.” She sighed at this, lowering her eyes a moment. “We may have to face facts soon. It could be that we won’t find her.”

I couldn’t help folding my arms and looking down myself at that. Her words stung me more than I liked. I had failed Andrea so badly.

“Unless you two have something to share?” Mulligan continued. “If they were after you?” She glanced at me.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com