AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Ameses rose as though roped together and followed them down the hall to a small, windowless room with one rectangular table and four chairs, two on either side. They all sat except Decker. He leaned against the wall, his thick arms folded over his broad chest.
“Okay, the most obvious question: Was there any connection between Hal Parker and your daughter?” asked Kelly, his small notepad open and his pen hovering.
“None that I know of,” said Susan. “There would be no reason, you see. He never worked for us. We didn’t require his services. He never came to the Colony. She never mentioned him.”
“Okay,” said Kelly. “When was the last time you saw Pamela?”
At this, Susan glanced nervously at her husband.
Decker said, “We found her at about one in the afternoon. Prelim on the time of death was around nine o’clock last night. So there’s a long gap of time unaccounted for.”
Milton looked up, his eyes watery. “She had left the Colony. Pammie had leftus.”
“When did this happen?” said a clearly surprised Kelly. “I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
“Well, we don’t broadcast when people leave us,” said Susan, assuming a more measured and prim manner. “It’s not something we like to dwell upon.”
“And it happens very infrequently,” Milton hastened to add. “But we can’t keep someone against their will, not when they’re of age. We would never do that.”
“But we did counsel her, we tried to show her how bad it would be,” said Susan.
“Let’s get back to what happened to your daughter,” said Decker.
At this comment, both Milton’s and Susan’s eyes filled with fresh tears.
Jamison handed them both Kleenexes, which they used to wipe their eyes.
“Pammie was . . . bored with life at the Colony,” began Milton. “And because of that we let her go and stay with my cousin’s family in San Antonio last year. She got a taste of . . . life outside. She apparently liked it very much. When she got back she told us she wanted to leave, go back to San Antonio and enroll in some classes, find a job and—”
“—start living her life,” finished Susan.
“But then you tried to talk her out of it,” said Jamison. “Like you said.”
“And we were unsuccessful, as we also told you,” replied Susan stiffly.
“When exactly did she leave the Colony?” asked Kelly.
“A month ago,” answered Milton brusquely.
“But she didn’t go to San Antonio?” Decker pointed out. “She was still here. Unless she went out there and came back.”
“She . . . she hadn’t gone yet,” said Milton in a small voice.
“What was she waiting for?” asked Jamison.
Milton was about to answer when Susan cleared her throat. He glanced at his wife, who was staring at him with such a rigid expression that it was like she had been transformed from flesh to wood.
Milton shut his mouth and looked away while Decker watched this interaction closely.
She said, “We . . . we live a communal life here, and have no personal resources, but we could have asked the community to provide her with some means to travel to San Antonio and given her a bit of a cushion until she became self-sustaining.”
“But you didn’t,” said Jamison.
Susan could only shake her head.
Milton said, “We thought it would be a way to make her come . . . home.” He broke down entirely now and rested his forehead on the table, his body quaking. His wife didn’t look at him, but she did pat him gently on the back.
Decker eyed Kelly and said, “We’ll need to check her movements, friends, whether she had a job. Where she was staying and what if any connection she had to Hal Parker.” He stopped and stared over at Susan. “Before, you said that Parker never came to the Colony. But then you said that you had never required his services, which implies that you knew what he did for a living. Did you know Hal Parker, Ms. Ames?”
