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Don retook his seat and sat quietly for a few seconds before opening up. “Melissa wasn’t the first. I didn’t know at first, you have to believe me. If I had known what she was up to, I never would’ve…” Never would’ve what Don? He asked himself?
“I know how this looks, I should’ve said something the first time I realized what was going on, but you have to understand, Stella’s all I have. She’s been with me since I was a boy she’s the only one I’ve had after my parents… Oh, I think I’m gonna be sick again.” He held his breath and tried calming down until the nausea passed.
“The first one was a long time ago. I don’t think anyone ever reported her missing; she was a runaway who’d got herself together, I guess. She was of age, though…” He hurried to tack on that last. “I didn’t know about that one until years later, after the first one that I suspected.”
“What was her name, do you remember?”
“Angela… Angela Moore. She was a sweet young lady. The first I ever fell in love with. She’d ran away from home years earlier and never got in touch with her family after getting her life together. She’d been running from an abusive home if I remember correctly. Just turned eighteen when she left, but she was in her mid-twenties when we met.”
He went on to name a few more that he suspected had found their end at Stella’s hand until he came to Detective Branson’s victim. “I know I should’ve said something after the first time but who was going to believe me? Like you said, I’m the one they had contact with. No one would ever suspect that Stella was the one…”
Don’s own words played over and over again in his head. Could it be that she’d actually killed his mother? He recalled the few times she’d come by the house when his mom was still alive. She’d come under the guise of being his father’s new secretary. Everyone had said what a nice person she was to help out because his mom had been so ill.
He remembered when she and his dad had sat him down and explained that they were getting married in order to give him a more stable life not long after his mom had passed. He also remembered his dad sneaking her in and out of their family home not long after his mother’s death.
How could I have been so stupid all these years? He thought. Had I been so blinded by lust that I didn’t see what was right before me? The more he thought about their lives, the more plausible the accusation seemed, and as if all the life had been sucked out of him, Don deflated right where he sat.
He was so disgusted with himself that he no longer cared about sharing the deepest darkest secrets of his life with Stella. She’d betrayed him, and all the while, he’d been too blind to see. If there’s one thing Don cannot abide, it’s being made a fool of. So as things came to his recollection, he spilled it all to Detective Sparks.
Celia recorded every word, her skin crawling more and more as she listened to the blatant child abuse that the educated man sitting across from her described as love. Murders aside, what Stella had done to the young impressionable Don Simpson is a crime worthy of death.
Two hours later, Celia needed to take a break to clear her mind. “Can I get you something to eat or drink, Mr. Simpson?” Don could only shake his head no. He didn’t think he’d ever want to eat again, even though he felt empty inside. The day had started out so well; how had it come to this?
Celia left the interrogation room and headed to her desk. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten lunch. “What the… Riley, what are you doing here? How long have you been sitting there?” He had the nerve to look at his watch before getting up from her visitor’s chair and grabbing the bag from the diner off her desk.
‘This thing work?” He turned up his nose at the ten-year-old microwave on the table across the room but didn’t wait for an answer. Celia watched speechlessly as he removed a container from the bag and put it into the microwave. She wanted to blast him, but the smell of potato soup, which happened to be her favorite, filled the air.
“Sit, I’ll bring your food to you.”
“Riley, how many times do I have to tell you that this is my workplace? You can’t just come and go here as you please.”
“Then you should’ve eaten lunch at lunchtime. I’ve been sitting here for damn near ever.” Celia ran her hand over her face and begged for patience.
