AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If it wasn’t him, then who was it?” Elle demanded, her voice cracking. “Who murdered my son?”
Compton looked aggrieved. “I regret to tell you that the suspect remains at large and is presently unknown.”
The detective’s statement left Elle speechless. She looked over at Calder Hudson, who appeared to be as dumbfounded as she.
Compton broke the taut silence by suggesting that they leave the building before the press conference got under way. “Unless you want to be hounded by reporters, which I don’t suppose you do.”
Perkins came toward them from the end of the hallway and overheard her as he reached them. “They’re already arriving and claiming spots. I’ll escort you out the back way.”
“I would appreciate that,” Elle said.
Calder gave a brusque nod. He appeared to be enraged and barely able to keep his anger in check.
Elle shook hands with Compton and thanked her for the update. “It wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”
“It wasn’t the news I wanted to break to you, either.”
“What are you going to do besides change the young man’s status from shooter to victim?” Elle asked. “By the way, what was his name?”
“Levi Jenkins. As for what we’re going to do in regards to the investigation, we’ll review every video from every security camera yet again. We’ll go over statements we obtained from eyewitnesses like yourselves, and appeal to the public to—”
“Enough bullshit,” Calder said. “You’ll be starting from scratch. That’s essentially it, right?”
He had said precisely what Elle was thinking except in a tone much harsher than she would have used.
To Compton’s credit, she responded candidly. “Yes. We’re no happier about it than you are, Mr. Hudson.”
Acting as a diffuser, Perkins said to Compton, “I’ll escort them out and meet you down there.”
Compton nodded. To Calder and Elle, she said, “I’ll keep you apprised of developments.” With no more than that, she retreated into the office and closed the door.
Perkins wordlessly indicated that Elle and Calder follow him. They fell into step behind him as he threaded his way through the third floor’s maze of hallways to an elevator at the back of the building, designated as being for sheriff’s personnel’s use only. He punched a code into a keypad to bring it up.
They rode down to the ground floor in silence, although Elle could feel anger emanating from Calder like heat waves. She reasoned that he was struggling to contain a variety of simmering emotions: Frustration. Impatience. Despair. Rage.
She was experiencing all those, plus some. Indefinitely, if not forever, they’d been cheated of getting closure. It was a devastating blow.
As they got out of the elevator, Perkins motioned them toward an exit. Adjacent to it were restrooms. “If you’ll excuse me,” Elle said and gestured toward the women’s room. “I’ll see my way out from here.”
She exchanged a look with Calder, but he didn’t say anything so neither did she. She turned away and went into the restroom, locked herself in a stall, and had a meltdown.
It wasn’t nuclear, as others during the past week had been. But it was violent enough to make her torso ache as she sobbed out her grief and outrage.
But mindful that her car was parked in front of the building and that her time to escape ahead of the press conference was dwindling, she forcibly brought herself under control.
At the sink, she made a cold compress out of paper towels and used it to dab at her flushed face, then held it against her stinging eyes. It did no actual good in terms of making her look better, but it was soothing.
She left the restroom and exited through a door that was so heavy she had to put her shoulder to it. It opened onto a sidewalk that divided a parking lot on the left from a grassy lawn on the right.
The sidewalk ended at the street, where Calder Hudson was looking down at his phone and pacing along the curb, his empty left sleeve swinging at his side.
Perkins was nowhere in sight.
She headed for the parking lot. Cutting across it would put her in front of the building near the row of meters where she’d left her car. But after taking no more than a few steps, she acted on impulse and changed course.
When Calder noticed her coming toward him, he put away his phone and took off his sunglasses. Right away, he noticed that she’d been crying. Concern deepened the dent between his eyebrows. “Are you all right?”
“Are you?”
