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“You hanging in there?” a different detective asked, one who I think had been introduced as Lloyd, but all the names were starting to tumble together in my head into a mass of indiscernible letters.
“I don’t even know,” I told him, shaking my head at myself.
I didn’t see pity in his eyes. I saw that in most everyone else’s. I wasn’t sure what was in his. Not suspicion. But almost… knowledge?
No.
That couldn’t have been the truth.
I was just projecting my insecurity, my fears.
“I wish I could tell you that this is going to be all over in a few hours. But I think we both know it is going to be weeks of this,” he leveled with me, shrugging. “My advice is to get some good, much-needed rest, and stay away from the TV.”
“Rest sounds good.”
And it did.
I wasn’t sure the last time I genuinely felt rested, like I could sleep without worry.
My face was throbbing with pain from the beating. My head was screaming with a migraine from all the crying, the worry, the questioning.
“Mrs. Ericsson,” the other detective, an older man with one of those round faces that made him indistinguishable in a crowd, the top part of his head bald, catching a shine from the light above, the rest of his hair almost inky black framing his head like it had something to prove. “We think we are done here for the night,” he told me, sounding apologetic. Like I wanted half a dozen people in the house for the next day or two.
“Okay,” I said, voice as hollow as I was feeling.
“We might be in touch with more questions in the morning. Maybe talk to your neighbors. We will be keeping you – and the senator, of course – up to date as we learn anything. If you plan on staying here tonight, make sure you set your security system, lock your doors and windows. Actually, I will have one of the boys do that for you,” he said, snapping at one of the police in blue to come over, giving him the instruction to tramp through the house and check for open windows. “I would also advise looking into some private security. Just as a precaution,” he added in a soothing voice. “Until whoever did this is behind bars. It would just ease your – and, quite frankly, my – mind.”
“I will call someone. I have some numbers,” I told him, mostly lying.
“Good. Tonight. Before you lie down. See if they can come right out.”
“I will.”
“Do you want me to stay with you until you can find someone?”
“No. No, I’m okay. I’d rather know you were out there tracking this man down,” I told him, my eyes glistening again. This detective, he was a father of girls, my gut told me. His blue eyes went sad and panicked anytime a new bout of tears overtook me.
“Of course. Of course. We will do everything we can, I assure you.”
There was another fifteen minutes of goodbyes and assurances and advice before everyone finally cleared out, leaving me completely and utterly alone in my big, empty house.
I sat there on the couch in the library where I’d been questioned. I’d never sat on it before. I found it garish – red leather with brass nail heads up the front of the arms and across the bottom under the cushions. It turned out it was every bit as hard as it looked as well. I’d been there for I didn’t know how long, my behind numb five minutes after sitting down.
But my legs didn’t feel like they could hold my weight even if I tried.
So I sat.
Waiting.
Until I heard the low scratching noise that had brought Smith into my home hours before. Lockpick.
His footsteps were different. And when he moved in and forward toward the study, I realized it was because he’d changed his boots.
Because he’d made random bootprints out back.
He’d said he would.
The crime scene people had found them and molded them after taking pictures.
Somehow, seeing him, a face who knew my secret, broke the wall of calm I had been trying to keep in place.
My lips trembled on their own – not because I told them too. My eyes filled because they needed to – not because I needed them to. My whole body started shaking.
Smith’s gaze fell for a second. Sad, almost? Or maybe that was wishful thinking. When it rose again, he was moving across the room toward me, carefully side-stepping the bloodstain on the floor.
“The adrenaline is wearing off,” he told me as he got close, squatted down in front of me, his gaze steady, making me realize for the first time that his eyes were hazel. Green and brown at the same time, but maybe just a tad more green. Maybe it depended on the light. “You’re about to feel really, really shitty. I wish I had something kinder to say, but I find the truth is usually better in these circumstances. Right now, what you need is a shower. If you think you’re too shaky for a shower, then a bath. Do you drink?”
