Chapter Eighteen – Laina #2
The world passed me by, or maybe I passed the world by as the officer took me downtown.
I didn’t say a word, not when we arrived, not as I was escorted to an interrogation room, not when that officer asked me if I wanted anything to drink.
I wasn’t fully there. My mind was gone, still at that house with my dad’s body.
It wasn’t my first dead body. I’d seen much more gruesome things, much fresher bodies, and yet I knew at the time they were bad men who deserved every ounce of pain they got. Some people deserved to die. I’d never claim to be a saint.
But when it hit home, it hit differently. No one warned me. No one told me how much worse it was when the body you were looking at belonged to the only family member you had, the one who raised you, the one who tried to give you everything.
Another police officer came into the interrogation room, this one not wearing the typical police uniform.
I assumed he must’ve been some kind of detective or something, someone whose job it was to get to the bottom of crimes like this.
An older gentleman nearing fifty, but he had none of the appeal that, say, Jason had.
“Before we get into things, I want to say I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Hawkins. Your father was a credit to what this city is becoming, and we’re worse off with him gone,” he started, but his niceties meant nothing to me. I didn’t know this man, so why should I give a shit about anything he said?
I stared at a spot on the metal table that had a dent. I didn’t know how a table like this could get a dent like that, but I imagined if it was created by someone’s head meeting it, it would hurt something fierce.
“I hope you understand this is just procedure. When we have a high-profile case like this, a case that’ll definitely draw national attention, we need to do it right,” he went on. “So, tell me what you were doing leading up to the moment you found your father.”
I lifted my gaze. Above the detective, in the corner of the room, was a camera with a red blinking light, pointed directly at me. Was I a suspect? Did these people think I could’ve done this? The thought was enough to enrage me.
But, with how out of it I was, that anger was futile.
There was no point in lying, so I said, “I was out last night with my boyfriend. I didn’t get home until…
” I tried to think back, to what time it was when I got out of Kieran’s car.
I couldn’t recall a specific time. “Maybe twelve. Or one. I showered. I was going to make something to eat, but figured I’d call my dad to let him know I was home.
When I called him, I heard his phone ring in his office, so I went to check and… that’s when I found him.”
I didn’t sound like myself. It was like I was listing off things on a grocery list and not describing what I was doing when I found my dad’s body.
“And this boyfriend of yours can corroborate that? We will need his name.”
“Kieran Miller,” I said, and though I was out of it, I noticed the way the detective’s brows raised. He thankfully resisted saying anything stupid and wrote down Kieran’s name.
“Can you think of anyone who would want your father dead?”
That got me to stop staring at the camera in the corner and to gaze steadily at the man.
“Are you kidding? He was the mayor. In a city like this, that puts a target on your back no matter what.” Of course, I didn’t say the one person I thought was responsible.
I couldn’t. It’d make me look like I’d lost my mind—and that was probably exactly how she wanted this to play out.
The detective nodded along with me. “I’m well aware of that. Tell you what, I can get you some food to eat while we work on contacting Mr. Miller.”
All I did was shake my head and mutter, “I’m good.”
The expression the detective gave me told me a few things: the biggest one was that he felt sorry for me.
The next thing was that he was not looking forward to the eye of national news being on this city.
And, of course, the final thing was that he simply did not know whether or not he could trust me at my word.
As if I was the killer. As if I’d done it. The mere thought was beyond insulting, and yet I couldn’t exactly fault him for it. He didn’t know me. He was simply a cop trying to cover his bases.
He left the room, and once again I was alone. Alone in a cold, sterile room full of walls, a two-way mirror, and a camera in the upper corner recording me.
Being alone, but I didn’t really feel alone, because mentally I was back in that house, reliving the moment I turned into my dad’s office and saw him.
Those few split-seconds before the wound on his chest registered in my brain, when I thought he was in there, working, before I realized he was long gone and I never got to say goodbye.
I’d hated him for so long, blamed him for everything, and I’d been wrong. We’d had heart-to-hearts, talks about how I felt about his life of politics and how I sacrificed for him as a kid… he’d told me he’d walk away from the mayor’s seat if I asked him to.
It was too late for any of that now. There was no walking away from death. Death came for all of us.
But it shouldn’t have been today. It should have been years from now. We were mending the bridges between us, we were on the up and up. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair, although I bet a lot of people had those two thoughts when it came to death coming for someone in their life.
Time crawled on. Or maybe it stopped altogether. It was hard to say. I was a shell, vacant, nothing more than a body sitting there, waiting for whatever would come next.
What would come next? I didn’t know. How did someone plan a funeral? What did my dad want—to be buried or cremated? It wasn’t something we’d ever talked about, so I had no idea, and the thought of choosing wrong made me want to vomit again.
I didn’t know how long it was until the detective came back, only when I looked up I saw it wasn’t the detective. It was a familiar face, and a beautiful one at that.
Lola.
She rushed toward me. “Laina,” she breathed out my name as she pulled me to my feet and wrapped me in a hug.
“Sorry we took so long. Sylvester just got word from one of his men here that—well, I don’t have to explain what’s going on to you.
” She held me at arm’s length, studying me, her blue gaze intrusive.
“How are you? You look like you want to be sick.”
All I could do was shrug.
“Come on. We’re getting out of here.” She slipped her hand into mine and pulled me along, leading me toward the door.
“If they need you for something, they can get in line.” Out in the hall, we met Sylvester, who looked pretty stern while he spoke with a pair of detectives.
After a few moments, he followed us along.
No one tried to stop us, although we did get a few questioning looks as we went. Feeling Lola’s hand in mine grounded me somewhat, even though I still felt like I wasn’t really here. This was some terrible movie I was watching, and I couldn’t pause it and end it. No rewind button anywhere.
As we exited the station, Lola’s hand squeezed mine and she walked a little closer to me as she whispered, “Having friends like us has benefits. You’re coming home with me.”
I couldn’t argue with her, not that I would. Where else would I go? What would I do? I supposed I should contact my guys. Everything just felt so… so pointless. Useless. In the end, we all died, so what did any of it matter?
Sylvester drove us to Lola’s house, where he promptly said he’s going to look into this. Lola took me to her bedroom and told me to get some rest—but how could I rest at a time like this? How could I do anything but think of that sight, of the way my dad had stared so evenly at the ceiling?
“I’ll order some food for us and call your guys,” she told me, acting like the supportive friend who’d been through something similar, even though I knew she hadn’t.
No, Lola didn’t lose her dad. She killed him, just like she killed her mother and, eventually, her brother. They got what was coming to them, but my dad? He didn’t deserve an end like that. He was far from perfect, but he definitely didn’t deserve that.
She squeezed my shoulder once she sat me on her bed. “We’ll figure this out together, okay? I know you probably feel like it, but you aren’t alone in this, ‘kay? I got you, girlie.”
I didn’t say anything as she left, and even though I didn’t feel tired in the slightest, I still laid down. My head on her pillow, I moved my right hand beside my face, staring at it. The hand I’d touched my dad with. Even now, I could still feel that coldness, how it had chilled me to the bone.
I’d gone from riding high to the lowest of the low.
The whiplash was unwelcome, as was the event that led me to where I was now.
The thought of my dad no longer being here, no longer being alive—the realization that I’d never sit next to him and have dinner with him while he awkwardly talked about my love life—it was crushing.
How were people the same after such immeasurable loss?