CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR #2
“Sara MacAllister. What have you done with her?”
“Me?” I pointed at myself and shook my head. “I haven’t done anything with her. I don’t have a clue where she is. But the real question is where Cara is. I… I was going to get dinner. We were trying to get out of here. But we were too late.” I closed my eyes, wanting to sink down on the curb again.
“Why don’t you come on down to the station with us, Mr. Ashton?”
My eyes flew open at that. “What? Why? You need to look for Cara. Someone has her, and I’m willing to bet it’s Monty Hart.”
The policeman’s eyebrows went sky high. “Monty Hart. As in Hart Family Farmers Markets?”
“Yes.”
“Right.” I didn’t like the skeptical look on his face or in his tone one bit. He turned to Maynard, and I heard him say, “I think we’ve got a loony one,” under his breath.
Then he turned back to me. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”
“Why?”
“We want to ask you some questions regarding the disappearance of Sara MacAllister.”
“Oh my God,” I mumbled under my breath. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
He started pulling me towards the patrol car, and I didn’t resist. I had seen enough on TV about what could happen to people who tried to struggle with police.
Just as I was about to get in the car, an older woman I recognized as Cara’s neighbor Mrs. Rivera yelled out something. The policeman holding onto me stopped moving.
“What?” he shouted.
The woman was being interviewed by a female police officer. “Hobbs—you need to hear this,” she called out while leading Mrs. Rivera over to us.
At first, I had hope. I thought she would either share something of relevance about Cara or assure the police that she’d seen me with Cara and that things were good between us.
That is not what happened.
“Is this the man you saw yelling at Ms. Hargrave this morning?”
The woman studied me with watery brown eyes. “Yes,” she said, anger written all over her face. “He was yelling at that sweet girl. He had another woman with him, too.”
Hobbs tightened his grip on my elbow. “What did the other woman look like?”
“She was pretty, with blonde hair. She was tall and thin, and she looked like she’d been crying. He,” she pointed an accusatory finger at me, “was yelling at both of those girls.”
“That fits the description of Sara MacAllister,” Maynard said, the look on his face turning even more grim than it already was.
Hobbs’ mouth thinned to a straight line. “Don’t worry ma’am. We’re taking him downtown for questioning.” With that, he basically pushed me into the back seat of his car. He didn’t close the door, and I could still hear him talking to the other officers.
“Finish taking her statement,” he said to the female officer who was talking to Cara’s neighbor.
“Y’all split up,” he said, pointing to even more officers who’d shown up in other squad cars as I’d been talking to Officer Hobbs.
“I need someone to process the vic’s townhouse.
Maybe two of you. Someone else needs to continue knocking on doors and finding out if anyone saw something.
And you,” he pointed to the last guy, “look for anything down the side of the building. That’s where one of our guys found a trail of blood droplets. ”
“Blood droplets?” I was up and out of the car before either of the officers had time to grab me.
I hurried around the side of the townhouse, following what was definitely a trail of blood.
It ended abruptly at the edge of a sidewalk just down the side of the street, as if Cara had been put in a car and taken somewhere.
I was inspecting things as both Hobbs and Maynard approached.
Hobbs grabbed me, put my hands behind my back and pushed me chest first into the brick wall of Cara’s townhouse. “I didn’t say you could come over here, Mr. Ashton.” He was surprisingly strong. My face scraped against the bricks as I tried to turn and look at him.
“I just want to look for her. I just want to find her,” I pleaded with him. He shook his head, looking at me like I was a murderer, and half dragged, half walked me back over to a police car.
He pushed me inside, barely taking care that he didn’t knock my head against the top of the car. “Don’t make me cuff you.” With that, he walked away to talk to a few officers.
I slammed my head against the back seat.
I was so frustrated I could scream. I wanted to be out looking for Cara.
I wanted to drive directly to the Hart estate and see if they had her.
Instead, I sat there, helpless. I’d seen the remains of an attack on the woman I loved. And I was powerless to help.
And where the fuck was Sara MacAllister? What had happened to her between Cara’s townhouse and the hotel she was supposed to go to? Had someone hurt her? Was she really missing?
I was pretty sure I was a suspect.
I put my head in my hands. She was last seen with me. The guy who’d practically forced her on a plane. This didn’t look good. Not at all.
And I didn’t even have my phone with me. The phone that had a recording of Sara telling what happened. A recording that would have backed up what I’d said about the Harts.
I sighed as Hobbs got in, started the car, and pulled into traffic. His lights were flashing, but he didn’t turn the siren on.
I thought it couldn’t get worse than realizing that Cara had been attacked and taken. But it had. Now, I was traveling to the police station in the back of a cop car for questioning about Sara’s disappearance. And Cara’s, too.
At least I wasn’t wearing handcuffs. It’s not like they had arrested me.
I felt dazed, numb. Frustrated, overwhelmed, and brutally sad, I watched the scenes of downtown Charleston pass by.
For the first time, I wasn’t charmed by this beautiful city.
I wished with everything I had inside me I’d just grabbed Cara and run far away from Charleston as soon as I’d arrived instead of staying one second longer than we’d absolutely had to.
I leaned my head against the cold glass of the car window and closed my eyes. Now someone had Cara. And I didn’t know if I’d ever get her back.