Witness

by Denise Gwen

  He pulled out a chair and slumped down into it and put his head in his hands.

  The Sheriff said nothing.

  “Boss,” Rob said. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I know you don’t,” Sheriff said, “and I’m sorry, Rob.”

  “Things’ll still work out, you know?”

  “Yeah,” the Sheriff said. “I know.”

  “So, we’re just gonna have to be careful.”

  Rob chose his words with care. Walls have ears, the old saying went, and thus far, neither one of them had said anything incriminating, but then again, if someone smart, someone suspicious, had been paying close attention, or managed to put all the elements together . . . well, it could all go badly.

  It could all go very badly.

  “We’re just gonna have to keep an eye on her,” the Sheriff said at last, looking up at him, and Rob nodded.

  Yes, they both knew who they had to keep an eye on.

  Kathryn McGlone.

  “She could really fuck things up for me,” the Sheriff said.

  Rob looked up quickly, studying his boss’s face, to see if he wanted to say anything further, but Randy remained silent.

  Rob considered, then sighed. “Yeah, she could.”

  “Well, let’s not do anything just yet. Let’s just keep an eye on her.”

  “Okay, Boss.” Rob smirked. “Too bad they let her out of the nuthouse, eh? They couldn’t keep her one extra week?”

  “You’re telling me,” Randy said, and they laughed.

  A few minutes later.

  “Hello, um, hello?” Kathryn knocked on the screen door of the house next door. “Um, hi? Can I talk to Brittany, to Brittany Stephens, please?”

  A woman came to the door and opened it but left the screen door closed. She pressed her lips tight together and gave Kathryn the once-over. “Are you with the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office of Randy Randalls?” she asked.

  Knowing what the woman was about to say, and yet helpless to stop it, Kathryn cringed and said, “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  She couldn’t pretend otherwise; she wore the brown Sheriff’s uniform, with all the insignia of a deputy sheriff. No way in hell could she pretend to be affiliated with any office other than the Rowan County Sheriff.

  “Do you want to see my credentials, ma’am?”

  “No, I can see your credentials perfectly well,” the woman said coldly.

  “Ma’am, I am a deputy sheriff with the Rowan County Sheriff’s Department, and my superior officer, Deputy Michael Poling, told me to come to this house to interview Brittany Stephens. Now, ma’am, I’m on official police business. Will you please let me talk to this young lady?”

  At this, the woman crossed her arms over her chest and glowered. “Do I have to let you talk to her? You do understand, don’t you? Brittany doesn’t trust any of you.”

  “She doesn’t trust a police officer?”

  “She doesn’t trust you, meaning, anyone from the Rowan County Sheriff’s office. She doesn’t trust her step-father, whom she firmly believes murdered her mother, she doesn’t believe in the court system, because it allows a man to beat his wife and beat his wife and beat his wife and get away with it time and time again—”

  “Who is it, Helen?” an old lady asked, hovering in the corner of the storm glass door.

  “It’s one of Randy’s henchmen,” the woman said angrily, “and she wants to take Brittany away—”

  “No, I don’t, ma’am—”

  “She wants to get Brittany out of this house and do things to her and God alone knows what’s going to happen next, because I don’t want to see Brittany accidentally committing suicide, if you get what I mean—”

  “Ma’am,” Kathryn said, raising her voice, “if you refuse—”

  But the old lady was ahead of everyone. She stepped forward, put a restraining hand on the woman’s arm, and opened the screen door. “Helen,” she said gently, “this is a young lady police officer. And I’m sure she’s just here to do her job, and that requires her to interview Brittany.” She gazed keenly up at Kathryn. “Isn’t that right, Officer?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kathryn said, relieved and mollified at the same time by the little old lady’s quick intervention and soothing ways.

  But then Helen stepped outside and Kathryn took a step back and reached for her holster and the old lady hurried outside as well, keeping a restraining hand on the woman’s arm. “Helen, she’s a perfectly nice young lady police officer, I’m sure, and I’m also sure she’s here to do her job, and once she does her job, she’ll leave, won’t you, Officer—” and she narrowed her gaze, searching for Kathryn’s badge to get her name “—McGlone, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kathryn said. “Deputy McGlone. That’s right, ma’am, I just want to meet with the dead wo—decedent’s daughter, take down her statement, and you all can be present for the interview, but my superior officer told me to interview the little girl.”

  The little old lady beamed up at her daughter. “There, you see, Helen? Not a problem at all, is it? And we can both be present during the interview and no harm will come to Brittany.”

  “Hah,” Helen said. “And what the hell is the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office doing here at the crime scene, anyway? Why wasn’t the Shelbyville Police Department called to the scene?” she glowered at Kathryn. “This woman who got killed—and I don’t for one second believe it was a suicide—was married to Sheriff Randy Randalls and it’s a travesty of justice, I say, yes, a travesty of justice. For the Rowan County Sheriff’s department to be anywhere near this crime scene.”

  She began yelling some more, some incoherently babbling and weeping, and the old lady tried vainly to get her to calm down and come inside. She nodded at Kathryn to take her daughter’s other arm, and together, she and Kathryn eased the distraught woman back into the house and then the old lady shut the screen door, locked it, and then locked the front door as well. As she stepped away from the door, she gazed up fiercely at Kathryn.

  “You’d better take care, Officer, or we’ll have words.”

  Kathryn gulped. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The little old lady nodded at the door, to indicate the house next door. “I knew something terrible was going to happen to Miranda Randalls. I knew it the first day I saw her, with bruises on her neck and arms. It wasn’t a matter of if he was going to kill her. It was a matter of when he was going to kill her. I told her then to leave him, leave him for good, and she promised me she would, but you know how it is, these women never do find the strength to leave the men who beat them, and now he’s gone and killed her.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to say.”

  “I understand, you’re just doing your job, officer, but kindly remember, I saw this coming a long time ago, and if things go the way they’ve always gone, then Sheriff Randalls is going to get away with murdering his wife.”

  Kathryn remained silent. She believed it, too, and wasn’t going to let him get away with it, but she couldn’t very well agree with the little old lady. She did, on the surface at least, owe a shred of loyalty to her boss.

  The little old lady stood there a moment longer, staring up at Kathryn, then reached forward to pat her on the hand. “It’s been a terrible upset, I’m sure you understand. And I’m sure you’re a very nice young lady, but I don’t think too much of your boss, Sheriff Randy Randalls.”

  Kathryn said nothing.

  “Would you like some refreshment before you start your interview?”

  “A glass of water would be nice,” Kathryn warbled.

  “Very good,” the little old lady said. “Go on into the den there, and I’ll be back in just a minute with a glass of water, and then I’ll go fetch Brittany and my daughter Helen.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Oh, and young lady?”

  “Yes, ma’am?” Kathryn asked politely.

  “Take care of this bastard,” the little old lady said. And she tu
rned on her heel and walked into the kitchen.

  An hour later.

  Feeling she’d done as much as she could to get the young girl relaxed and at least moderately receptive to being interviewed, Kathryn opened her notebook, poised a pen above the paper, and looked at the girl. “Okay, so your home, you’re eating a snack, and then you suddenly got this sense, this feeling, right? That something hinky’s going on?”

  Up till this moment, Brittany Delacourt had sat there quietly, withdrawn and tearful. The little old lady, Sophia Getz, had been very helpful and had managed to get the child to offer more information, and Helen, Sophia’s daughter, and the mother of Bridget, Brittany’s next-door friend and neighbor, after her initial mistrust of Kathryn, had finally warmed up to her as well, but getting the little girl to say anything other than ‘uh-huh,’ ‘no’ and ‘yes,’ felt liking pulling teeth.

  But when Kathryn uttered the word ‘hinky’, Brittany looked up in surprise and managed a wry smile. “Hinky? You a Chicago girl?”

  “Um, yeah, actually.” Kathryn ducked her head and chuckled. “No. I grew up in Milwaukee, but my friends and I used to head down to Chicago a lot on the weekends, hang out at Wrigley Field, catch the Cubs in action, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Brittany said, smiling, “isn’t it amazing the Cubs finally won the World Series?”

  “Oh, it’s beyond awesome,” Kathryn agreed. “It’ll keep us going for the next hundred or so years, ya think?”

  “How come you don’t have a Sheboygan accent? You grew up in Milwaukee, after all, you oughta be talking like the characters in that movie . . . oh, what’s that movie’s name?”

  “You mean Fargo?” Kathryn asked.

  “Yeah.” Brittany snapped her fingers. “Just like that? How come you don’t sound like that Deputy Sheriff in the movie Fargo?”

  “My mother’s Welsh,” Kathryn said. “An expatriate to this country, who never gave up her British ways, she made darn good and sure I spoke like a proper, British girl.”

  “Hah, hah,” Brittany said, her face pinking with pleasure. “My dad’s French, and he lives in Chicago, and he does everything he can to make sure I speak French fluently when I’m at home with him and my step-mother, and he presses me to use a French accent as well, but he can’t stop me from saying things are hinky.”

  “Good for you,” Kathryn said.

  “I know, right?” Brittany said, and she beamed at Kathryn, and in that moment, as she smiled, Kathryn saw the lovely young woman this twelve-year-old girl was rapidly blossoming into. Even though it annoyed her French father for her to use the expression, Kathryn suspected it was probably okay with him that Brittany used the expression hinky, because, after all, they were Chicagoans, and even a proper twelve-year-old girl with a French father could be permitted the occasional Chicago expression.

  Brittany laughed, then, and as she laughed, something of the sweet, unaffected twelve-year-old girl she’d been before her mother died in this horrible, wretched way, returned to her features, and it seemed to Kathryn as if Brittany got to forget, for a brief moment, the fact that her mother had died, and then she gulped back a big sob, and to Kathryn’s surprise—and to, no doubt, Sophia’s and Helen’s surprise as well—Brittany jumped out of her chair and flung herself at Kathryn and wrapped her arms and legs around Kathryn and howled with tears and laughter and Kathryn held her close and wept with her.

  I’m gonna nail him to the wall on this. I will not stop until I get him convicted and in prison for the rest of his natural life.

  A few minutes later.

  “So,” Kathryn said, reviewing her notes, “you were sitting in the den, eating your snack, and then, suddenly, you got this hinky feeling, right?”

  “Yes,” Brittany said, her eyes filling with tears, but the girl controlled her emotions.

  Kathryn had taken Brittany through the entire series of steps she’d taken, from the moment she got home, through to the moment when she found herself sitting in the den, suddenly getting a bad feeling.

  Ever since their discovery of a shared love of Chicago, her interview with the young girl had gone well, and the grandmother had sat quietly, listening, sipping her tea, offering no remonstrance or other comment, but at Brittany’s hesitation, she said, “I know this is the hard part, honey, but you can do it.”

  “Yes,” Brittany said, gazing thankfully at the old lady. “This is the hard part. As I sat there in the den, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight, and I felt odd, as if someone was watching me.”

  She shuddered.

  “Go on,” Kathryn urged her.

  Brittany described what she felt and saw in the moments as she got off the sofa and walked into the dining room and found her mother.

  Brittany still appeared eerily composed, but throughout the colloquy, Kathryn sensed the girl holding something back from her.

  “That’s when I ran upstairs to my room . . .” she said, and her voice trailed off, as if she’d suddenly realized a fact she didn’t want to reveal, and Kathryn wondered at this, and pressed, gently, to get the girl to say more.

  “What did you do when you ran upstairs to your room?” Kathryn asked.

  Brittany gazed back at her, her eyes wide open and bright. “I got a strange feeling about something, and ran upstairs, but when I got upstairs, I realized I didn’t remember why I ran upstairs.”

  “Anybody would’ve been upset,” Sophia said.

  “What did you do when you ran upstairs?” Kathryn prompted again.

  “I forgot what it was that I wanted.”

  “What were you checking on?” Kathryn asked, thinking she might get the girl to open if she tried another tack.

  “Oh, I thought I left a book in my room, but then, when I got upstairs, I realized I didn’t.”

  You ran upstairs to your bedroom for a reason, young lady. And you’re not telling me the entire story.

  “Anything else happen in your bedroom?”

  “No.”

  Okay. Subject closed, for now.

  Brittany, apparently feeling she’d covered everything, stretched and yawned, a clear indication, for Brittany, at least, the interview was over.

  But the girl was hiding something.

  “Okay, that’s great, Brittany. You’ve been a tremendous help, but I just need to ask you one last thing, a kind of wrap-up question, you’ve been so patient with me, and you’ve been very helpful, but I like to ask my witnesses a final series of questions—” and at the look of boredom on the child’s face, and the sigh of frustration from Sophia, she quickly added, “—and this won’t take long at all, but I want you to give this next question your concentrated effort, okay?”

  “Okay,” Brittany said warily. “Aren’t we done, yet?”

  “Just give this last question some serious thought, and please don’t answer right away, but I want you to think about it, okay?”

  “All right,” Brittany said.

  “I want you to close your eyes, and try to remember everything you did, from the moment you walked into the house, until the moment you found your mother . . . and I want you to see, in your mind’s eye, if there’s anything at all, anything you can think of, that struck you as odd or strange, or somehow not quite fitting, okay?”

  “You mean, apart from finding my poor mother, dead?”

  “Yes, apart from seeing your poor mother dead.”

  “Okay,” Brittany said warily, glancing at Sophia, who nodded encouragingly, and said, “Go ahead, honey, it’s a good question.”

  Brittany’s eyelids fluttered closed.

  “Walk me through the house,” Kathryn said in a low voice. “You said you walked in through the back-kitchen door, right?”

  “Right,” Brittany said in a far-away voice.

  “So, you’re in the kitchen, and you’re looking around. Does anything look . . . not quite right, to you?”

  And just like that, Brittany’s eyes fluttered open.

  Kathryn had to stifle a sigh of disapp
ointment.

  Oh, well, at least it was worth a try.

  “I do remember something odd,” Brittany said. “But it sounds kind of dumb to say it.”

  “Nothing is dumb,” Kathryn assured her. “Trust me, you can’t ever say a dumb thing to me.”

  “Hah,” Brittany said, but without rancor. “Try telling that to my step-father.”

  “That’s just something men say to women to put them in their place,” Sophia said, winking at Kathryn. “Eh, Detective?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “My mother is—was, a wonderful cook, and she loved her kitchen. Randy had just spent forty-thousand dollars renovating it.” She looked over at Sophia. “He never let up on reminding my mother of that, either. He mentioned it at every god-damn meal. ‘Oh, look at this fine meatloaf from my wife’s brand-new-fucking-forty-thousand-dollar-kitchen. I sure hope this meatloaf is worth it.’”

  She glanced worriedly at Kathryn. “Sorry for using the f-word.”

  “That’s okay, Brittany. I hear that word a lot, over at the Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Anyway,” Brittany said, a crease of anger at her brow, “my mother loved her kitchen and she was very particular about everything. She didn’t even like it when Randy went in there to get something from the fridge. She said she’d get it for him, because he had a way of rearranging things whenever he went in there, and she said she couldn’t find the ingredients she needed when she was cooking.”

  “That’s fine,” Kathryn said. “I’m sure your mother’s coking was excellent.”

  “She was a fine cook,” Brittany said with a reverential sigh, “and she told me that morning, before I left for school, that she was gonna make her tomato basil soup that day for her ladies’ club luncheon, and I remember telling her, please make enough for me, because I love her tomato basil soup, and she laughed and said she would.”