by Riley Scott
Not too long ago, it had just been Wes and a couple others in this place. They’d come in the coffee shop, and Wes had always talked about being short-staffed. She looked around, taking in the influx of officers in the small space. No doubt this was spurred on by Chloe’s death, but it didn’t make her feel more comfortable. Every person here looked tired and more than a little on edge. She looked around the waiting room and noted the complete lack of anything she could deem uplifting. It was bland. The laminate lifting off the edges of the aged tables, the yellow paint peeling off the walls, and the water damaged ceiling tiles that had turned from white to brown made her cringe.
There was nothing beside her on the table, aside from her Styrofoam cup in which they had provided her water from the cooler. Not a magazine to be seen. Now she had nothing to do but sit and wait. For what? For whom?
She didn’t know. But she felt like she was going crazy.
Potential newspaper headlines circled in her thoughts. Lesbian Lover Thought to Have Committed Crime of Passion. Or worse yet, Lesbian Love Gone Bad. She sighed. It was a lesbian horror story. There was no need to sensationalize what was already horrific, but she knew the possibilities were endless.
While she knew she was being dramatic, it didn’t change the fact that her prints were likely the ones found on a murder weapon used to kill the woman with whom she had secretly been carrying on an affair. She knew how easy of a sell that could be. Coupled with the fact that she had no alibi, it would be a homerun for any prosecutor. They’d say she was angry. Whether it was a relationship fight or perhaps Chloe had wanted to go public and she hadn’t, they would be able to spin whatever story they wanted.
This town had already done away with one lesbian. Why not throw the other one behind bars?
She shifted her attention to what was happening at the station and watched a dopey kid with a buzz-cut almost run into a door because he was so frantically shuffling the papers in his hands. He looked stressed out, and he couldn’t have been more than twenty. In the corner of the room near the door, she heard a commotion. Sheila Dennings, a woman who worked at the grocery store, was trying to kick the police officer bringing her into the station. She was clearly drunk and was screeching incoherently, but it was obvious she was upset.
Amelia closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. People-watching had always been one of her favorite ways to learn about the world. She couldn’t do it here, though. In a police station, people-watching for the sake of entertainment was like trying to calm down by watching Psycho.
“Ms. Brandt.” The sound of her name jolted her upright in her seat. It was time.
She rose to her feet and thought about straightening her white button-down shirt but found the effort futile. It was wrinkled beyond repair. That was fitting. She felt wrinkled and beyond repair. There was no need to try to be acceptable.
She stepped up to the receptionist who had called her name. “Detective Stark will see you now. First office on the right.” The woman halfheartedly pointed in the general direction of the office without looking up from her files.
She wasn’t being monitored or being led to the office, which Amelia took as a good sign. But she couldn’t be sure. For all she knew, walking into that office could be the beginning of the end. Dutifully, she followed orders and focused on putting one foot in front of the other, even though her feet suddenly felt like they were made of lead. Her hands trembled and her breath caught in her throat. Shaking like a leaf, she rounded the corner into the office with Stark written in sharpie on a piece of printer paper and hung above the door. Quite a downgrade from what he was used to, she guessed.
Her mouth opened and she knew she was supposed to announce her presence, but her throat went dry. No sound came out, so she stepped inside.
“Ms. Amelia Brandt?” he asked, looking up at the sound of her footsteps. He extended his hand, motioning for her to take the seat in front of him.
She cleared her throat and tried to casually wipe her sweaty palms onto her pants as she took a seat.
“I’m Detective Stark,” he said, once again extending his hand, this time for a handshake.
“Amelia Brandt.” Her voice sounded foreign, as if she were listening to someone else speak.
“I’m sure you know why we asked you to come in today,” he said. She looked at him and wondered if it was the stress of the job that had created the sharp lines around his eyes and mouth. His gray hair was thick and wavy and, despite his weathered look, he had kind, gentle blue eyes. She imagined he would have made a good Santa Claus in another life, albeit a slimmer version.
He cleared his throat, and she realized he was still waiting for her to answer.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I spoke with Clayton Turner before he brought me here.”
“Clayton told me you might have some information on the Stanton case, and I just want to gather that information from you in your own words.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but his eyes still looked kind. He lifted the left corner of his mouth into a small, sad smile. “Can you do that for me?”
“I can.” She took a deep breath. “Do I need a lawyer or anything?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. You can have one if you’d like. But we just need to gather some information from you. Think of it as research.”
That didn’t make her feel any more at ease. Research could be damning. “Okay,” she agreed. “All I told Clayton is that I dated Chloe. We were together. I saw her the evening this all happened, but I left her place in the early evening and went home. I made her dinner and then went home.”
“You were dating her?”
She started to get angry until she realized he wasn’t judging her or trying to decide if she fit the “lesbian” bill. He was simply doing his job.
“I was.” Whether it was becoming more normal for her to say the words, or if it was due to her need to adhere to authority, telling him she was gay was easier than it had been before with anyone else.
“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he said, nodding his head as if he was tipping his hat.
She covered her mouth with her hand, not wanting to let the emotions rip through. “Thank you,” she said after a moment. “That’s something I haven’t heard a lot since it happened.”
“Do you know of anyone who could have wanted to harm her?”
“I don’t know why anyone would have wanted to.” She glanced down before making eye contact again. “None of it makes sense to me. She was good as gold, sweet, funny, and hardworking. She was everything people raise us up to be here in Knell. She didn’t deserve this, and I don’t know why anyone would have wanted to harm her. That said, I think we all know that Trent did it. Everyone who was at the bar that night has made pretty clear the kinds of things he said, his actions, everything. Why is it even a question when Trent is in custody?”
“We just want to make sure we’ve got the right guy.” He jotted something down in the notebook on his desk and furrowed his brow. He opened his mouth but didn’t speak, and Amelia knew there were things he wasn’t saying. “Trent maintains his innocence, and he’s innocent until proven guilty. We’re doing due diligence.” He tightened his lips and exhaled, making it clear he was done speaking. He looked off into the distance. Letting out another sigh, he reached up his right hand and then let it drop back to the desk and shook his head.
“Can’t discuss that part of the investigation, I take it?” she asked.
He broke eye contact and placed all his focus on the water glass to the side of his desk. He took a long sip, obviously stalling. Gingerly, he placed the glass back on the desk and turned his head back in her direction. In the silence, she replayed his words: Innocent until proven guilty. Something that was supposed to bring hope only seemed to reinforce the good ol’ boy system of this little town. Trent was the mayor’s kid. No doubt there was pressure from someone higher up to keep him from sullying the family name.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Stark said, finally. “But I
can tell you that anything you know that would help us would be much appreciated.”
“Of course. What can I do?”
“Did she have visitors often?”
“Aside from me, her dad, and some of the guys who worked on the ranch, she didn’t. She kept a pretty private life. She was a social butterfly, but she liked it on her terms. When she wanted to see people, which was frequently, she would go out mainly to McCool’s. She also went on road trips to visit friends in other areas when work allowed. She had many friends, no enemies…at least until that night. But few ever came over to her place.”
“Okay.” He made notes in his notebook again. Amelia wished they didn’t have to do that. She could see the recorder on the edge of the desk and didn’t know why he had to add to the element of making her feel like a suspect if she wasn’t one. “So you would say that the tire tracks in her driveway were strange if you had seen them there?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “I went over that next day to take pastries to her father and those investigating, and I’ve never seen tracks like that on the east side of the house. No one would park there. That was her garden and everyone who knew her well knew that she’d pitch a fit if someone killed her okra or tomatoes. Most of the guys who come over with trucks would park in the circle driveway.”
“And where did you park when you visited?”
As if she were watching a movie, the excitement she felt each time she parked her car in her hidden alcove came rushing back. She would check the road for any passing cars and then punch the gas, accelerating quickly back behind the west side of the house, in between two towering pine trees.
She balled her right hand into a fist, making sure her fingernails pressed into her palm to draw her out of her nostalgia. “I parked further back on the west side, in a hidden spot, covered with trees.”
“Why the secrecy?”
She wished she could tell him how stupid a question it was. “Obvious reasons.” A sound resembling a laugh escaped from her lips. “Chloe was out. And Chloe is dead.”
“Fear?”
She nodded.
“Of something like this, or in general?”
He had never been any type of different, she could tell. She looked at him again. White, male, heterosexual. He was the epitome of privilege. She didn’t want to look at him that way, but he was making it difficult. Only someone who had always fit the mold they were supposed to fit would ask a question like that. “Fear of everything,” she said, her words coming more quickly, sizzling with passion as they slid off her tongue. “I’m a business owner. You think anyone around here wants to buy gay cupcakes, muffins, or pastries? You think anyone wants to keep me around at family gatherings or continue to be my friend? Chloe had friends, yes. She had plenty of friends. But Chloe was different than I am. I had to work to build my circle of people. Chloe came by it naturally. She was a force of nature. Everyone wanted to be around her. She had that charm and the type of personality that brings people closer. It’s a type of charm that let the small-minded folks around here overlook the fact that she was gay. They’d almost dismiss it for the sake of loving who she was. Me, on the other hand, I’m different. I talk too much, too fast. I’m quirky. I am the downhome girl who wanted to leave and then realized this was home, even if I didn’t quite fit. I made myself fit. But being gay on top of it was too much. I hear the way people around here talk about gay people. You should listen to the coffee shop chatter. Women announcing to their gossip circle that, gasp, ‘my nephew just told everyone he likes boys, and now I’m not going to Christmas if he’s coming.’ It happens all the time. They talk about supporting hospitals choosing not to treat gay patients and about how it’s just wrong for a child to have two mothers. They defend bullies. They stand firm in their hatred. I’ve never heard anyone mention Chloe’s name. It was as if they forgot she was gay or didn’t want to risk bringing her up for a point of controversy. I have lived in fear that I’d be the one they gasped and gossiped over, the one they weren’t afraid to rake over the coals. I was never like Chloe, and I don’t know that I could be if I tried. So yeah. I’m afraid of all of it.”
His eyes were wide, but he nodded as if everything she had thrown at him was what he was expecting. He was good at this, she noted. She looked at the lines on his face again and reminded herself it came from years of practice.
“So no one ever really used the spot where the large truck tires were found?”
“No. Chloe used the driveway, too. Wait.” She held up her hands to stop him from asking another question. “Didn’t the tire tracks match Trent’s truck? We know he was there, right?”
Instead of answering, he again sighed and looked down. Frustrated, she upped the ante, careful to keep her tone calm. “People talk. We know the details. We know too much about the case to pretend we don’t all think he’s guilty. You all here—as well as all of us in town—know his pretentious, large tires were at the scene. And even if you don’t want to confirm that, we’ve already gone over the fact that I was there delivering pastries the next day and saw the tracks firsthand.”
“They did.” His eyes looked tired and he shrugged as if he had messed up somehow. “Tire tread and time match.” Tapping his fingers on the table, he knit his brow. His eyes shifted back and forth and Amelia fought the urge to tell him to just ask his question. Clearing his throat, he leveled his gaze on her. “Any reason why he would have been over at Chloe’s house?”
“None at all. She didn’t associate with Trent. He didn’t associate with her. It’s a small enough town and they knew each other. But she didn’t care for his pretension. And he didn’t care for her gayness. They didn’t interact.”
“Until that night?”
“Until that night.”
His lips formed a tight line and he nodded, scrawling things on that damn pad again. She could hear people scurry back and forth in the open area behind her, and she had to wonder what was going on in this town. People didn’t get up in arms this often around here.
“Aside from Trent and his actions that night, did she have anyone who treated her that way, as an outcast?”
“I’m sure people did behind closed doors, but not that I know of.”
“Hmm,” he sighed. “Any ex-lovers she mentioned who might have had it out for her?”
“We didn’t really talk about those things too much. We talked surface level about ex-lovers. We weren’t there. We were just starting out. We didn’t know each other that way for very long. And now we never will.”
The weight of her statement hit her in the gut. It would have been nice to have been afforded the chance to get to know Chloe in the deepest of ways. She thought about all she had learned and how it would never be enough. The world would never have enough Chloe and the sunlight she brought with her when she entered a room.
She was grateful when he took another strange, focused drink of his water. It gave her time to get her heartbeat back to normal rhythm. Cueing on the method her mother used to lower her blood pressure in heightened situations, she took a deep breath in through her nose, held it, and exhaled through her mouth. Deep breath. Repeat. In the time it took him to take his labored drink, she had gone through five repetitions, just enough to settle her and bring her back to normal.
“Did you have a key to her house?”
Amelia flashed back to their fight on the fateful and only day she had ever used it. She nodded. “I did. Why is that important?”
“Just need to know these things, ma’am.”
Her right eyebrow shot up as if jolted by electricity when she realized where this was headed. “There was broken glass. Whoever did this—I’ll resist blaming Trent just as a formality—broke in through the back double doors. That was in the news story, too. Is that why you need to know?”
He gave her a gentle, but condescending, half smile. She was breaking the rules and speaking before being spoken to. Taking the cue, she nodded.
“I have one other thing I would like to talk to y
ou about, if that’s all right?”
She nodded, wishing she could have said “no.”
“There were some fingerprints discovered around Chloe’s house that don’t match hers. They don’t match Trent’s either, and we’ve come up dry in our search for whom they might belong to. They’re small prints. This is just a hunch, but Clayton mentioned you had small hands. Any chance those prints are yours?”
A laugh shot up but she squelched it in her throat. This was no laughing matter. “I’m sure they probably are. I was in that house just hours before this nightmare occurred. I made dinner that night, brisket, for her before she got off work. She worked long, hard days and I wanted her to have something nice. I was in that kitchen, that dining room, that living room, her bedroom for most of the day. I had gone over early to clean the place and make it feel homey. I had taken care to light candles to give it a happy scent. I had spent most of the day trying to spoil her the way she always spoiled me. Aside from that day, I was there often—several times a week. So yes. I’m sure those prints are probably mine.”
“Understandable,” he said, jotting notes. “Mind if we take your prints, just so we can rule out another suspect in the case?”
She tried to hide the gulp that formed in her throat. Did they want to rule out another suspect or add one? She nodded, despite her worst fears.
With that, he stood and she was led down the hallway. Within minutes, she had been printed and returned back to his office for waiting. She couldn’t help but feel like she was in the principal’s office as he quietly waited with her for the running of her prints against the evidence.
Running through topics in her mind, she tried to find something that would make suitable small talk. Nothing really seemed to follow murder questioning well, so she remained silent. He too kept quiet. In the silence, her stomach growled. She tried to remember when she had last eaten but came up blank. By the wailing sound in her belly, she realized it had probably been far too long.