‘Crystal,’ Deputy Hanson replied blandly.
‘Good, now I am going to go and get dressed and when I have at least had a cup of fucking coffee I will drive myself to the police station and answer Chief Walcott’s questions. I have absolutely nothing to hide and despite the alarming level of incompetence of your department I can only hope that you will catch the real killer soon and this witch hunt will stop,’ Olivia marched back into her house, grasping the door. ‘Now get the hell off my property.’
She slammed the door in the deputy’s face and sagged against it, trying to drag some air into her lungs which suddenly seemed too small. Her body was shaking with fury.
She’d had about as much as she could take from Chief Walcott and his minions. Unfortunately she had the unpleasant suspicion it wasn’t going to end anytime soon. With him so fixated on her, she was sure he was missing vital evidence which would lead to the true murderer. It was time to do something about it.
Picking up the phone, with trembling fingers she dialled the number she had memorized the night before.
‘Hello,’ a sleepy voice mumbled.
‘Erica?’
‘Yes,’
‘It’s Olivia West,’ she breathed heavily. ‘I think I need your help.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing yet, but Deputy Hanson turned up on my doorstep ten minutes ago, insisting that she takes me in for questioning.’
‘About what?’ Erica frowned on the other end of the line. ‘Adam Miller? Do you think they found something in your car?’
‘They couldn’t have, there is nothing in my car to find,’ Olivia replied tightly. ‘Besides Deputy Hanson said it had nothing to do with either Adam or the incident with my car the other night.’
‘But she wouldn’t tell you what it was about?’
‘No,’ Olivia confirmed. ‘She said I wasn’t under arrest but I get the feeling they’re going to insist that I go in.’
‘Okay, hang on a minute.’
The phone went quiet for a few moments, although Olivia could hear mumbled voices in the background.
‘Olivia?’ Erica’s voice was calm but it held an underlying urgency.
‘Yes.’
‘Jake is going to call in to the station and see if he can find out what’s going on’ Erica replied.
‘Jake’s with you?’
‘Yes,’ she responded easily. ‘Now listen, you don’t have to actually go in for questioning if you don’t want to.’
‘I know,’ Olivia sighed tiredly, ‘but whatever they think I did this time, it will only look worse for me if I don’t go. It’ll look like I’m trying to hide something.’
‘Okay then,’ Erica replied, ‘I’ll meet you there.’
Erica hung up the phone with a frown of concern. She turned to Jake who was pacing the room, his jeans slung low on his hips, the first button undone. He raised his hand and ran it through his unruly hair, causing the hard muscles of his stomach to ripple. Erica fought back the sudden urge to continue what the early morning phone call had interrupted, but she focused instead on his face. He scratched the early morning stubble at his jaw as he turned his blue eyes on her, his gaze filled with unease.
‘Okay, thanks Carl I owe you.’ He hung up the phone, slipping it into his pocket as he bent forward and scooped his shirt off the floor before pulling it over his head.
‘So what’s going on?’
‘Looks like Brody disappeared last night.’ Jake sat down on the bed next to Erica causing the mattress to dip as he pulled his boots on.
‘Brody?’ Erica looked up in confusion, ‘but I was just with him last night.’
‘You were?’ Jake’s eyes narrowed.
‘Yeah, I followed him in when he went to drop off Olivia’s car, and then I stayed to talk with her’
‘Well according to Carl down at the station, dropping off Olivia’s car was Brody’s last job. He was supposed to head straight home but Cassie says he never showed up. His pick-up was found this morning, just down the road from Olivia’s place. The door was open and there was blood found at the scene.’
‘Jesus,’ Erica breathed shaking her head in disbelief and displacing the wild red curls. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to figure the Chief will look straight at Olivia for this.’
‘There’s something else,’ Jake murmured.
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure yet,’ he frowned, ‘but I’m being stonewalled. It’s like they’re purposely keeping me out of the station. I’m being sent out to Salem today on some bull shit errand that one of the newbie’s could easily handle. Something else is going on, other than Brody disappearing, and whatever it is I don’t like it.’
Erica hauled herself out of bed, wrapping her naked body in a silken robe.
‘It’s okay,’ she ran her hands down Jake’s arms comfortingly as he stood and faced her. ‘I’ll take care of Olivia, trust me.’
‘I do trust you,’ he murmured as he ran the pad of his thumb along her jaw, tipping her face back so he could look into her startling green eyes.
‘Then go to Salem and let me do my job,’ she replied softly.
He nodded before he grazed his lips against hers.
Erica smiled, stepping further into the hard steely warmth of his body and sighing against his mouth.
Olivia stepped down off her porch with a travel mug of coffee in one hand and slipped her sunglasses on with the other. She had a monstrous headache brewing. Having already sunk a couple of Advil she sighed and headed towards her car, pointedly ignoring the deputy who was propped nonchalantly against her squad car, while watching Olivia with an inscrutable expression.
Biting back the ridiculous urge to hurl her coffee at the intrusive deputy she got into the car and fired the engine, not at all surprised when the deputy pulled out after her and followed her into town. Paying particular attention to her speed and driving she tried to ignore the unease prickling between her shoulder blades. She wouldn’t put it past Mercy’s finest to get her on a traffic violation if they thought they could get away with it.
Feeling particularly ornery she decided to forgo parking in the assigned bays outside the police station, in favor of parking along Main Street.
Stepping out of her car as if she didn’t have a care in the world, she strolled down the street, stopping by the bakery to pick up a bagel and more coffee for her breakfast. Despite the fact that it felt as if she were swallowing lead, she made herself eat slowly as she wandered casually towards the police station.
Taking the last bite of her bagel she washed it back with more coffee and dropped the wrappers in the trash. Out of the corner of her eye she saw deputy Hanson reach into the trash and extract the cup, placing it into a clear plastic evidence bag and tucking it under her arm.
Her eyes met the deputy’s and Olivia deliberately gave her an insulting smile and laughed, lightly shaking her head as if in amusement. The deputy frowned at Olivia’s reaction but continued to follow her towards the police station.
Olivia really was amused under the thick layers of irritation. They must think she was dumb as a brick. She’d watched Deputy Hanson remove her trash carefully and she had to chuckle. No doubt they were after a sample of her DNA. Well that wasn’t going to happen. She’d let her magic burn slowly beneath her skin, not enough for anyone to notice but enough for the heat to run to her fingertips, melting the surface of the paper cup and leaving slight burn marks but no fingerprints or DNA.
Good, she thought viciously, let them try and figure that one out.
Pushing open the clear glass doors she felt every eye in the room turn and study her. Taking a deep breath she straightened her spine and headed for the front desk. A middle aged woman wearing a peach twin set and perfectly coiffed hair, peered over her glasses curiously as Olivia stopped in front of her.
‘I’m Olivia West,’ she stated in a clear voice. ‘I believe Chief Walcott wishes to speak with me.’
‘Cam,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘Miss West is here.’
A tall, well-built Deputy, freshly shaved with neat blonde hair, appeared from the back. For a moment Olivia tried to place him; he had a hint of familiarity about him. She realized he was the deputy who had knocked on her window the day she arrived back in Mercy, as she had sat undecidedly at the town limits. Hell, she really wished now that she’d thrown her damn car in reverse and put Mercy in her rear view mirror.
‘Deputy,’ she nodded as he approached her.
She studied his face as he stopped in front of her; there was something else familiar about him. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it and maybe that was for the best, given the way he was looking at her. His blue eyes burned with barely suppressed hostility and his jaw clenched reflexively, as if he were trying to stop himself from saying something.
‘Follow me,’ he spoke curtly before turning his back on her and marching toward the back of the station.
Rounding the desk she followed him through a maze of desks and filing cabinets. People stopped working as she passed, either watching her openly or whispering behind their hands. Trying to shake off the prickles of unease, she held her head high. She hadn’t done anything wrong. No matter how they tried to bully her, there was really nothing they could actually do.
The deputy led her down a quiet corridor into a small airless room. A mirrored window adorned the wall to her left, leaving the other walls a plain utilitarian gray.
A metal table sat in the middle of the room with chairs either side. After being shown to one of the chairs she sat down, quietly shedding her jacket and hanging it over the back of the chair.
It was hot in the small room, making it feel even more airless and uncomfortable, but then she supposed that was its purpose. Instead of questioning her out in the office, they had put her in one of the interrogation rooms like a suspect. They really weren’t subtle, she thought scornfully.
The deputy had disappeared and closed the door behind him with a chillingly quiet click. Olivia found herself hoping that Erica would hurry up. She could certainly use some back up in the shape of a lawyer right about now.
They left her sitting there for a good twenty minutes, sweating in the tiny room. Pulling at the neck of her soft chenille sweater she shifted uncomfortably. God, she wished they’d turn down the damn heat, it was like sitting in an oven. Finally the tidy little woman from the front desk stuck her head around the door and asked if she wanted anything. Shaking her head Olivia watched as the woman disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared.
They left her another twenty minutes and Olivia shifted in her seat wishing she hadn’t had two cups of coffee before she’d come in. She’d need the bathroom before long if they didn’t get a move on. She wasn’t stupid, she knew these delaying tactics were their subtle attempt to get under her skin and make her nervous.
Well, the hell with him, she thought irritably. He obviously had no idea how stubborn she could be. When she was a teenager her social worker had always said she was too stubborn for her own good, that she’d cut her own nose off to spite her face and at this particular moment Olivia had to agree with her. So far, the Chief wasn’t so much making her nervous as pissing her off.
Frustrated she pulled a hair band from her pocket and scooped her long, thick wavy hair off her damp neck and wound it into a messy knot on the top of her head and pushed her sleeves up her arms.
After the first hour passed she rummaged in her pocket and came up with a cherry lip gloss. Leaning back in her chair, she casually glanced over at the mirror which she assumed was two way glass. She knew they were watching her. She lazily applied her lip gloss and pressed her lips together, slowly blowing the cops on the other side of the mirror a kiss and tossing them a wink.
That must have annoyed them because the door opened ten minutes later and Chief Walcott entered. He was holding a file, and flanked either side by the deputy who had shown her to the room earlier, and another shorter, older deputy she hadn’t seen before.
He sat down comfortably in front of her and studied her silently.
‘Aren’t there Geneva convention laws against this kind of thing?’ she raised a slender brow.
‘What sort of thing?’ he asked calmly.
‘The heat?’ she smiled slowly. ‘Are you hoping to sweat some sort of confession out of me?’
‘Nothing of the sort Miss West,’ he smiled coolly in return. ‘We simply did not wish you to get cold. After all we are coming into winter and Massachusetts can be very cold at this time of year.’
‘You’re too considerate,’ she answered sweetly.
‘Miss West where is Brody Walker?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Who?’ She tried to place the name.
‘Brody Walker. He came to your home late yesterday afternoon.’
‘The Auto guy?’ she frowned, casting her mind back. ‘The one who dropped my car off?’
‘That is correct.’
‘How the hell should I know?’ she shrugged. ‘He came, he dropped my car off, and he left. Why?’
‘Brody has been missing since he left your property yesterday evening,’ the deputy who was shooting her daggers earlier snapped at her.
Gazing at his face, it suddenly clicked why he looked familiar and her eyes dropped to the badge pinned to his shirt.
‘You’re his brother?’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Miss West, how would you know that?’ Chief Walcott leaned in closer.
‘Seriously? He looks like the guy and his badge says Deputy Walker. It’s not exactly rocket science.’
‘Miss West, you were reportedly the last person to see Brody. Yesterday afternoon, after dropping your car off he disappeared. His truck was found not far from your property, abandoned. There were signs to indicate some harm may have come to Mr Walker.’
‘And right away you just assumed what? That I followed him and somehow managed to overpower a guy who had a good six inches and fifty pounds on me?’
‘Miss West,’ the Chief’s voice hardened, ‘this is not a moment for levity,’
‘Believe me I am well aware of that,’ Olivia replied coolly, ‘but you are mistaken.’
‘How so?’ his eyes narrowed.
‘I was not the only one to see Brody yesterday. Erica Kelly was with me.’
Chief Walcott’s jaw tightened.
‘Miss West, if you wouldn’t mind running through the events of yesterday afternoon.’
‘Fine,’ she snapped irritably. ‘Brody arrived at my house late yesterday afternoon with my car. Erica Kelly arrived at exactly the same time. She introduced herself to me, Brody handed me the keys to my car and Erica came in the house with me as he left. We talked for a while and she ended up staying for dinner and didn’t leave my place until nearly 9.30pm.’
Olivia straightened in her chair. Leaning forward and placing her elbows on the table, she stared directly at the Chief.
‘Now correct me if I’m wrong, but if Brody left my property and was stopped not far from my house, then I can only conclude something happened to him within what? Twenty minutes of leaving me? I was with Miss Kelly for several hours and she can vouch for me. Even if I had been physically capable of causing Brody any harm, I had no motive and no opportunity.’
Deputy Walker rounded the desk and leaned over her. Bracing his arms either side of her, he trapped her in her chair forcing her to look up into his furious eyes.
‘Where is my brother?’ he hissed.
Olivia gripped the arms of her chair tightly, forcing down the wave of anger. The last thing she needed right now was to lose her temper. She could already feel the fire inside her uncoiling like a serpent in her gut. She could feel the heat flooding her arms and her fingers. If she didn’t get a tight grip on her emotions she’d melt the metal and the last thing she needed right now was them finding out just how different she really was.
‘Deputy W
alker,’ she replied tightly, ‘as I have explained, I don’t know what happened to your brother. It had nothing to do with me. If you want to find him get your shit in order and go do your job, instead of trying to bully me.’
‘Alright Cameron, that’s enough,’ Chief Walcott interrupted.
Deputy Walker held her gaze for a moment longer before stomping angrily from the room, closely followed by the Chief and his other deputy.
She was once again alone. Letting out a breath she tried to calm her racing heart. They had a lot of nerve accusing her of every wrongdoing in the town and she found herself wondering when was she going to catch a break.
She sat for nearly another hour, amusing herself by humming and murmuring her way through the playlist she’d been listening to on her iPod on the drive in. Although, given how long she’d already been in the tiny cramped room, she could have hummed her way through the entire soundtrack to Les Miserablés and both encores…twice.
Moving on to counting the little indentations in the ceiling tiles, she began to wonder what the hell was keeping Erica. She should have been there not long after her.
Another ten minutes passed and the door opened again. This time the Chief entered with the unknown deputy from before. Deputy Walker was conspicuously absent.
Chief Walcott once again took the seat opposite her with Deputy Carl, she read his badge, standing at his shoulder.
‘Are we done yet?’ Olivia’s gaze narrowed. ‘There’s really nothing else I can add about Brody Walker. I’m sorry he’s missing but I don’t know anything about his disappearance.’
‘Not quite Miss West. There are a couple of other matters we wish to discuss with you.’
‘Such as?’
‘With regard to the man you hit with your car,’ he began.
‘I thought we’d established I didn’t actually hit him with my car,’ she replied flatly.
‘My apologies,’ he nodded, not looking in the least bit sorry. ‘You stated you didn’t know the victim’
The Guardians Complete Series 1 Box Set: Contains Mercy, The Ferryman, Crossroads, Witchfinder, Infernum Page 13