by Kurt Ellis
Muncie nodded and stared at his hands for over a minute. Finally, he began, ‘My stepdad took me up to this cabin once, to hunt for deer, you know, before he left my mom. Nobody uses it any more now, because all the deer are gone, but the cabin’s still there.’
‘Is that where she is?’
Muncie nodded.
‘A’ight, let me go ask her.’ Creed stood and walked to the door.
‘And you’ll tell me what she says, right?’
‘You have my word.’
*
‘We picked the stepfather up and he took us to the cabin. We got to her in time.’
Red sighed as he recalled the day Kerry Bryson was found. He and Creed had stayed behind at the station while Bartlett Police and a few of his FBI team went to the cabin. The next day, Creed and Red went to see this so-called cabin themselves, barely bigger than an outhouse. They stood outside and just stared at it. At the paint that was peeling like dead, sunburnt skin. At the grey wood being eaten by rot.
Red blinked hard to bring himself back to the present. ‘This interrogation is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. It was well planned and well executed. This is what you want to be aiming for.’
‘I don’t think I’d be able to do what he did,’ a cadet said. ‘To smile and get chummy with this sicko. I don’t think I could act that well, and if I could, I don’t think my soul would be able to stand it.’
Red recalled the phone call he had received from one of his team to say that they had found Kerry alive. Creed had been standing next to him, as still as a pillar, but the moment Creed heard that she was alive, he collapsed to his knees and began to dry heave until tears ran down his cheeks. The things he’d had to say and do to find her had emotionally drained him. They made him feel psychically sick, but once the nausea had subsided, he stormed into the interrogation room.
‘Is she …’
That was all Muncie managed to say before Creed grabbed him by the collar and slammed his face into the table. His anger and repulsion caused the saliva in his mouth to froth in the corner of his lips.
‘You fucking piece of shit,’ Creed hissed.
Red was about to pull him off when Creed released Muncie himself and stormed out of the room.
Red’s thoughts returned to the present. ‘You’ll be surprised by what you’re willing and capable of doing when an innocent life is at stake.’
The End
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