Chapter 1
“You need to answer the question,” Chief Deputy Kurt Theodore Robinson said.
Kelly looked around the room, hungrily taking in every detail as if looking for answers. Or reassurance. She didn’t seem to understand what was going on or why she was there at the police station. Not able to focus on one thing for more than a few seconds, her eyes were wild, and she kept biting her bottom lip so often that it bled.
The police station in Leavonville was a modest, one story brick building situated on the corner of Main and Elm Streets, right in the heart of the small town. Its weathered facade bore the marks of time, with ivy creeping up one side and paint chipping away from the green wooden trim around the windows. A simple sign above the entrance read “Leavonville Police Department” in faded gold lettering, hinting at the town’s former prosperity.
Inside, the station was a blend of functionality and homely touches. The front desk, a sturdy oak counter, dominated the small lobby area. Behind it, an old-fashioned switchboard sat beside a computer that looked slightly out of place, as if the digital age had reluctantly intruded on Leavonville’s analog world. Framed photos of past police chiefs lined the walls, alongside community event flyers and a large hand drawn map of the town.
The station consisted of just a few rooms: the lobby, two small offices, a couple of holding cells and the interrogation room.
The interrogation room didn’t have any windows, offering only a bare bulb for light that hung from the ceiling over the steel, rectangular table. It created a stark boundary between the middle of the room and the eerie shadows in the corner. There was every shade of tan from the cement walls to the uncomfortable plastic folding chair she was sitting on. The light gray floor was fractured in several places, mostly because of improperly mixed concrete, and chipped spots along some of those lines. The room didn’t have the tempered glass like you see in the movies, but it did have a video camera in the top corner of the right side of the walls. Every thirty seconds, a green dot would blink. And the only decoration was a poster that offered phone numbers for the local bail bondsman.
She wondered if the drabness was meant to be a psychological test. Is this how they make the criminals crack under pressure?
“Kelly, I need you to focus,” Kurt said. “This is very important.”
She looked at him for a couple seconds and then her eyes glazed over. She continued to look around, hardly recognizing him.
The chief deputy took off his half-rim glasses with one hand and used the other hand to massage his temples. His eyes normally crinkled at the ends and sparkled from a happy life of sixty years in the small town of Leavonville, Virginia. But after a long night and one of the worst crime scenes he’d ever seen, his face was haunted and etched in pain. There was still a lot of work to be done, and the worst part was having to interrogate this young woman, his own godchild.
Officer Kurt and his goddaughter, Kelly’s relationship was that of legend. Kurt, a burly man with a heart as vast as the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains, had been chosen as Kelly’s godfather when she was just a baby. Her parents, trusting in his unwavering loyalty and kind spirit, knew that Kurt would always look out for her.
From the start, their relationship was special with Saturday morning adventures. When she was little, these were trips to the local park where Kurt would push her on the swings until she squealed with delight. As she grew older, their adventures evolved into walking and talking down Main Street. Their bond was characterized by a mutual respect and a deep, abiding love. Officer Kurt never treated Kelly as just a child; he saw her as a person with her own thoughts and dreams. This is why it pained him so much to see her at the crime scene and sitting here getting interrogated just now.
He and his wife Cindy met in high school and became sweethearts, planning a simple but fulfilling life together. They visited Gardenwood every once in a while, for a taste of city life, and every year managed a road trip to the state fair in Mays Valley. But one of the most exciting times of their lives was when their best friends Trudy and Robert Jones asked them to be godparents, first for Mark and then Kelly. The little girl was special in his eyes, and he remembered holding the baby in his arms. She was so tiny and helpless, but when she looked up at him it was as if she really knew him on a deeper level.
The most painful thing he ever had to do was to put Kelly in the back of his squad car. And now he had to question her with all the objectivity and professionalism he could muster. He closed his eyes and tried to compose himself.
When police got to the crime scene it was that of a nightmare etched in vivid, gruesome detail. Blood was everywhere, a macabre carpet covering the wooden floor in thick, congealing pools. It glistened darkly under the flickering light, casting eerie shadows that danced grotesquely across the walls.
The room, once tidy and mundane, was a scene of chaos and horror. Furniture lay overturned, drawers yanked open with their contents strewn wildly, and picture frames were shattered, their glass shards mingling with the blood on the floor. A sense of violence hung heavy in the air, a silent witness to the terror that had unfolded.
Kelly’s hands shook uncontrollably as she looked down at herself. Her clothes, once pristine, were now stained with crimson. Blood streaked her arms, her hands and even her face, smeared across her skin in haphazard streaks and splatters. She could feel it drying, tightening uncomfortably on her skin, and the metallic scent filled her nostrils, making her stomach churn.
Kelly could feel her heart pounding and sweat dripping down her back. She looked over at Kurt who had put his glasses on and was writing notes. He’d worn the same brown uniform for as long as she could remember, only now it was in a bigger size. A rotund man, his club-like fingers reminded her of twinkies, her favorite treat as a child. She never noticed the resemblance, but it was a good memory. In fact, the chief deputy always had twinkies to hand out when she and her brother visited the sheriff’s office on their way home from school. He had darker hair back then, but now she liked his salt and pepper hair and goatee. It suited him.
Catching a brief glimpse of herself in the reflection of his glasses, Kelly was startled at her disheveled appearance. Her long, brown hair was matted with sticky blood, and her face seemed to have splotches of blood all over it. She wore a wrinkled t-shirt and jogging pants with holes in them. Her tennis shoes were also filthy. She looked nothing like the girl next door that everyone in the community knew. Everyone liked her, and no one ever seemed to have a mean or unkind thing to say about her. When they described her, words like “pleasant, nice, easy-going, and considerate” were used. She was always there to lend a hand and rarely said no to a request for help whether it was delivering meals to senior citizens or reading to the third graders at the elementary school.
“Kelly, I know you’re afraid, but you have to talk if you want me to help you,” Kurt said softly. She stared at him, noticing that his breathing was heavy, and he was sweating just as much as she was.
“I . . . I . . . I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“Do you know where you are?”
“I . . . I’ve never been in this room.”
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“Yes! Of course, why wouldn’t I? You’re Uncle Kurt. You always come to our birthday parties.” She remembered when she was six years old, and her mom got hula hoops as a fun activity for her birthday guests. Kelly couldn’t seem to figure out how to move her body so the hoop would rotate around her hips. Her friends caught on fast and were showing off and making fun of her. She almost ran away to cry, but Uncle Kurt and Aunt Cindy got out in the middle of the lawn with them and pretended to be clumsy at the game. Everyone started making fun of them, and then soon, all the kids were being goofy. Her godparents showed them that it didn’t matter how good you were at hula hoops. It was just a way to have fun. The Robinsons were at every event in her life, from her birth to her college graduation.
“Yes, that’s right, Kelly. But I’m also chief deputy of the Leavonville Sheriff’s Department.
“Oh,” she said, looking up at the camera. “Am I in jail?”
“No, not yet, but you’re here at the precinct. We’re trying to find out what happened. If you want to get a lawyer, that’s your prerogative.”
“What? Why would I need a lawyer?” Kelly stood up but felt dizzy and sat back down.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“I . . . no. Am I in trouble? What the hell is going on?”
“Calm down, Kelly, we’re just trying to find some answers.”
“I’m scared, Uncle Kurt,” she said, closing her eyes against the bright, invasive bulb. “I don’t belong here.”
Her mind was a whirlpool of fear and confusion. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten here or what had happened. Flashes of memory - a scream, a struggle, a blinding pain - assaulted her senses, but none of it made any coherent sense. She felt as if she were drowning in a sea of panic, the room spinning around her as she struggled to piece together the fractured images in her mind.
A loud bang almost made her jump out of her chair, and she opened her eyes to a Japanese woman in an ill-fitting navy-blue pantsuit who had slammed the door.
“It’s Kelly Ann Jones, isn’t it? Or should I say Mrs. Miller?” She didn’t wait for an answer, fully confident in her interrogation abilities. “Didn’t mean to wake you there, but as Chief Robinson put it, we need you to start talking.”
“Who are you?”
“Kelly, this is Detective Sharon Moore,” Kurt explained. “She’s one of the law enforcement officials that was called in from Gardenwood when we saw your house. This was bigger than we can handle here.”
Gardenwood wasn’t the biggest city in the state, but it had a little over 20,000 people while the population in Leavonville was just over 3,000.
“My house?” Kelly asked, frowning.
“Oh, your house is filled with officers and detectives like me.,” Moore said, sitting down at the desk and staring closely at Kelly. We’re going over every inch of that place to see what they can find.” Moore said, as she put her hands on the table and leaned in.
Moore's face was just a couple inches away from hers, and Kelly could smell the stale cigarettes and coffee on her breath. She figured, by looking at the detective’s teeth, that both were in ample supply daily. The woman’s dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she had no makeup on.
Moore never let her guard down with the police’s good ol’ boys breathing down her neck most of the time, waiting for the trash she usually saw to make mistakes. She didn’t feel like she had the luxury of being feminine or physically attractive. People also assumed the stereotype of a quiet, gentle Asian woman, but she was nothing of the sort. She was raised by adoptive parents and wasn’t inclined towards learning about her heritage.
“There’s nothing to find,” Kelly said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The detective laughed harshly. “Sure, that’s why there’s blood everywhere, including on you. That’s not what it looks like to us so you can either start talking or we’ll pin the charges on you. We can hold you responsible for all of it.”
Kelly’s eyes darted around the room, searching for some clue, some anchor to reality. “Hold me responsible?” asked Kelly “For what? What am I here for?”
Kurt reached across the table and gently touched his goddaughter’s arm, earning him a scowl from the detective. “Kelly,” he said, tears in his eyes. “Where's your husband? What have you done?”
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I want to go home.”
“I understand that. But you need to give us some information.”
“I’m not the one who should be charged!” she blurted. Quickly wiping her tears away, she tried to keep her emotions at bay. She tapped her foot nervously on the floor and wrapped her arms around her thin body.
“Really?” Moore demanded. “Who should be charged then? Why don’t you tell us? What happened?”
Kelly took a deep breath and exhaled a rush of words. “I don’t know what happened! You don’t understand. We were alone in the house, and I was tired and afraid.”
“That’s a start,” Kurt said. “Tell us how you got so bloody and why you started running.”
“I was running because I was scared and didn’t know what else to do. I don’t know why. I didn’t have time to think.” She started rocking back and forth, softly mewling like an injured kitten.
Kurt looked like his heart was breaking. “You were the only one there. Nobody else was in the house or saw what happened. The neighbors didn’t hear anything. The security cameras were turned off. Kelly, you know me. I want to help. You’ve got to give us more details so we can help you.”
Help me?
Kelly looked at him bewildered. She needed help a long time before that point, but she couldn’t let anyone in or allow anyone to understand what was happening. No one seemed to have a clue even though everyone knew each other in the small town. It was like a close family.
They sure as hell gossip like one.
Sure, Mark, her brother and best friend, had an inkling, but they really had no idea the extent. How did nobody realize what was going on?
She’d been stuck with no way to escape. There was no way out. She didn’t know how her life had spiraled out of control or how to fix it. But in all the scenarios she played in her mind, she never imagined she would be sitting in an interrogation room. She had been desperate but never considered doing something that would result in a prison sentence.
They continued to pepper her with questions, many of them the same, over and over as she retreated mentally away from the frightening room.
“Whose blood is it? How did your hands get so dirty?” Moore gave her a disbelieving glance. “Where is your husband? What happened?”
Finally, Kelly stopped rocking and looked down at her hands as if seeing them for the first time. Her tears seemed to fall in slow motion, bringing the dried blood to life again and swirling it around on her skin.
“What . . . who . . .?” She slowly looked up at Kurt, her eyes wide with horror.
He thought she was possibly ready to talk about it, and he turned to a new page in his notebook, so he could document the incident. But when she opened her mouth, a gut-wrenching sound came out. It was something dark and almost animalistic that had been buried deep for a very long time. She screamed for the violence. She screamed for the nightmares and agonizing existence. She screamed for a life she didn’t ask for. The world around her seemed to close in, the edges of her vision darkening as the full weight of the horror pressed down on her, leaving her scared, disoriented and utterly alone. Then she screamed for her world before everything went black.