by Frankie Rose
“I’M GONNA need your keys, cell phone, jewelry, loose change, everything in your pockets, basically, and that includes your lint. Place the items in the tray and wait until we call you.” I don’t know the young female officer behind the counter of Breakwater police station and she doesn’t know me, but we’ve come to an instant mutual agreement: we don’t like one another. She seems fine with Luke, though. “You can go through if you like, hon. Chloe’s expecting you.”
“That’s okay, I’ll wait out here,” he tells her, slipping his hand into mine. We sit in the station for an hour before Chloe Mathers, Luke’s old partner, comes to find us. I recognize her as soon as she walks through the door. She was with Luke the day they came to tell us about my dad. She made my mom a cup of tea, like that was going to fix everything.
“Iris,” she says, nodding towards me. “Good to see you again. How you goin’, Luke?” She bypasses his outstretched hand and pulls him in for a hug. “Not the most ideal circumstances to be seeing you again, but still a pleasure all the same.”
Luke hugs her back awkwardly. “Yeah, good to see you, too, Chloe.”
She nods her head through the open door behind her into the police station. “Come on. He’s already been interviewed, I’m not supposed to do this but it can’t really hurt. You can see him for five minutes.”
My heart fumbles in my chest. I still have no idea why they pulled my uncle in, what they can possibly have discovered to make them think he had anything to do with this. They have to be wrong. We follow Chloe into the station and make our way to the holding cells. The place reminds me of a hospital, all bleach and blank faces and flickering fluorescent lighting. Chloe stops in front of a door, opens it, and gestures us inside. Through the door, there’s a single peeling veneer table, three chairs, and my uncle Brandon. He looks startled when his head shoots up, catching sight of me immediately.
“What are you doing here, kiddo? You didn’t need to come.” He looks like hell. He’s always a little scruffy, but his unshaven face and the bags under his eyes make him look flat-out ill.
“You look like shit, Uncle B.” I take a seat across the table from and turn—Luke is hovering in the doorway.
“I can give you guys a minute, if you like?”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. Stay. Please.” There’s no way I can handle doing this on my own, and Luke will know better than anyone if they have grounds to keep holding Brandon. Luke nods, slipping into the seat beside me.
“I’ll be back in five,” Officer Mathers tells us. She pulls a tight smile and closes the door, leaving us alone.
“What the hell’s going on, Brandon? No one will tell us anything.”
Brandon closes his eyes, his shoulders slumping. He looks exhausted. “They say they think I was there the day your dad and those other men died. They think I had something to do with it.”
My knee sets to bouncing up and down under the table. Just hearing him say those words makes bile rise up in my throat. “Why the hell would they think that?”
“Something about an old camera of mine. They had a video handed in at the station a week ago and it was apparently shot using a specific kind of film. A rare one that I used to use.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous! I mean anyone could have a camera that uses a certain type of film, Brand. Right?”
My uncle goes quiet for a moment, chewing on his lip. “Yeah, but there’s a fault on this particular camera I own, a light leak. It allows light into the housing. It corrupts the video in a very specific way. Apparently, the film that was handed in bore a leak that could only have been created by my camera.”
I process this for a second. “So, it was definitely your camera. Does that mean they can prove it was you who shot the thing?” My heart is beating like crazy. A small, terrified part of my brain is causing chaos, screaming, Did he do it? Did he do it? Of course he didn’t, I know that, but still. That nasty little suspicion is making my whole body tremble. Luke puts his hand on my knee under the table, shoots me a reassuring look.
“I keep telling them that I loaned that camera to your dad, Iris, but they don’t seem to be listening. He borrowed it months before he died. I never got it back. They seized it among his possessions, but they say someone was holding the camera when your dad was in that room with the other men…it wasn’t on a tripod, it was following him around the room.”
A pained expression flutters across Brandon’s face. He looks sick to his stomach.
“You know I would never hurt anyone, right Iris? You know I would never hurt your dad?”
I nod my head immediately. I can’t get the words out, though. It isn’t that I don’t believe him. My throat is just closing up, refusing to let me speak. This is such a mess. Everything. My whole life, Brandon’s life, Luke’s…
“Brandon, I’m going to go see if I can get you a coffee,” Luke murmurs. He squeezes my hand one last time and then plants a soft kiss on top of my head, surprising me. “I’ll be right back.”
Brandon scratches at his stubble, his eyes searching my face. “I knew you were a smart girl,” is all he says. His gaze drops to his hands, and it’s then that I notice they’re handcuffed together at the wrists.
“Oh my God, they’ve cuffed you?”
“I’m under arrest, kiddo. Generally means you get the five star treatment.”
“This is such bullshit. We’re going to work this out, okay? Do you even know what’s on the tape?”
Brandon sighs, heavy and worn down. “They’re not sharing. I think they’re trying to get me to slip up, waiting for me to tell them what’s on the tape. I’m pretty sure they think they’re gonna get me to accidentally admit to something that way.”
“Will they tell Luke what—” My sentence remains unfinished. The door to the interview room slams open, and a tall woman in a pantsuit stands there, gaping at us. Her red hair is pulled back into a tight bun, so tight, in fact, that I wonder whether she’s cut the circulation off to her scalp.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” The woman places one arm up on the doorjamb, the other on her hip. She glares straight at me, pissed.
“I—I was told this was okay?”
“Well, it’s not okay. Who are you?”
“Iris Breslin. She’s my niece,” Brandon answers. I return the woman’s steely gaze, getting the distinct feeling that she’s pulling it off a lot more convincingly than I am.
“I’m FBI Agent Cosgrove, and this is a federal investigation. You can’t be in here.” She motions me to stand with a casual flick of her wrist. Up.
I rise, shooting Brandon a quick glance. “I’ll call a lawyer, okay? You’ll be out of here by tomorrow.”
I have to leave then, under the watchful eye of Agent Cosgrove. She shoots daggers at me as she slams the door, blocking out my uncle and her unsmiling face as she does so. Luke appears down the abandoned corridor with a polystyrene cup in either hand, the coffee steaming.
“What’s going on?”
“Some FBI bitch just booted me out. She was a real bulldog.”
Luke bites his lip, staring at the closed investigation room door in front of us. He hands me a coffee. I take it, my hands still shaking. “We can’t leave him in here, Luke. I know he’s got nothing to do with this. We have to get him a lawyer.”
A crease forms in between Luke’s brows. Something’s up. He looks…anxious. “I got that covered. I just made a call.”
“Okay.” I don’t say anything else. I know there’s more coming, something he doesn’t want to tell me. “I contacted the legal firm on file as Brandon’s representation.”
“Right. When are they getting here? Which agency is it?”
Luke visibly blanches. “They’ll be here first thing in the morning. And the agency is…it’s Harrod, Whitt, St. French,” he rushes out.
Those three names are like individual explosions in my ears. Harrod. Whitt. St. French.
Shit.
“You’ve got to be kidding
me.”
Luke flinches. “Yeah, I’m sorry babe. Your mom is on her way.”
Twenty Seven
Laney
