by Erynn Mangum
Chapter Five
DETECTIVE MASTERSON RODE IN THE PASSENGER SEAT and another policeman drove.
“Girls, this is Officer Walker,” he said.
“I guess that’s fitting,” Maddy whispered to me as we drove off the curb, leaving some nice tire marks there for my dad to stress over. “You know, the whole Walker name and him being a ranger and all.”
“But he’s an officer,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure he’s not from Texas.”
“Yeah, but he’s still into the whole keeping-the-law, protecting-people bit. You never know, maybe that guy has almost been run over by an unmanned plane before.”
“Walker was almost run over by an unmanned plane?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I usually watch E!”
The police station was only three miles from my house, so it didn’t take too long to get there. There were reporters there too, though, so once again we got surrounded and hustled inside while people were yelling at me and waving cameras in my face.
Once we got inside, there was a huge room, filled with tons of cubicles.
I’d never been to prison, but I kind of imagined it would look more like Alcatraz than the set from The Office.
Mom and Dad joined us in the entrance of the big room, and Detective Masterson waved for us to follow him down one of the outside aisles and into a small room that was off to the side.
There was a table, six chairs, and a pitcher of water in there.
“Wow, is this where you interrogate criminals?” Maddy asked the detective, her voice all hushed for the souls gone before us.
“We have concentrated staff meetings here,” Detective Masterson said, nodding to the chairs.
I guess there was no need for the hushed voice.
Right then a tall, heavy, older-looking guy wearing a business suit walked in and closed the door behind him.
“Please, have a seat,” he told us and we all sat. Mom and Dad sat on either side of me, and Maddy and Detective Masterson sat next to the older guy across the table from us.
“I’m Gene Slalom, the deputy chief of police here in South Woodhaven Falls,” he said, all deep and booming voiced. He didn’t sound at all like I thought deputies sounded. But maybe that was because my entire basis for deputies was founded on Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show.
We all nodded.
“That’s Kate,” Detective Masterson said, pointing to me.
“Ah.” Deputy Slalom said, looking at me without smiling. “Hello, Kate.”
“Hello, Deputy Slalom.”
Awkward silence. I almost wanted to ask if he skied or not, considering his name, but I held my tongue. They brought me here, they can talk.
“Nice conference room,” Maddy said.
Or Maddy could talk.
“Thank you.” Deputy Slalom nodded at Maddy. “We recently updated the paint. It used to have wallpaper.”
I looked over at the neutral tan color while Maddy smiled. “Good choice. Wallpaper is very out of style.”
She would know.
He nodded again and looked away from Maddy. “Kate, Mr. and Mrs. Carter, we brought you here because Kate has done her city, her state, and her country a service that can never be repaid.”
“What kind of danger is my daughter in?” Dad asked.
“Do you have any idea what this type of situation will do to a young girl’s psyche?” Mom said at the same time.
Deputy Slalom held up both of his hands. “Trust me, we will get to all of your questions.” He leaned across the table and looked at me. “But first, Kate Carter, I wanted to extend a hand of thanks.”
He reached across the table to shake my hand, and I have to admit, I’ve never been given a hand of thanks before.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No. Thank you.”
“Oh. Well. You’re welcome.”
Handshake dispensed with, he turned to my parents. “Okay. Danger. Kate is in a significant amount of danger. John X was not believed to have any accomplices, but then we won’t know for sure until we are able to extensively question him, and we have been unable to do so for the past twelve hours.”
Dad glared at Detective Masterson.
“That being said, we will have around-the-clock protection for Kate. She will take one of my officers to school with her and we will also have at least one, if not two, officers in your home night and day.”
“Two,” Dad said. “I don’t want even the chance of something happening.”
“Understandable, sir. And while this is a regrettable situation to be in, it is also one that will bring a tremendous amount of relief to many people in this state, you do realize. Your daughter is a hero.”
“Heroine,” Maddy corrected.
“What about her mental state?” Mom asked. “You do realize how much stress this puts her under, don’t you?”
It is definitely a huge pet peeve of mine when people talk about me in front of me like I’m not even there.
“We do realize,” the deputy said. “And we have a staff psychiatrist that has supervised many a witness case and will be working with Kate as well.”
I raised my hand. “But I can still go to school?” We were covering how to multiply and divide fractions in algebra. And knowing my dad’s teaching skills, I’d rather learn from my algebra teacher than Dad.
“Yes, you can still go to school.” He raised a hand to cut off my parents’ immediate rebuttal. “Accompanied by an officer, of course.”
A lady knocked on the door and then opened it, sticking her head in. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but the mayor is here and wants to meet Kate.”
Deputy Slalom winced slightly and then nodded. “Send him in.”
A minute later, in walked Arnold Walinski, who was arguably the biggest schmoozer you could ever meet. I was pretty sure he prided himself on having the most handshakes of any mayor in Missouri — and coming from such a small town, that said a lot.
“Kate Carter,” he said warmly to Maddy.
She pointed to me and Arnold didn’t even skip a beat. “So nice to meet the girl who saved our town from disaster!”
And here I thought that disasters were typically made up of those mudslides that our gym teacher liked to tell us about.
“Hi, Mayor,” I said, shaking his outstretched hand. “I don’t think I saved our town from anything. Was John X even around South Woodhaven Falls?”
Detective Masterson shook his head. “Ballwin,” he said, naming one of the neighboring suburbs.
“Regardless,” Arnold said. “Kate, it would be my honor and privilege to have you and your family join me and my wife for dinner at the mayor’s house Saturday night.” He was grinning in a way that I thought was supposed to be welcoming, but it ended up just looking toothy and cheesy.
And I was now going to refer to my house as “the Carter’s house.”
“Um,” I said, looking at Mom.
She shrugged. “Sure,” she said after looking over her shoulder at Dad, who nodded rather stiffly. Dad was not one for hobnobbing with politicians. He said they got annoying and that while most of them could talk circles around a band of turkeys, they couldn’t hold one straightforward conversation to save their lives.
I wasn’t sure that turkeys ran together in bands, but whatever.
“Fabulous, fabulous!” Arnold started crooning. “I’ll not interrupt your conversation with these fine gentlemen any longer. See you this weekend, Kate and family.”
He left whistling.
Deputy Slalom waited until the door was closed and latched before he started up again. “Where was I? Oh yes. School.” He nodded to me. “You will take an officer to school with you tomorrow.”
“Are you sure it’s safe for her to be returning to school so soon?” Mom asked.
“She’ll be fine with Officer Kirkpatrick.” The deputy nodded to Detective Masterson. “And if the need comes up, I can send Detective Masterson as well, just to monitor the situation.”
“I … I guess if you think it’s safe …” Mom stumbled.
Dad was resorting to silence. Meaning he didn’t agree.
“Wonderful,” Deputy Slalom said. “Now, if you and Maddy could wait outside, we have some questions we need to ask Kate alone. Margo out there can get you some refreshments.”
My parents got up and left, looking sadly at me as they walked out the door. Maddy whispered, “Remember everything!” and then followed them out.
And then it was just me with the two policemen.
“Kate,” Deputy Slalom started. He had his hands woven together and sitting on the table. Detective Masterson looked more at ease, lounging back in his chair.
“Yes?”
“Kent here has told me that you are a remarkable artist,” Deputy Slalom said, angling his head toward the detective.
Kent. Awkward name, no offense to the detective.
I shrugged. I don’t take compliments well. Mom said that’s a reflection of a lack of self-confidence and one of the top three signs of a loner, but I said it’s just because I don’t get them too frequently. Practice makes perfect. I’m barely over five feet tall. There’s not much here to compliment.
Which is when Dad told me that I had nice earlobes.
“I have to admit, when Miss Yeager came to us and asked if we could help explain the forensic sketch artist career field to a bunch of high schoolers, I was less than enthusiastic,” Deputy Slalom said. “I guess we can see who was wrong. Anyway, I have something I want to ask you, but I don’t want an answer today. Actually, I don’t want an answer until all this insanity with John X is over and done with.”
I was trying not to cringe in my chair, waiting for the word babysitter. I wasn’t sure what it was with adults, but I tend to attract potential babysitting jobs like Lindsay Lohan attracts miniskirts.
I was not a babysitter. I didn’t like kids. I did not like the way they smelled or the way they had some weird fascination with Dora. Any show that makes little kids think it’s perfectly normal to talk to and interact with a television set was breeding future clients for my mother, if you ask me.
I waited for Deputy Slalom to finish his thought.
He leaned across the desk. “Kate, you are a very nonthreatening person.”
“Please don’t tell my father that.” He would send me back to that self-defense class again.
“You’re very nice, you seem to listen before you speak,” the deputy continued. “And I already mentioned the artistic talent.”
Maybe he wanted me to draw pictures of his kids.
“Kate, I’d like you to consider joining the police force as a junior member.”
I just blinked at him.
“I really feel like we need a female forensic sketch artist and witnesses need someone who is nonthreatening to talk to, especially women and children.”
I opened my mouth to protest, and he held up his hand.
“I told you to think on it, Kate. It’s just a thought. Though, I think it’s a good thought, and Kent here agrees with me.”
I did not know why hearing the word Kent kept throwing me off.
The deputy smiled very briefly and very tiredly at me. “Thanks again, Kate.”
I nodded.
We all stood, and Detective Masterson opened the door for us. Outside, there was a redheaded police officer talking with my parents.
“This is Officer Kirkpatrick,” the deputy said. “Get used to him, he’ll be around.”
“Hello, Kate,” the officer said. He couldn’t have been more than about twenty-five, and he was tall and kind of on the skinny side.
He didn’t look very menacing. I think my dad was thinking the same thing as he sized him up.
“Hi,” I said. “So you are following me around now.”
He did one of those little smiles that was half friendly, half pained. I guess I couldn’t blame him, considering it did mean going back to high school for him.
“We’ll take you guys back home. If anyone requests an interview, please refuse it for the time being. And Kate, you will probably receive a lot of offers for various things … just turn them all down,” Detective Masterson said. “Shall we?” He motioned to the door.
We got back home and it was just me, Mom, Dad, Maddy, Lolly, and Officer Kirkpatrick.
And it was silent.
Mom looked exhausted and went into the kitchen. I could sense a vanilla-laced bath in her near future. Dad was still strapped to his gun and followed Mom into the kitchen. Maddy sat on the couch and reached for the remote.
Officer Kirkpatrick stood in the doorway, pensively. And I had to wonder how much of the pensiveness was because Lolly wouldn’t stop smelling the guy.
“Lolly. Cut it out,” I said, patting my leg.
She didn’t cut it out.
“Lolly.”
Maddy whistled, not taking her eyes off the TV. “Lolly, cheese!” she yelled.
Lolly immediately bolted toward Maddy on the couch.
“Good girl, good girl,” Maddy crooned to her.
“Where’s the cheese?” I asked. “You can’t promise something and not give it to her then. Now she won’t come the next time.”
Lolly, depressed because of the lack of cheese, slumped in front of the couch in a dog heap.
“Hey, Officer Kirkpatrick,” Maddy said, ignoring me, angling her head toward him, but waiting for the story about some star’s new love interest to end before she moved her eyes.
“Yes, Madison?”
“What’s your first name?”
Officer Kirkpatrick squinted at her. “Darrell.”
Now I looked at him. I was not sure how a couple could look at a scrawny little redheaded baby and name him Darrell. Judging from Maddy’s expression, she agreed.
“Your name is really Darrell?” I asked.
“It’s a family name. My great-uncle’s name is Darrell.”
“Well, my great-aunt’s name is Olga and my parents were kind enough to forgo family tradition,” Maddy said, going back to Ryan Seacrest’s rundown of all the top “news.”
Seriously, since when did seeing Sienna Miller sans makeup on her way to the gym become news?
Darrell Kirkpatrick shrugged at me. “He didn’t have any kids, and my dad was always pretty attached to him.”
I asked, “So you go by Darrell?”
“I go by DJ. My middle name is Jefferson.”
I wanted to say that was a big name for a little guy, but for some reason, I didn’t think our friendly officer would like that. And considering he was going to be following me around for the foreseeable future, I wanted to be on his good side.
“So, should I call you Officer Kirkpatrick or DJ?” I asked.
He thought about it. “DJ. At school, I’m going to be dressed in plain clothes.”
School.
I really needed to study for my test tomorrow. I nodded. “Well, it’s time for me to get to studying.”
Madison looked at the still-closed blinds on the front windows. “I don’t think I’m going to go home until my parents will be there,” she said. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to stay here and watch TV.”
“Fine with me.”
I went to my room and shut the door. It was the first time all day I had been alone.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
Which is when someone knocked.
“Yes?” I yelled, quietness shattered.
“It’s DJ. You need to leave your door open, Kate.”
I opened it and looked at him. “How am I supposed to use the bathroom or take a shower or get dressed?”
He nodded. “The bathroom doesn’t have any windows. You can shut the door when you are in there. But not in your room.”
He smiled a friendly smile and then moved to the hallway where he could se
e almost all of the house.
I was going to have to have a very serious talk with Miss Yeager tomorrow.
Chapter Six
FRIDAY MORNING. APPROXIMATELY FIFTEEN MINUTES before the bell was scheduled to ring.
School looked normal enough. I was peering out the windows of the unmarked police car that DJ had driven me to school in. Apparently, me driving by myself was a definite no. DJ did swap the uniform with a pair of jeans and a Polo shirt though.
Still. So much for all the privileges that came with that hard-earned driver’s license.
DJ, who looked as refreshed as a man could look after sleeping on an air mattress in the hallway of my house, was looking out the window too. Another policeman, Officer Colton, came at night as well, only he stayed awake so DJ could sleep.
“Let me get out first and you follow. Your first class is drawing. You are to be no more than five feet away from me at any given moment. Understood?”
I wondered if this is what the daughters of the president had to go through and I immediately was overcome with despair for them. Dad always said that pity is pointless. Mom said it’s only pointless if we don’t do something to help.
Aside from kidnapping the first daughters and showing them what life outside of a security detail was like, which I imagined was a federal crime to the highest degree, I couldn’t think of a way to help them.
So I stopped pitying them and glared at DJ instead.
“Hey,” he said, holding his hands up. “I didn’t draw John X.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Good thing art was first. Miss Yeager and I were about to have it out.
DJ got out of the car and I followed him as instructed. What I didn’t expect was that all the news crews that had been parked outside my house for half the night would be at SWF High.
“Kate! Kate!” one lady yelled incessantly at me as DJ hustled me into the school.
I would think there must be more exciting news in South Woodhaven Falls, but surely there was not. One of the perks and apparently curses of living in a small town.
I remembered when Dusty McSweeny, the local grocer, put up the very first “Handicapped Parking Only” sign in all of South Woodhaven Falls in front of his store. That was the only news we got for the next three nights. People were getting their picture beside it and making bad jokes about it like, “Hey, did you see the new sign outside of McSweeny’s? It’s pretty handy!”
