I sat up in my seat. “Are you serious?” I couldn’t believe my ears. I had hoped to God that my hunch was right, but I wasn’t sure we would be so lucky.
“Sure am.” A smile was plastered across that gorgeous face of his.
Chapter 14
On the way to the police station, Aiden called Anna to let her know what we had found out from Mrs. Carson. She and Dave were at our school to talk with Chrissy—well, not really talk. They were there to read her mind. They were trying to figure out why she’d said she saw Chelsea with Ben at the movies, when her whole memory of the event didn’t seem to be true.
Once Aiden explained that Mrs. Carson may have a description of the kidnapper, but he hadn’t been able to get it from her thoughts, Dave left Anna to ‘speak’ with Chrissy, and he headed over to Mrs. Carson’s.
I let out a sigh of relief as we pulled into the police station car park. We finally seemed to be getting somewhere. And who knows, what Dave might find out from Mrs. Carson might just be enough for us to nail this bastard. And more importantly, save Chelsea.
All I had to do was get through the interview with the detective without letting on that I knew more than I was telling.
I was surprised to see Mum’s car already parked a couple of spots across from ours. She was leaning against the drivers’ side door and talking on her phone. If all the talk in the media were true about mobile phones causing cancer, then my mum would have no hope with the amount of time she spent on hers. I really hoped it was just another myth.
We walked up to her and motioned for her to follow us, trying not to disrupt the conversation she was clearly engrossed in.
Aiden held the door open for us, but Mum decided it was better to stay outside until she had finished the call, so Aiden and I went in without her.
I walked up to the counter. There was an officer sitting at the desk doing paperwork. He looked to be around sixty-five years old. He was balding, with white hair, and wore thin, wire-framed glasses that were almost falling off his nose. I guessed that he was probably holding out for retirement, which looked to be coming up very soon.
He didn’t look up as we approached. Instead, he continued with his paperwork, which was starting to irritate me. I was about to say something when Aiden squeezed my hand.
“Don’t, you will only get him offside – I’ll get his attention.”
A second later, the police officer put down his pen and finally acknowledged our presence. “Sorry about that. How can I help you?” he asked in a croaky voice.
“My name is Jade Sommers. I am here to speak with Detective O’Neil. He asked me to come down today for questioning about the disappearances,” I said nervously. I really did not want to be here, but there was no turning back.
“Take a seat, and I will call through to him.” He motioned to the benches pushed up against the wall to the side of his desk.
“Thank you.” Aiden and I sat as instructed.
Mum had just finished her conversation and walked through the doors. She sat down next to me. “Hi, honey.”
“Hi.” I still sounded a bit nervous. I didn’t know why, but being at the police station gave me the heebie-jeebies.
“Don’t worry, sweetie, this is just routine questioning.”
“Have you heard anything else yet?” I asked Mum quietly. I seriously doubted she had as good a lead as what we were following, but when it came to my mother, anything was possible. Although the way she’d been acting lately, I could be wrong.
Ignoring my question, she turned her attention to the front door. There was shouting outside, which sounded as if it was getting closer. A drunken man shouting obscenities was being led through the doors by two police officers, who didn’t look at all amused by his antics.
They nodded to the officer behind the desk. “Hey, Jonesy,” they said in unison.
Then the bulkier officer said, “Just another drunk driver. We caught him trying to drive off after spending hours at the pub getting himself sloshed, and he doesn’t even think that he’s drunk.” He was shaking his head in dismay.
Jonesy chuckled. “Don’t they all.”
“Yeah, but this one took almost five minutes to unlock his car. He was either searching in the dirt for the keys that he dropped, or trying to put them into the key slot in the car door, only to finally figure out that he hadn’t even locked the damn car in the first place,” the skinnier officer said in disbelief. “I mean, he didn’t even see our car twenty metres away from him until we put the siren on when he started to drive.” He was shaking his head. “Unbelievable, hey.”
Jonesy chuckled to himself as they led the drunken man through into the back office—probably towards a holding cell until he sobered up.
I was trying to hold back my laughter when a man in his late forties entered the waiting room. He was wearing beige pants and a pale blue shirt that needed to be ironed. His face was rough, but there was a kindness that flickered in his eyes. Somehow, I knew he was Detective O’Neil.
“Jade?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered nervously.
“I’m Detective Brendan O’Neil. Please, come this way.” He gestured towards the door he had just walked through.
Detective O’Neil looked at Aiden, realising he was with us, and said, “I’m sorry, you will have to wait out here while I question Jade. We won’t be too long.”
I shot Aiden a sympathetic look. I would have preferred to have him in the room with me, but who was I to argue with a cop.
He led Mum and I through a corridor until we reached his office. He motioned for us to sit in the seats opposite his desk. We sat down, and I looked around the room. I had expected a camera to be on me, like I had seen on TV when people were being questioned, but there were no cameras in sight—not even a glass mirror that other officers sat behind like on the crime shows.
“This won’t take long, Jade. I will be as quick as possible,” the detective said, looking through some paperwork.
I noticed a picture of Chelsea in the file he was flipping through. It was the same photo that was used when they’d announced her disappearance on TV. I remembered the day that picture was taken. We had just come back to my house after spending the day wakeboarding behind Aiden’s speed boat. A lone tear slid down my cheek. She was so happy that day, and more importantly she was safe. I tore my eyes away from the picture before the floodgates opened. I’d never get through this interview if I started crying.
Officer O’Neil put down the folder, and looked up at me. “Did you notice anything unusual about Chelsea in the days leading up to her disappearance?”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”
Detective O’Neil jotted down my response in Chelsea’s file.
“Did she mention anything to you about not being happy at home?” He still had his head down, waiting for my response.
“Nope. Things have been much better lately. Chelsea and her mum seemed to have finally gotten past what happened to her father, and they are now closer than ever.” I didn’t want the detective wasting time by having to rule out a possible runaway. And I knew that he was fishing around that whole possibility, even if he wasn’t going to come right out and say it.
“I’m glad to hear,” he said, his eyes still on his notes.
Detective O’Neil started to ask me another question, but I was interrupted by Aiden’s voice in my head and couldn’t concentrate on a word the detective said.
“Jade. There’s a change of plan.”
“What? Now?”
I couldn’t believe he was doing this to me while I was in the middle of the interview. God. I’m sure that the detective just asked me another question, which I hadn’t a clue what it was.
“Yeah, I know it’s bad timing and all, but Anna and Dave have just turned up, and you were right. Mrs. Carson saw it all.”
“What!”
I couldn’t believe it. I knew the old bat had seen something, but I couldn’t believe she was that much of a bitch to not tell anyone about it. She had to know the kidnapper could kill Chelsea, but she didn’t seem to care. I could hear Detective O’Neil saying something to me, but I was too caught up in this revelation to care.
“She even saw the guy without his mask on, and—”
“Honey?” Mum put her hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”
I looked between her and the detective. They were both clearly concerned by my zoning out. Although Mum was more concerned with how I was coping with the situation, and the detective looked to be more suspicious, as if he thought I was hiding something from him.
I nodded. “Ah, yeah. Sorry,” I said to Mum. I looked at Detective O’Neil. “Is it okay if I go to the bathroom?” In my head, I kept repeating, “Please, say yes; please, say yes,” as if that was somehow going to work like Aiden’s ‘suggestion’ ability.
Detective O’Neil put down his pen. All of his suspicions seemed to have vanished from his face. “Yes, of course. It’s just down the hall, second door on the left.”
“Thanks.” I pushed my chair back as I stood up.
Leaving Detective O’Neil’s office, I followed his directions and ended up in the women’s bathroom.
Entering the cubicle farthest away, I closed the door behind me, but was too freaked out about germs to sit on the toilet seat. Even if I was only going to be sitting on the lid, it was still too gross for me.
“Okay. Talk,”
I said to Aiden.
“You know your immune system is too efficient for you to get sick from germs,”
he said.
“Talk to me about it when you get over your dog slobber issue. Now, what does Mrs. Carson know?”
“As I said before, she saw the whole thing. Apparently, the guy who took Chelsea had been staking out your place for the last couple of days before he took her. She even saw her actually being kidnapped, and Dave said it was exactly like your vision.”
I didn’t know what to say. What person in their right mind wouldn’t call the cops if they saw some psycho kidnapping a teenage girl?
“Anyway, Dave was able see what the guy looks like from her memories.”
“Are you serious?”
I was so excited that I almost spat the words from my mouth.
“Sure am. But here’s the tricky bit. You’re going to have to go back into the interview and tell the detective that you had noticed some random guy watching you and Chelsea. And I’m guessing that they are going to ask you for a description of the guy.”
My heart tightened with fear. I was not very good at lying.
“You’ll be fine,”
Aiden assured me.
“I was able to get an image of the asshole from Dave, so you’ll have no problems creating a profile of him when they ask you.”
“Yeah I’ll be fine, so long as you’re in the bloody room with me.”
I was really starting to freak out, so much so that I almost sat down on the toilet seat. I could really have done with some of those calming endorphins.
“You’ll be fine. Just take some deep breaths, centre yourself, and most importantly, trust yourself. And remember, the sky’s the limit if you would just believe in yourself.”
He was right. I had to get myself together for Chelsea’s sake. And he was right about the other thing, too. I really had to start trusting in my own abilities if we were going to save her.
I took a few deep, calming breaths before I opened the toilet stall door and headed back to Detective O’Neil’s office.
“Feeling any better now?” Mum asked, as I sat down in the chair beside her.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Detective O’Neil gave a slight smile. “Right, then, let’s get back to it.” He returned his eyes to the file. “Do you know if Chelsea has been hanging around anyone new lately?”
“Ah, no she hasn’t.”
“Right then, has she—”
“But,” I said, interrupting the detective, “now that I think about it, I did notice someone watching us.”
The detective’s eyes shot up as he realised the interview was going to be more than just the routine questioning he originally thought.
“I didn’t think that much about it before. But now that I think about it… he was definitely watching us.”
“Hang on, hang on.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a tape recorder. He placed it on his desk and pressed record.
I looked over at Mum, who was staring at me with her mouth wide open. She was in shock and must have felt hurt. I could tell she was wondering why I hadn’t told her about this before. Why I had not trusted her. I would have to make it up to her when I got out of the police station, and I just hoped she would forgive me.
I looked back at the desk. The sight of the recorder made my heart beat faster and faster, until it was practically pounding through my chest.
“What if I stuff up? It will be caught on tape,”
I said to Aiden.
“You won’t. I’ll help you through. I know you can do this.”
I wished I had half the confidence in myself that he had in me.
Detective O’Neil saw that I was taken aback by the device. “Sorry, I know it can be daunting. Just try to pretend it’s not there.”
“You’ll be fine.”
I was so glad Aiden was with me, if only mentally.