Let’s Keep It RealHelen answered in short, flat sentences, never taking her eyes off his hands. He, on the other hand, did his best not to look directly at her. “Mrs. Carter,” he began at last with a weary sigh, “you live in a difficult town.
We don’t have hard evidence against Warren and his friends. The locals aren’t talking. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. Prints at the scene were compromised, there are no usable eyewitnesses, and all three men have alibis.
Supposedly they were drinking all night on the other side of town, and about ten people are willing to back that up. We both know those folks are scared, but in court, statements are statements.” The detective paused and slowly pulled out a cigarette.
“We’ll keep working the case, of course, but to be honest, the outlook isn’t good. Odds are this one goes cold and ends up in storage,” he said. Mallory looked at her for the first time, and what she saw in his face wasn’t compassion so much as a quiet warning.
It said one thing clearly enough: accept the loss. Let it go. Don’t make things worse for yourself.
When he left, taking his smoke and resignation with him, Helen understood the whole picture. No one was going to help her. No one was going to punish the men who had killed her daughter.
The system that was supposed to protect her had admitted its own weakness—or maybe just its cowardice. The days that followed blurred together into one long gray nightmare. Helen barely left her apartment.
Share how the story made you feel
0Comments appear after a quick automatic check. Please no links, ads or personal data.
Next to your name we show your country, determined from your IP address; the address itself is never shown, and only a hashed fingerprint of it is kept to stop spam.