Hannah
Hannah had moved to the neighborhood for a lot of reasons, but one of them was to stave off the feeling, post-divorce, of always being the only one alone. Her old house had been a twin, and the yards were all nestled close together, so yes, if she screamed in the middle of the night, someone would hear her. She had neighbors close by, and that was worth something.
But everyone around her was a couple and knew Mike. And going to their potlucks and block parties without her husband and seeing them all gathered there, around the microbrews in the silver tubs, taking turns at the grills set up in a row, so many of them, all belonging to someone else—and all of them buddies of Mike’s—that somehow sharpened her loss. Whereas Hillary had said that her street was all women, all the time, because half of them were divorced, and the other half were married to men who traveled internationally for their jobs or worked insane hours in New York and commuted. She’d made it sound almost like a sorority but with lots and lots of money. What she’d failed to mention was how busy stay-at-home moms could be. Had her neighbor Kendra felt that, too? She’d seemed lonely, not just grief-stricken on the path.
But as Hannah walked up to her house, where the detectives were waiting for her, she felt more alone than ever. Two against one. Men against women. Logic against intuition. They would have all the facts now, and she knew it.
“Good morning,” Thompson said with his small, careful smile. Carelli stood behind him, not making eye contact, scratching at a spot on his face as if he’d just found a spent cornflake crumb there.
Good cop, bad cop, Hannah thought immediately, then reversed herself. That’s what they want me to think. Stay open, Han. Stay open.
“How can I help you?”
“Is your son home?”
“Um, he’s at school,” she said slowly. “By law. In the state of Pennsylvania.”
“No need to get testy,” Carelli said. He was moving his tongue around in his mouth now, and Hannah wanted to scream at him to wash his face. To brush his teeth. Grow the fuck up and learn some basic manners.
“Well, it’s a somewhat ridiculous question. You already know he’s there,” she said. “You both know perfectly well where he is.”
“He might’ve stayed home sick,” Carelli said. “Or faked being sick.”
She gritted her teeth but did not respond and did not invite them in. There would be no offerings of beverages, no niceties. They were beyond that now, she saw.
Thompson looked down at his feet, and she had a good view of the back of his neck. From that angle, he looked vulnerable, thin, his ears turning red at the tips in the cold. Beneath the layers of his rayon suit, she saw his rib cage expanding as he took several deep breaths before he spoke. Hannah recognized that move. It was what she did when she was scared. When she had to summon strength. When she had to rise up to the challenge. Now, was she the challenge?
“Ms. Sawyer, we need you to go pick up Miles and bring him down to the precinct for an interview,” he said. Softly but firmly. He continued to look at his feet, not meeting her eyes.
“What? No. What for? No. No, we are not doing that. I am not doing that!”
“You can stay with him, since he’s a minor,” Thompson added, as if softening his original blow. As if she didn’t know her son’s age. As if she didn’t know she had every right to be present.
“No!”
“So,” Carelli said, “just so I’m clear, you’re refusing to cooperate? You’re withholding information that could help in the inve—”
“No, I’m refusing having a couple of grown men try to…manipulate a child who has done nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong.”
“If he’s done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
She almost laughed out loud. How stupid did they actually think she was?
“I have work to do, and you have no right to be here.”
“We have cause to be here, ma’am.” Thompson reached out his hand as if he was going to touch her, pat her on the arm, but stopped. A reflex he had to curtail, his hand flailing midair. But he was looking at her directly now as he attempted to land the word cause. Aiming it, burying it, letting it go deep.
“Cause? Do you have a warrant?”
“No,” Thompson said with an exhalation, “but we have surveillance video that implicates your son.”
She kept her lips as still as she could, refusing to let words she’d regret fly out of her mouth. But they churned inside her, and she was certain they were all but visible on her face.
“No, you don’t.”
“The neighbors provided surveillance video from their homes,” Thompson said.
“Without a warrant,” Carelli added. “Because they want to help their neighbors get justice for their child. Unlike some people.”
“Leave,” she said. “Now.”
“He killed and buried an animal in your backyard. That’s how it starts, isn’t it? When he was a toddler, he pulled wings off flies, didn’t he? And then he works his way up to worms, to—” Carelli was punching the air now with his hands, his face starting to turn crimson, his cheeks ombre and turning. Her porch an interrogation chamber with its spotlight the hidden, waiting moon.
“No!” she cried. “He did nothing! He found it!”
“Why didn’t you call animal control? Why didn’t you call your brother-in-law, your sister? Or, better yet, your ex-husband, the hunter? Why did the kids at his former school think he was offing animals behind the playground, huh? If it was all innocent, Hannah, why—”
“That proves nothing! You need to leave! Now!” She pointed to the street stupidly, for emphasis. As if they didn’t know where their car was and where they needed to go. She held her hand in the air a long time, achingly long, before she lowered it to her side. The blood pulsed back in as if she was wounded.
“What if we told you we had evidence linking the girl to your house?”
“I’d say you were lying,” she said. “I’d say prove it.”
Her heart pounded inside her chest. She thought of what she’d seen in the binoculars that first night, the ghostly edge of what had looked like a wing. Was that a little girl, wearing wings, running between the houses? Or an owl, a wild turkey? And would that show up on a camera, too?
“Is this what you want? Your son dragged out of soccer practice in handcuffs? Without us hearing his side of the story?”
“You don’t know anything,” she said.
Carelli stifled a chuckle, and she thought she saw Thompson shoot him the smallest of warning glances.
“My son,” she said firmly, “does not fucking play soccer.”