Blood on My Hands

CHAPTER 48

Sunday 5:21 A.M.

WITH TEARS OF disbelief and confusion running down my cheeks, I stand in the motel doorway while they put Slade in the back of the patrol car and lock the doors. Then Chief Jenkins comes back toward me. “Call your mom, Callie. She’s frantic.”
I’m still so shocked that I can’t find the words to acknowledge him. He starts toward the patrol car, then stops and turns back to me. “I’m sorry, Callie. This whole thing … came as a huge shock … to everyone involved.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I hear myself whimper.
He purses his lips, as if there’s more he could tell me but he has decided not to. “Go home.”
He gets into the patrol car. In the back, Slade stares at me with tears running down his face. He nods. I mouth the words I love you, and he does the same. The police cruiser rolls away.
Numb, I go back into the motel room. Slade’s cell phone is lying on the night table. I open it and there on the screen is a photo of me. And it just makes me cry harder.
But finally, when I feel like I’ve gotten control of myself, I call Mom and tell her I’m okay and I’ll be home later. She wants to know where I’ve been and I promise to explain that, too.
Then I sit on the unmade bed and try to make sense of it. But I can’t. Slade killed Katherine? It simply can’t be. The only explanation is that the police are as wrong about him as they were about me. And that means I’m still not finished. I’ve proved that I had nothing to do with Katherine’s murder, and now I have to prove the same for Slade. But how? Where do I begin?
Lost in thought, I idly scroll through the photos on Slade’s phone. They are, for the most part, photos of me. Mixed in are a few shots of young men in military uniforms, no doubt acquaintances from Guard training.
And then … a photo that causes me to freeze. A young woman’s naked torso, shot from the chin down. A slim body with large round breasts.
It is an unmistakable glimpse of how much I still don’t know.