Hush Little Baby

EPILOGUE

"So Scott let's go over this again, just to make sure I got all this straight."

The detective sat across the table from Scott. His body chained to the steel chair that was bolted to the ground. His hands were cuffed, and the chain ran through a metal loop on the edge of the table. Scott leaned back in the chair as his hands fell to his lap.

"Sir, you have to believe me, I didn't kill them."

"Then who did?"

"My little sister did."

"So you're saying your deceased little sister, killed your two partners and spared you?"

"Please, you have to believe me."

"I wish I could Scott, but it's not looking good for you."

The detective got up from the desk and walked out the side door behind the two-way mirror. The chief on the other side was glaring down the boy in the metal chair, gritting his teeth. He knew Scott had killed his daughter; there wasn't a single doubt in his mind.

"So any new information from Anna's killer."

"Sir we don't-"

"Honestly you can't be serious, you and I have both heard this over and over again. He's a broken record."

"Sir, I get it, but this kid was pumped with so many drugs when he was institutionalized as a kid that I wouldn't even be surprised that he has lost bits of his memory. The kid also just stole twenty million from a bank, he's probably under a massive amount stress, and that could cause the hysteria and hallucinations."

"So you admit, that you think he killed her."

"No doubt, but he keeps speaking of a metal door in the inn, has any of the guys found anything yet?"

"No, nothing's there, just a solid wooden wall."

"I see, I'll head down there again this afternoon and take another look around."

"Thanks, James."

The chief put a hand on James's shoulder as he walked out of the interrogation room.

***

A few hours passed as James pulled up to the crime scene, just the way he left it. He pulled up to the entrance of the ghost town, where Scott's getaway van sat with another truck's bumper entwined with it. In the other attached vehicle, a man's body still slumped over the dash. Dead, from drunk driving.

Passing that, he walked into the ghost town's compound and into the center of town. The other two bodies were still laying in the middle of the gravel road. James crouched down to examine, the bodies of Reggie and Anna once more.

In front of their corpses, to long oval shapes were imprinted into the gravel from where they found Scott. To the left of the knee imprints, Reggie's body laid staring at Scott, a small hole piercing his head and the crossed out word liar on his stomach was exposed to the world. To the right was Anna, she was laid out on her back. Her stomach had been cut open as her intestines were spread around her body.

Behind both of the bodies where two utterly full duffle bags of the bank's money, the third in the destroyed van that still sat on the road. James got back to his feet as an officer approached him.

"Detective."

"Hey, Mike did you check the butchery?"

"Yea nothing. Just drawings from some local street artists, the usual graffiti, nothing too out of the ordinary except...there was a trap door."