The Evil Beneath Us

27| An Unexpected Visitor

The officer doing the interrogation was somewhere in his fifties with light grey hair and a bit of silver in the stubble of his beard that covered a good portion of his face. As soon as he removed his black Ray-Ban sunglasses, Melissa's eyes widened in surprise. If it hadn't been for the scruffy man beard of facial hair and distinguished brown mole on the left side of his cheek, he would have easily been a dead ringer for Richard Gere.

Her eyes reflected on the picture of Derek, underneath her thick black lenses, and nodded her head, as if she didn't have a clue who he was. The last thing she needed right now, was getting taken downtown for questioning. They would do it no questions asked, if they even had the slightest inkling of who she was. In the eyes of these men, who considered themselves above the law, she knew was vilified in this town and guilty by association.

"I definitely haven't seen him or an old man, but he sure is real handsome," she said intending to sound vague. Even though it went against her better judgement she lied her way through the whole thing and told him she had just moved here, from Omaha and had never seen this man in her life.

She explained to the officer that she had to go home and get ready for her Le mars class, which was about to start in an hour. The officer apologized without even bothering to inspect her car and let her pass, but she still wasn't out of the woods yet.

There were hundreds more of them from a twenty-kilometre radius, blocking the roads and ordering people to stop at their command. Faint Incongruously joyful music started to play in the background but had been interrupted when the radio announcer intruded with an important news announcement.

"Howdy, there folks...How y'all doing today? Looks like things are gonna be blowing up a storm in Highbury Hills, tonight! There's a mother of all tornadoes approaching this here, town. So grab em shovels, boys and girls. Grab your loved ones - heck even your ex-wives and go underground where it's safe. If Y'all really wanna know what I think, I'd say we're all in for some mighty big trouble."

The radio announcer coughed nervously into the microphone before saying, "This is Gunner Holt, signing off from Radio, five -"
Melissa switched off the radio and bit her into her lip so hard, she was certain it would bleed.

There hadn't been a natural disaster in this town, in over ten years, she thought feeling sick to her stomach. For the first time, she could honestly say it had nothing to do with the baby this time. She couldn't imagine going through something like this without Derek. She was having a panic attack just thinking of being forced to rush her and Holly to safety without him.

As she looked heaven upward, towards the skies, one last time, she could see the sun was completely forgotten about, hidden behind the ashen-black clouds looming into the horizon. She prayed wherever Derek was right now, that he was safe in amongst all this. Wiping the tears from her eyes, Melissa forced herself to keep it together.

She knew she had to be strong for her and this baby. It was up to her now, to press on and prove her husband's innocence in front of the eyes of the law.

Everyone else in this town wouldn't have given a shred of a shit if Derek were dead or alive. As long as they got to see him burn in the electric chair or go off in some unfortunate way they would be happy. She had to keep reminding herself that she was all he had.

She opened the gate hearing the sound of the gravel and mud crunching against the tyres of her car. There were deep, watery, muddy puddles surrounding the driveway, that were gradually turning into murky, brown pools of water, mud and sand.