Anybody's Child by Michelle Kidd (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📕

Beth paused a second. “No, not that loud . . . like footsteps.”

Detective Arnold’s eyebrow shot up. “Footsteps?”

“I thought it might be Mom . . . everything happened so fast.”

“But we know it wasn’t your mom, don’t we? Now we’re back at square one.”

“What if the person who killed her was still in the room? They might have heard me coming down the hall and hid.”

Arnold pursed his lips, looking at her with a mixture of amusement and condescension. “You want me to believe a vicious killer, who broke into your house and slit your mother’s throat, suddenly decides to hide from you?”

How she wished she could slap the smug expression from his face.

“Come on, Beth, you’re going to have to do better than that if you want my help.”

His help? What was he saying—that he’d refuse to look for her mother’s killer unless she . . . what? It didn’t make sense. “I’ve told you everything. What more could you possibly want from me? I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

His eyes burned with a conspirator’s light as he leaned close. “I know, Beth . . . that’s why you’re going to help me catch the real killer.”

Detective Gavin Arnold paused, allowing the full weight of his words to sink in. He maintained a neutral expression, leaned back in the chair, and laced his fingers behind his head. It went without saying he’d learned to read people.

The majority of suspects he dealt with grew up with adults yelling at them and some form of abuse. Shouting produced zero results. They came from broken homes and learned early on the law was not on their side. The harsh tactics seen in movies or on TV didn’t usually work. Bullying and roughing up the suspect often made them defensive. His preferred method of extracting a confession involved finding common ground. He gained their trust by building up their self-esteem, feigning respect that wasn’t there. The ruse left him jaded and hard. Beth was different.

This girl came from a background of teachers, preachers, and parents who cared. She played by the rules. An air of innocence surrounded her. He felt positive his tough guy approach would wear her down. Her natural response under duress would be to submit to authority, and if she had something to hide, he would find it.

Her continued refusal of food was a good sign. That told him she wasn’t some psychopath. If she killed her mother, he’d get it out of her. Already his instincts denied her involvement. However, determining guilt or innocence wasn’t up to him. That was for a jury to decide. Like a bloodhound on the trail, he chased the scent wherever it led.

The preliminary interview yesterday had yielded nothing. Finding her prints on the weapon slid her to the top spot on his suspect list. He was fairly certain she hadn’t committed the crime, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help him nail the one who had. She still had a lot of explaining to do. First, he had to get her to waive her rights, and that could be tricky. In most cases, the guilty ones were more likely to dismiss their privileges than the innocent. Human nature. They’re eager to find out what the police know.

Arnold rolled his chair closer until he was about a foot away and stopped. “Beth, I want to talk to you. I have a few details to share. To do that, I’m going to tell you that you don’t have to speak to me. By law, you can have someone present, but I asked your dad if I could chat with you alone. Do you understand?”

She gave him a tense nod.

Go slow, Arnold, don’t spook her. “For me to grasp what happened, I need the truth. I can’t help you unless you talk to me.” Slightly unethical, but sometimes the end justified the means. “What do you say?”

She rubbed her hands along her shoulders in a self-comforting gesture. Her gaze darted around the room as if in search of a distraction. The walls were kept bare to avoid that very thing. It told him she felt unsure, uneasy, but not defiant as she’d been earlier. A good sign.

“Come on, Beth, talk to me. Unless you have something to hide . . .” Would she take the bait?

“I’m not hiding anything!” She tipped her chin and gave him a frosty glare. “What do you want to know?”

Great! He grabbed a pen from his pocket and uncapped it. “Why don’t you tell me again what happened that night? Walk me through, step by step.”

Beth exhaled and closed her eyes as if trying to extract more details from her memory. “Something woke me. A sound . . . I’m not sure what it was. I just remember being scared. It was quiet for several minutes. I’d convinced myself it was nothing.”

 “Okay. What made you decide to get up then?”

“I heard a noise like . . . I’m not positive. It’s hard to describe. More a sense, you know? Like someone looking for something. I thought it might be Mindy. I didn’t want her to get in trouble, so I got up to put her back to bed.”

 “What happened when you got up?”

“When I checked on Mindy, she was still asleep. That’s when I heard the shuffling from downstairs again, so I leaned over the banister trying to figure out what it was. While I was listening, I heard something coming from Mom’s room. I thought the noises had awakened her too.”

Arnold tapped the pen on the table as he studied her. This is the part of her story that didn’t make sense. His gut rejected Beth as a typical clueless teen, prone to drama—but anyone could get spooked. Despite, what she thought she’d heard, it wasn’t possible. More likely, she’d gotten confused. Witnesses mixed up details and sequence of events all the time. “So, you run to your mother’s room, find her on the floor, and call 9-1-1.”

“Y-yes.”

“Then what?”

“She told me she would be sending someone and wanted me to wait on the line with her until they arrived.”

“But you didn’t do that, did you?”

Beth shook her head, no. “I remembered Mindy was alone. I got scared for her, so I ran down the hall—”

“But you never made it to her room,” he interjected.

“No. M-my dad stopped me.”

“And you didn’t question why he was in the house?”

 “Well . . . no, I told the dispatch lady my dad was a cop. I’d asked her to page him.”

“All right. Let’s back up. Beth, my men interviewed the operator. I have transcripts of the 9-1-1 call. She never paged your father.” Arnold paused, letting her ponder the implication. “What was he doing there at that time of morning?”

The hard line of her mouth indicated she didn’t like where he was going. “Sometimes he stops by the house if he’s in the area. It’s not that unusual.”

“Maybe.” He nodded, doing his best to keep his expression dispassionate. “Beth, how did your parents get along before the murder?”

“Okay, I guess . . . like they always do.”

“Has your dad been acting strange? Your mom?”

He watched the wheels start to lock in place as she realized where he was headed.

“Let me spell it out, Beth. Your dad’s not being honest with me. He’s hiding something, and I don’t like it when people hide things from me. I’m betting he did it . . . or at the very least is involved somehow.”

She shook her head with passion. “No! No way he had anything to do with this.” She balled her fist and slammed it on the table. “Why are you doing this? First me . . . now my dad. Why can’t you stop harassing us and find the real killer?”

A small blue vein in her neck throbbed. Of course she’d be loyal, that was to be expected. A stab of conscience pricked his heart for what he was about to say. He grimaced and brushed it aside. “Beth, are you aware your father is having an affair?”

Her head shot up. For a moment, it seemed she was going to come out of the chair. Instead, she stared at him, those strange eyes glittering as if a raging fire burned behind them. “You’re a liar.”

“No, Beth. I’m telling you the truth.” He extracted a black-and-white photo from the case file, slid it to her, and tapped his finger on the print. “Recognize this woman?”

She glared at him, shredding him with a glance, but dragged her gaze to the picture after several seconds. Her sharp gasp was proof enough. “So?” The word shot out her mouth with the belligerence only a teenager could accomplish. “That doesn’t mean anything.” Yet, her trembling hands said otherwise. 

“I take it you know her?”

She gave a curt nod. “It’s Jeni’s mom, Lynne.” She shoved the photograph back at him. “They aren’t even holding hands.”

Arnold nodded. “True, but when we took a closer look inside the house we found email and private texts on the computer.”

“I don’t believe you. My dad wouldn’t do that. He loves my mom.”

Arnold raised a shoulder of indifference. “Adults do strange things, Beth.”

“Have you asked him about the picture?”

“Denies it, of course. But it’s pretty difficult to debate emails when they are on the hard drive.”

“My dad knows all about that stuff. If he’d done something like that, he’d be smart enough to cover his tracks.”

“I’ve found most people act on the assumption they’ll never be caught. Who knows . . . it could be what he was after when you woke up. Here’s my theory.” This was his moment. He lurched forward in the chair. “My hunch, he killed your mother and went downstairs to remove anything that might be considered a motive. The sound of you walking around alerted him. He realized you were up and came to stop you from discovering her. Perhaps he wasn’t trying to frame you. He simply panicked, hid the knife in your closet, and everything else fell into place. If he wore gloves, it would explain why only your fingerprints are on the weapon.”

She cocked her head, giving him a calculating stare. “If you’re so sure, why haven’t you arrested him? Why do you need me?”

Why indeed. This was the reason he’d called her in today. He rolled back, allowing her space, picked up his discarded pen, and bounced it end over end as he weighed his chances of her taking him seriously. “The truth . . . I believe your father is involved with something much bigger. The murder of your mother might have been a cover-up. This goes deeper than your dad. I want him to get comfortable. When people relax, they make mistakes. He might even confess to you.”

“Confess! Are you crazy! Why would I help you?”

“Don’t you want to see your mom’s killer caught?”

“My dad didn’t do this,” she insisted.

“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?”

The light caught on a slender chain around her neck. At the end hung a simple cross. The familiar inner voice mocked him. Such charms inspired false hope. “I take it you’re a Christian?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should want the truth.” He didn’t try to disguise