“Uh, I just wanted to say hi. He is my uncle, I haven’t seen him in a few days. Is he available?” Kate started getting exasperated and you could hear it in her voice. Frank just stared at her, looking like he hadn’t decided whether or not he was going to let her in. He had the tiniest smirk on the edge of his lips as if he really got off on wielding his control over other people.
“You look like someone knocked the hell out of you.” He said to her, ignoring her question as he leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet out, crossing his ankles. The smirk still decorating his lips, now almost in a snarl. She just stared at him, her eyes slimming into a squint trying to hold her irritation at bay.
“Car accident, right? At least that’s the word going around the office.” He said to her, not even pretending to be concerned.
“Yeah, thanks for your concern.” Kate responded sarcastically, noting that her sister must have told everyone at the office that she had had a car accident and that was why she had been out for two weeks.
“He’s free.” Frank said to her in a gruff voice after staring at her for a moment and sat up, going back to typing at his computer. He nodded his head towards Lenny’s door and just like that, she was completely off his radar, absorbed back into his own world.
“Thanks,” Kate mumbled, walking to the door and then mumbled, “for nothing.”
She walked into Lenny’s office without knocking, which was not really unusual since he was her uncle. He was sitting at a round table to one side of his office instead of the desk in the back center of the room. The round table had four chairs around it and stacks of papers spread out across it, including a legal pad that Lenny was currently writing on while punching numbers into a large print calculator, staring carefully through his thick glasses.
He glanced up when he heard the door open and then beamed, smiling at her and clearly glad to see her. Kate was surprised at how happy she was to see him in return, because her entire body suddenly relaxed and she breathed a huge sigh of relief. She felt the first true and genuine smile spread across her face since before her attack. The entire sensation shocked her because it was new. There is a genuine feeling of happiness and relief that most people think that they have experienced before, but Kate realized then and there that this wasn’t the case.
What Kate had once thought was happiness and joy in the past was nothing compared to what she felt seeing her uncle for the first time since her attack. Here was a friendly face, a familiar face, and someone who loved her no matter what. She had never truly appreciated that or felt these emotions before because she had never experienced the opposite until two weeks ago. Until she had been subjected to some of the worst experiences a human being can go through and felt the emotions so far from happiness that happiness wasn’t even a speck on their horizon, she couldn’t have fully felt real and true happiness.
Happiness is the face of someone who loves you.
CHAPTER FOUR
Both detectives weren’t even fazed by Craig’s cussing and angry retaliation as he stood up out of his chair in the interrogation room and walked back and forth angrily. Snow continued to sit in the chair across the table from him and McCraig leaned against the concrete by the mirror, unwavering in his cold stare towards their suspect. Craig was pacing now, his face clearly a flurry of emotions and thoughts that Snow was trying her best to decipher. She couldn’t form an opinion yet about whether this was Kate’s attacker, but she was carefully looking for any signals of guilt.
“Well, who the hell is it now? How am I supposed to have done anything? When was it? I bet I have an alibi, I’m not alone all that much and I work a lot. I am not even dating anyone, let alone doing anything that could fuck with my probation. So who the hell is this woman picking my picture out?” Craig turned to face Snow and asked her pointedly, purposefully avoiding eye contact with the more frightening detective in the back of the room who had scared him earlier in an angry outburst.
“Where were you two Sundays ago? All evening.” Snow replied, careful about how much information she revealed.
“Sit down, McDermott.” McCraig said firmly from the back of the room where he continued to loom, saying just enough to remind the suspect that he was there but not enough to overtake the interrogation. Snow’s bedside manner was easily better than McCraig’s and they tended to let her play the good cop as often as possible.
Craig sheepishly looked towards him and then decided that it would be a good idea to follow his instructions. He sat down across from Detective Snow and sighed.
“Two Sundays ago? Damn, I don’t know. Let me think.” He looked up at the ceiling and fiddled with his thumbs on top of the table.
“I think I was working. I work every other weekend and I didn’t work last. So yeah, I was working at the Java Jolt, it’s a coffee shop. My parole officer knows about it and I do good work there. It’s not much but I’m good at it and making some money to take care of myself. That can’t be a crime now, can it?” Craig taunted the officers.