Chương 4
“I heard you.”
Velez ended the call.
Clara stood beneath the awning until the ambulance pulled out. Then she followed in her government sedan, keeping three car lengths back through the rain.
Westbridge Memorial’s emergency department smelled of disinfectant, wet clothing, and burnt coffee. At three in the morning, the waiting room held a child asleep across two chairs, an older man clutching a dish towel around one hand, and a woman filling out insurance forms while muttering at her phone.
Helena was taken for imaging. Clara was told to wait.
She sat beneath a television showing a muted cooking competition. Someone had left a paper wristband on the chair beside her. She folded it once, unfolded it, then stopped when she noticed what she was doing.
Her phone held six missed calls from Arthur.
She did not return them.
At 3:26, a nurse came out and asked about Helena’s medications. Clara knew some of them: blood pressure, thyroid, arthritis. She did not know the dosages. She opened Helena’s medical portal on her own phone and discovered she no longer had authorized access.
The small denial embarrassed her more than it should have.
“Her pharmacy is the Miller’s on East Hart,” Clara said. “They’ll have the current list.”
The nurse nodded. “We’ll confirm.”
Clara looked at the closed treatment-room doors.
The last time she had asked whether Helena needed help managing appointments, her mother had said, “I’m sixty-eight, not expired milk.” Clara had laughed. Then she had returned to Washington and not asked again.
Arthur called a seventh time.
This time she answered.
“What?”
“Brooke left.”
Clara stood. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were told to remain available.”
“You said we weren’t detained.”
“That was not an invitation to disappear.”
“She said she needed her medication.”
“What medication?”
“I don’t know. Anxiety.”
“Did Landry let her leave?”
“He said he couldn’t stop her.”
“Where are you?”
“Still here.”
“Why?”
A long silence.
The cooking-show audience applauded something Clara could not hear.
“Because I don’t know where else to go,” Arthur said.
For one second he sounded nine years old, standing in the kitchen after breaking their father’s watch and waiting for Clara to decide whether to tell.
Then Clara remembered the bruise on Helena’s face.
“Do not touch anything in Mom’s house. Do not enter Brooke’s car. Do not call her and warn her about evidence preservation.”
“I’m not warning anybody.”
“You already lied.”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You said Mom lost her mind.”
“She did. She was swinging at Brooke.”
“With the bat?”
“No.”
“Who had the bat?”
Arthur’s breathing changed.
Clara closed her eyes. “Arthur.”
“I didn’t see.”
“Were you in the kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“Then you saw.”
“I was trying to stop them.”
“Who had the bat?”
“I need to see Mom.”
“You need to answer.”
“See? This is why nobody calls you.”
The sentence was petty, almost childish. It still found its mark.
Clara lowered her voice. “Who had the bat?”
Arthur hung up.
A man across the waiting room looked toward her, then quickly returned his attention to the towel around his hand.
Clara sat again.
She did not call back.
At 3:41, a woman in a navy rain jacket entered the emergency department carrying a leather folio and wearing her state identification on a lanyard. She was short, broad-shouldered, and looked awake in a way that suggested either discipline or chronic insomnia.
“Investigator Hale?”
Clara rose.
“Special Agent Lydia Chen, State Bureau of Criminal Investigation.”
They shook hands.
Chen’s grip was dry despite the rain. “Your supervisor gave me the outline. Before we go further, I need you to understand that you are a reporting witness and a family member. You will not direct interviews, handle evidence, review sealed material, contact potential suspects, or use your federal access to support the state case.”
“Understood.”
“You answered fast.”
“I’ve given the same warning to people.”
“Did they listen?”
“Rarely.”
Chen studied her face. “Will you?”
Clara looked through the treatment-room doors.
“Yes.”
“That sounded slower.”
“It was still yes.”
Chen opened the folio. “Tell me only what you directly observed.”
Clara gave her the station encounter. She separated what she saw from what Helena said, and what Arthur texted from what Clara inferred. When she reached Brooke’s reaction to the missing bat, Chen raised one finger.
“Describe the reaction without interpreting it.”
“Her crying stopped. Her eyes moved toward Officer Morgan when he denied a weapon existed. She then lowered her gaze.”
“Good.”
Chen asked for the original photograph Arthur sent. Clara forwarded it with metadata intact. She provided the station recording and the secure-preservation confirmations. She did not mention the red mark on Arthur’s hand until Chen asked whether she noticed injuries on anyone else.
“Right palm,” Clara said. “Linear redness near the heel. No photograph.”
“Why not?”
“He moved it out of view.”
“And you were focused on your mother.”
“Yes.”
Chen closed the folio. “Your mother’s interview will happen after the physician clears her, and only if she consents. You will not be present.”
Clara’s first response formed in her chest and died there.
“Understood.”
“You can wait nearby.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“No.”
Chen did not apologize.
At 4:12, the emergency physician told Clara that Helena had two cracked ribs, a severe wrist sprain without fracture, a facial contusion, and a superficial cut near the eyebrow. There was no intracranial bleeding. The physician wanted to keep her for observation until morning because of her age, blood-pressure fluctuations, and the possibility of delayed symptoms.
“Can I see her?”
“For a few minutes. The state agent will need privacy afterward.”
Helena lay beneath a thin white blanket with a brace around her wrist. Someone had cleaned the blood from her eyebrow. Without the torn cardigan and handcuffs, she looked smaller, not less injured.
Clara set Helena’s purse on the chair beside the bed.
“They found it in the ambulance storage compartment,” she said.
May you like
“I wondered where that went.”
“Your phone isn’t inside.”
