4.25 Indiscretion of My Sister
Hey, little girl
Where will you hide?
Who can you run to now?
Hey, little girl
Where will you go?
Who can you turn to now?
Hey Little Girl - Icehouse
Where will you hide?
Who can you run to now?
Hey, little girl
Where will you go?
Who can you turn to now?
Hey Little Girl - Icehouse
Chris
All Hell broke loose at 5 a.m.
It started with a call from Raven and from then on it was only getting worse. When I saw Raven's name pop up, I felt the levels of adrenalin in my blood rising. What's it gonna be this time if it was worth waking me up at 5 a.m.? I supressed the urge to reject the call. However, there was always a possibility she's in trouble and needs my help, considering her job and her exceptional talent for pulling anyone's chain. I answered.
"Don't tell me you didn't know about this, Chris!"
Definitely not in trouble by the sound of it. "Good early morning to you too, Raven."
"Did you plan it together, you and Kellie? Was everything you told me about hating your dad a lie? Why are you always keeping me in the dark, Chris? Why can't we trust each other?"
"Hey, slow down, okay?" When she mentioned Kellie and my dad in one sentence, my hair stood on end. "What this are you talking about? What has Kellie or my dad got to do with anything between us?"
All Hell broke loose at 5 a.m.
It started with a call from Raven and from then on it was only getting worse. When I saw Raven's name pop up, I felt the levels of adrenalin in my blood rising. What's it gonna be this time if it was worth waking me up at 5 a.m.? I supressed the urge to reject the call. However, there was always a possibility she's in trouble and needs my help, considering her job and her exceptional talent for pulling anyone's chain. I answered.
"Don't tell me you didn't know about this, Chris!"
Definitely not in trouble by the sound of it. "Good early morning to you too, Raven."
"Did you plan it together, you and Kellie? Was everything you told me about hating your dad a lie? Why are you always keeping me in the dark, Chris? Why can't we trust each other?"
"Hey, slow down, okay?" When she mentioned Kellie and my dad in one sentence, my hair stood on end. "What this are you talking about? What has Kellie or my dad got to do with anything between us?"
There was a short pause at the other end. She sighed before she spoke again. "You really have no clue, do you? Turn on the news. See for yourself what your crafty sister and your dad have done. Six dead, Chris. I would have never guessed Kellie has it in her. Still waters run deep as they say, hm?"
Six dead? "What?" My voice pitch raised unintentionally.
"Watch the news, Chris. Then call me back. I hope you will. You'll need to talk to someone. Might as well be me this time. Later."
I rushed downstairs and turned the tv on. I switched between the channels until I hit the news. There it was. All the mayhem my dad and my sister caused. Footage of the firemen rescuing people from the research facility, victims being taken away, paramedics treating the injured, arrival of restoration teams, witness interviews and as an icing on a cake a repetedly shown footage from the surveillance camera: my dad and Kellie walking like two drinking buddies across the parking lot and stealing a car.
This couldn't be happening.
Just when things were finally going well, my dad had to ruin everything again. How did he even get out of the maximum security prison for Watcher's sake? And what on Earth was he doing in the research center? Why did he have to drag Kellie into his mess? Six dead. Holy Watcher. Six! I wanted to scream. Look what you've done, father. Was my mom's death not enough? Do you want to destroy the rest of this family as well? Do you have to take everyone I care about away from me? Can't you just crawl in some dark hole and rot there forever?
As for my sister, to say I was mad at her would be an understatement. I warned her so many times about my dad and yet she kept visiting him in the prison. She was exactly what he needed, an innocent soul to feed his lies to, another trusting woman to charm. Oh how I despised him for his unscrupulousness and self-importance!
I heard a gasp behind me. My younger sister was standing in the kitchen door, staring at the tv with eyes wide open. She looked almost ghostlike in the light of the tv screen. I took a deep breath, then shook my head. What could I possibly tell her about what was going on? I had a hard time to grasp it all myself.
They were showing the footage of fire again. I turned the tv off and cleared my throat. "It's good you're up, Midget," I said. I'm taking you to school earlier today."
I took a quick shower, but before that I tried to call Terry to get more info. He wasn't answering.
Dressed and ready I ran down to the kitchen only to find out Celeste wasn't ready. She sat at the table over a bowl of cereal and sniffled. "Why are you still in your pajamas?" I asked and sat down across from her with my own bowl. She sniffled again. "Why are you even crying, Midget?"
Of course she wouldn't talk to me. "Is it because of Kellie and what she did? I should be crying, because I am the one who will have to fix everything. Again. What your sister did was utterly irresponsible. She has caused me a lot of trouble. Now stop crying and eat your breakfast. Or do you like snots in your cereal?"
Then just like that she got up from her chair and headed for the door. "Where do you think you're going, Midget? You haven't finished your meal yet."
She didn't even turn around and kept walking. She completely ignored me!
"Celeste!" I yelled after her when she walked out the kitchen door. Her hurried steps sounded on the stairs. My blood started boiling. "Celeste! You better come down dressed and ready in five minutes, do you hear me? Don't make me come up there to get you or I won't be responsible for my actions!"
Why was she always being so difficult? Kids at the orphanage were so much easier to handle. They liked me. They talked to me, wanted to take pictures with me and play games, while my own sister seemed to hate me. Getting eyewitness testimonies in gang related crimes in Oasis Springs didn't prove nearly as challenging as my every attempt to have a brother-sister conversation with Celeste.
To my relief she came down ready for school, but she wore a pout and her face was still wet from crying. I gave a frustrated sigh. I made another vain attempt to get her to talk to me, then I gave up and we just headed to the car in silence.
As I was closing the fence gate a wave of dizziness hit me. I had to grasp the fence not to lose my balance. Thankfully it passed quickly. Must be the stress and lack of sleep.
I didn't drive far. Before we could leave the neighbourhood we were stopped by two police cars which overtook us and blocked the road. It was Anita Alvarez and Lionel Parker and the agent who asked for my blood sample some time ago. I couldn't remember his name, but his presence certainly wasn't a good sign.
I got off my car and approached them.
"Where is your sister, Mr. Heffner?" the agent asked me in a cold tone.
Something about him had irritated me the first time I met him and it did now again. I ground my teeth and despite my better judgement I chose to play dumb.
"Sitting in my car, as you can see, agent," I said.
I had to bite my tongue not to ask him mockingly what crime Celeste committed. I knew he was asking about Kellie, but the way I saw it, they could have come to my house and knock on my door politely. I would have invited them in and we would have had a polite talk over a coffee. They didn't need to make a scene in the middle of a street. Passers-by already started taking pictures of us with their phones. It will be all over social media in no time. Mr. Agent clearly loved being overly dramatic.
"I see," he said unfazed. "You are trying to be funny. Do you see me laughing, Mr. Heffner?" When he got no reply from me, he continued. "I was of course asking about your other sister. Surely you must know where she is. You spoke with her on the phone last night. For two minutes and twenty four seconds precisely. That's a lot of time to learn where she and your father planned to go, don't you think?"
Shit! Of course they had already pulled out her phone records. If I wasn't wrong, they already knew everything about her from her favourite store she shopped in to the size of her shoes. My sister was in a bigger trouble than she could imagine and I was going to be put through hell because of it as well. Just as I expected.
"You will follow us to the station now, Mr. Heffner. We have a lot to talk about."
I shot a look at Lionel. He was watching his shoes very intently. The whole situation was clearly making him uncomfortable. I didn't blame him. It always felt wrong to have to treat your cop colleague as a possible suspect.
"I was on my way to work anyway," I said. "I Just need to take my sister to school first. I won't be long, fifteen to twenty minutes tops. "
The agent laughed. "Who do you take me for, Mr. Heffner? If I let you out of my sight, you'll drive to airport and jump on the next plane and fly away. Or you'll go wherever your sister and father went and we'll never hear from you again. To the station. Now."
"This is ridiculous. I'm not planning to leave Newcrest. If I wanted to, I would have already done it." I turned to Alvarez for support. "Anita?"
She shrugged. "I'm sorry. We have orders. We have to assist to agent Stiles and bring you in. Don't take it personally, Chris."
Don't take it personally, Chris. Bite my ass! Of course I'm taking it personally! It's me against the whole Newcrest PD again, as it seems. I wished Terry was here instead. Where is he?
Celeste
Kellie is dead and it's all Chris' fault.
He did nothing to help her. I told him she was going to do something dangerous. He wouldn't listen. Now she's dead. She died in the fire. I saw it on the tv. They said six people died in the fire. Kellie must have been one of them. She didn't come home in the morning. Then the police stopped us on the way to school and I didn't have to go. You don't have to go to school when someone in your family dies. It only means Kellie is dead for real.
Chris wasn't even crying. He never laughed and now he wasn't crying when he should be. Maybe he couldn't, because he wasn't a human anymore. Maybe an alien entity had taken over his body long time ago. I saw it happen in a movie. That's why he was the way he was, no matter what Kellie had said. He had no feelings at all. And now I was stuck with this alien forever.
I couldn't stop the tears. I wanted Kellie back. I was so afraid to have to live alone with this stranger that was my brother. I considered running away to uncle Brian and aunt Marissa, but I didn't think they would have taken me in. They had their own newborn baby, they didn't care about me. Nobody cared about me anymore.
Please, come back, Kellie. Don't leave me here alone with Chris. Please, don't be dead. I promise I'll behave, I'll do my homework in time, I'll do all the chores, I'll brush my teeth every morning and evening, just please don't be dead, Kellie. Please.
Chris
Our procession arrived at the station. We were met with the chief and Terry right upon our arrival. Terry looked miserable. He fell in beside me. "I'm sorry, Chris. They wouldn't let me call you. Watched me like a hawk." He jerked his head toward a guy in a suit, another goverment agent by the looks of it. "How are you holding up?"
"What's the kid doing here?" the chief asked before I could answer Terry's question.
"They didn't let me take her to school, sir. They practically grabbed us from the street," I complained. He didn't seem to acknowledge what I said.
Agent Stiles walked and stood next to the chief and looked at Celeste. "She's a Heffner. Can't hurt to keep an eye on her," he sneered. "Especially if she's a future troublemaker like the Ginger."
At this Terry's head snapped to his direction. All the time I have known Terry he rarely lost his temper. Whenever everyone else was on edge because of a difficult case, he would always keep his cool and even try to ease the tension. Now he walked up to Stiles with his fists clenched and looked daggers at him. For a moment I believed he would sock it to him right there. If I had any doubts before about his feelings for Kellie, they were gone now. He had it really bad for her.
"Taking it out on women and little children, that's all you people can do?" he said through gritted teeth. "You were trying to catch Corleonesi for years and failed. We delivered him to you on a silver platter and then you let him escape from your jail again and here we are. So shut the hell up, Stiles! Start doing your job properly like we do ours and try not to piss every good cop off by insulting them and their family in the process!"
Someone started applauding, but was quickly silenced by chief's hard stare. "Let's calm down, shall we?" he said.
"How interesting," Stiles remarked. "I expected Heffner here to get in my face, not you, detective Mitchell. Really interesting. You seem to have anger management issues. Chief Johnson should recommend you for therapy sessions. We can't have angry cops running about and accidentaly shooting people, can we? That wouldn't help our public image at all."
Terry gave out a deep growl. I was preparing myself for having to tear him off agent Stiles, when he grabs him by the throat, which seemed inevitable. But I would give him at least few seconds to dishevel the agent's perfectly groomed look. What wouldn't I do for my good partner?
Behind us Celeste sniffled.
The sniffling probably saved Terry a lot of trouble. He looked round at Celeste and his face softened. His shoulders slowly relaxed as his anger started fading away. Ignoring Stiles from the moment on he moved to my little sister. "Idiots. All of us. How easily we forget what really matters," he muttered and squatted down in front of her.
"Hey, Celeste," he said putting his large hand on her small shoulder. "Do you remember me? I'm Terry. We've met couple of times."
My sister nodded.
"What happened to you, ladybird? Why are you crying?"
"Because..." she heaved a sob, "Because Kellie is dead."
Oh. Shit.
"Kellie dead?" Terry kept talking to her. "Who told you such a lie? Point at them and I'm arresting them at once!"
"They said it in tv. About the fire where Kellie works." Another sob. "She didn't come home and I thought... I thought..."
Terry scowled at me. 'How could you allow this happen?' his look was saying. I know, dammit! Go ahead and arrest me! Instead he nodded his head toward a box of tissues on a nearby desk. I grabbed a few and handed them to Celeste. She wouldn't take them from me, but she took them from Terry. I gritted my teeth.
"Kellie is all right, sunshine. She's in a big trouble, but she's not dead," Terry explained. "We'll find her and bring her home."
"Do you promise?" she asked still unconvinced.
"I promise on my badge!" He unhooked the badge from his belt and let her touch its shiny surface. "You see, I can't lie when I'm wearing this badge. That's how you know I'm telling you the truth."
I watched them and felt a pang of envy. Being good with children seemed to come so naturally to Terry. He always knew the right things to say. I was liked by children who knew my face from the media, but I didn't know how to win their trust and make them listen to me without a headstart.
"Tell me, pumpkin, are you hungry?" Terry asked.
Celeste shook her head.
"Thirsty?"
Another headshake.
"Do you need to pee?" he whispered.
She bit her lip and noded.
Terry beckoned to Alvarez. "Celeste, this nice lady is detective Alvarez. She will take you to the restrooms, okay? She will keep you company, until your brother is done here and can take you home, is it okay with you?"
Celeste blew her nose and nodded.
Alvarez raised her eyebrows at Terry. "Did you just call me nice, Terry? I haven't heard that from you in a long time. Does it mean we're friends again?"
Terry looked at her with unreadable expression. "Don't push your luck, Anita."
* * * * *
Shortly after Celeste had been taken care of, I found myself in the interrogation room with agent Stiles and his partner. I felt more sure of my position than before, because the chief assured me the feds had nothing on me. I wasn't under arrest or anything, they only wanted my cooperation in finding my dad. I thought it was a load of BS. The way they treated me I figured they wanted to intimidate me in order to make me panic and slip up. They were utterly wrong in their assumptions about me, because I had absolutely nothing to hide.
"Sit down," Stiles commanded me, after we entered the room. I didn't comply.
"I said, sit down, Mr. Heffner!" he repeated.
"It's detective Heffner to you, agent Stiles." He needed to be reminded that I'm not just some perp, but a member of this force. "I earned my badge. I worked harder than anyone else."
"I don't care about what a model cadet you were, detective Heffner. I want to find your father and your sister and you will tell me everything I need to know."
I rolled my eyes inwardly. The guy was such a jerk. "Actually, I don't need to tell you anything. I know my rights. I haven't been charged with any crime. I can walk out of here and you can't do anything about it. I should do just that, because of the way you treated me and dragged me here like a criminal. But believe it or not, I want my dad back in jail as much as you do. It's the only reason I'm talking to you."
Only then I sat down.
"When was the last time you spoke to your father," he asked.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. "Must have been on the day we arrested him."
"You haven't spoken to him ever since? Not even in the jail?" he asked unconvinced.
"No. You can check the visitor records."
"We will do that."
"Then you'll also find out my sister visited him regularly."
That seemed to have caught his interest, because his eyebrows shot up. He looked at his partner. "You hear that, Lee? How did we miss this?" The other guy only shrugged and continued watching us in silence.
"Did you ever send any messages to your father via your sister?"
"You still don't get it, agent Stiles. I had no reason whatsover to communicate with my father," I said through gritted teeth. "He's been only causing grief to my family."
"Then why did your sister keep visiting him in jail? Didn't she feel the same grief as you? How would you describe her relationship with your father?"
This was pointless. "Look, my sister is a bit naive. She has this dream about a complete family. She thought she could reconcile me with him."
"Detective Heffner, I think you don't know your sister at all. From what I saw on the surveillance camera recordings, which are classified, of course, your sister is anything but naive. Your sister is very resourceful. She fooled all her coworkers with the naive girl act and she banded together with your father with whom she started the fire that resulted in a large material damage and deaths of six valuable scientist."
What the hell was on those recordings?
"Now, tell me what exactly did you speak about on the phone with your sister last night..."
* * * * *
After two hours agent Stiles ran out of questions. He wasn't happy, because I didn't give him what he hoped for. I had no idea where my dad and Kellie went. I didn't have a direct line to my father anymore to lure him out. The same trick wouldn't work on him twice anyway. Except for little bits of information I didn't learn anything from the agent about what actually happened and we weren't allowed to investigate because the feds took over the case. If we stumbled upon any info we were to hand it to them immediately. Chief ordered me to take two days off.
Terry was waiting for me eagerly, after I left the chief's office. We shared what we knew, which was practically nothing. I told him what Stiles said about Kellie and the recordings.
"That doesn't sound like Kellie at all," he whispered. "I wouldn't give much weight to what he said. I don't like the guy one bit."
"That makes two of us."
"What kind of people is the agency recruiting these days anyway? And why do they keep all the info from us? We could help them. What are they hiding?"
The frustration was taking over me again. "This makes no sense, Terry. What was he doing in the research center? He escaped from jail. Next logical step would be to find a place to hide, not to go and put a building on fire."
"What bothers me more is why would your sister help him do it? Did he convince her somehow? How do you even convince a person like your sister to put her workplace on fire?"
I gave a bitter laugh. "This is my dad we are talking about. The man can square the circle. Of course he talked her into it. It's the only explanation I have."
"Do you think he's capable of hurting her?" Terry asked and I could tell the thought troubled him more than anything. Even more that the fact that he would be obliged to arrest my sister on sight before getting a chance to ask her out.
I shook my head. "No. I don't believe he would hurt her on purpose. Not physically at least. But he will mess with her head, sweet talk her into doing things she wouldn't normally do. Step by step he will gain more ground, more control over her. Before she knows it, she will do anything just to please him, because his praise is too hard to resist. If there's anything Kellie craves it is acceptance from a parental figure. I'm sure my dad has already figured that out and can see right through her. It's not that hard."
Terry looked as if wanted to ask something else. Then he just sighed and rubbed his jaw.
"Okay. I'm taking Celeste to school now and then... I don't know," I said with resignation.
"Take her home, Chris," Terry suggested. "She's not in a state to go to school today. Let her stay at home for couple of days."
"She can't miss the classes."
"Give a call to her teacher. It's for the best, trust me. Kids can be really mean. They may tease her about her sister. She shouldn't be put through that right now."
I remembered all too well what it was like to have other kids tease me about my criminal father. Terry had a point. I nodded. Hopefully everything will be over in a couple of days. Kellie wasn't made for the life my dad lived. She'll come home soon.
"Hey, Chris," Terry called after me, when Celeste and I were almost out of the door. I glanced back at him. He smiled at me sadly. "I guess the dinner is off?"
"Yeah."
* * * * *
By the end of the day everyone in Newcrest knew about what my sister and father did and our house was once again surrounded by newsmen and journalists. I was sitting in the darkened living room with a glass of cold drink, when my phone buzzed.
An unknown caller. I recently changed my number, because I was tired of all the media trying to contact me. Could they have already found out the new one? I answered the call and was greeted with a voice of an automated operator telling me this was a reverse charge call from Oasis Springs Prison. "Press 1 if you want to receive the call."
What the hell? I hesitated before finally pressing the number.
"Good evening, Mr. Heffner," spoke an unfamiliar male voice at the other end.
"Who is it and how did you get my number?" I asked.
The caller chuckled. "It wasn't cheap, trust me. My name is Matt Morti. I have important information about your father. I'm willing to share it with you, if you are interested, Mr. Heffner, but not over the phone. You will have to come to see me in jail."
My undying gratitude for the poses goes to: Helgatisha, Joanne Bernice, K-SIMS-7, Rbarkah, R-Jayden