Chapter 16
Someone tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me this isn’t true. Robert can’t be dead. He just can’t. I had just seen him yesterday. Even though he rejected my love and treated me cruelly and harshly, I still loved him with all my heart and didn’t want him gone at all. I had grown so attached to him I could barely go a day without seeing him and knowing how he was doing even though he might not want to do the same for me.
I couldn’t seem to understand how someone could have done something this heartless and pinned it on me. He didn’t have any enemies that I knew of. The last thing I’ll do on this earth is kill someone, much less the father of my unborn child. The love of my life. My lifelong crush. If the police had come for me, that meant the news had probably gone viral. What will his family and the entire city think of me now? What do I tell my child when he grows up and wants to know what happened to his father?
My head was bowed low in despair as the police car sped through. I had never felt this way before. I felt like I was slowly dying on the inside. Thorns of pain tightened their grip around my heart, squeezing it hard as I profusely bled inside. The ocean of tears that flooded my eyes blurred my vision and seeped into my nose, making breathing extremely difficult. I kept stifling heavy sobs now and then, trying to at least hold myself together as if I wasn’t alone in this car but all to no avail.
“You’d better stop shedding those crocodile tears,” hearing that, I looked up a little to see the detective lady staring at me through the rearview mirror with a vile expression on her face. “The least you could do is confess your evil act when we get to the station and plead for mercy so your sentence can be reduced because there is no hope for you. You just touched the lion by the tail by messing with one of the most powerful families in the city.”
I stared at her in utter disbelief, tears freely spilling down my face as I managed to find my voice amid the onslaught of sobs that blocked my throat. “Please…you’re mistaken…you’ve got the wrong person, there is no way I’m capable of murdering anyone, much less my husband and the father…”
“Just shut the hell up!” She whipped her head sharply in my direction, scowling as though she harboured a personal grudge against me. “Let me remind you that whatever you say here can and will be used to persecute you. So if I were you, I would shut that lying hole, sit back and start counting down to the remaining minutes you have left till you’re locked up for good. That is if you don’t get the death penalty,” she smirked satisfyingly in contempt and faced the road.
I wanted to say something but her last words caused icy fear to prickle into me, leaving me shaken. How do I get the death penalty for something I didn’t do? How do I prove my innocence to them? Whoever did this is still out there, roaming the streets and probably thinking of killing someone else. I couldn’t think of any other person aside from Scarlett. But she had no reason to do this. Even though I doubted she loved Robert genuinely, she couldn’t do without the luxury and perks he was offering her, and she was pregnant with his child.
I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around all this. It was too much for me to take in. What has Robert done to deserve this? He wasn’t meant to die like this, leaving me and his unborn child behind to bear the brunt. Did he perhaps get caught up with some dangerous people and did something they didn’t like?
The picture of his dead body with his eyes wide open, staring blankly and blood splattered everywhere filled my head. Agonized, I shook my head repeatedly to erase that ugly image when one of the policemen seated beside me in the back seat grabbed my arm and forced me back against the seat. The impact took me unawares, causing my breath to painfully catch in my throat and my hair to splash against my face.
“You. Stay. Put.” He spelt out harshly, pointing a warning finger to my face. The other one seated by my right did nothing more than support him, sneering at me irritatingly.
I stayed put like they ordered, caged in between their cruel dominance. I sobbed quietly, wiping my tears with the inside of my elbow now and then till we reached the station.
On reaching there, they literally manhandled me, dragging me like I was some criminal into the building. The police officers there, and everyone at the station stared at me with a look of disgust on their faces as if aware of what I did. I couldn’t understand how is it they believed someone like me who could barely hurt a fly could do such a thing.
They confiscated my phone and bag and pushed me into a room labelled interrogation room on top. The room was small and plain. It had a single table and two chairs on both sides of the table. The walls were bare, painted grey with no windows. There was something that looked like a tape recorder on the table and a camera above the wall to record everything. A large fluorescent bulb hung directly above the table, flooding the entire room with bright white light.
I was uncuffed and made to sit down on the chair. I massaged my wrists to ease the soreness the cuffs caused. The skin there was irritated, a red circular mark forming around it. As I massaged my wrists and stared around the room, I couldn’t help but feel cold and uncomfortable. I had never been to a police station before. I didn’t like it here.
A few minutes later, the detective lady sashayed into the room. Her hands were loaded with a folder, tablet device, small notepad and pen. She sat down on the chair in front of me. Her sharp gunslinger eyes never left my face, glaring at me as though she had an axe to grind with me. It was obvious she hated me so much already. They all did.
“Let me make it very clear to you,” she spoke civilly but with traces of venom in her tone. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions and you’re to answer all of them with complete honesty. This is to help us in our investigation of this murder case. After this interrogation session, you will be locked up in a cell. Solitary confinement. An attorney will be provided for you since looking through your file, I can see that you’re poor and have nothing…”
Flipping through the folder in front of her which I could see contained my passport photograph and other information, she couldn’t help but gaze at me with fake sympathy.
“The attorney assigned to you will be visiting regularly to guide you legally and help prepare your case for court hearing till the date is set,” she continued with a nonchalant huff of breath as if bored. “You’re to cooperate fully and provide her with all the information she needs to prepare your defence.”
Reluctantly and still in tears, I nodded to everything she said. I waited as she flipped through my file, absorbing my details and occasionally looking up to dagger me with glares. I hoped she saw I had no criminal record and wasn’t capable of something as gruesome as murder.
After she was done, she closed it and kept it aside. Flipping open her notepad and taking hold of the pen, she maintained a stern gaze and began her interrogation.