Past Crimes: Part II

 

I started digging into my mother’s case whenever I could. As I was a detective, I thought all the information I required would be easy to find, but what I found was a lot of red tape. My partner, Dave, was twenty years senior to me, so I turned to him for help. He was curious about what case I wanted to look into, so I opened up about it without letting him know about my most recent discovery.

“I remember that case. As a matter of fact, I worked on it until the then captain asked us to drop it.”

“I’m guessing politics played its part there.”

“Yes, our prime suspect, the husband, had connections to a lot of powerful people; one of them was even a senator.”

“And do you have an idea about what happened to the child?”

“I’m not certain. At the time, my partner and I assumed that her mother had asked a friend of hers to skip town with her daughter, but since we were asked to stop looking into it, we never got to confirm it.”

I could see the pain in my partner’s eyes as he spoke those words. He offered to help me look into the case and I accepted. Dave told me how the lack of closure kept him up at night back then. It had happened in his first year as a detective. My father had moved out of town the following year and had never come back since, so finding him after two decades was a little difficult. However, over the next week, we sifted through every fine detail we could find until we got a lead: he was on holiday in a cabin in the woods in another town. Since he was staying there for a month, we decided to pay him a visit during the weekend.

After a four-hour drive, we were finally able to confront him. However, the second he opened the door, the rage that I had been bottling up for so long possessed me. It was almost like a reflex action—how, in an instant, I pulled out my gun and shot him in the left knee.

“Helena, what’re you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I thought I could hold myself back, but seeing him right now and knowing what he did to my mom, I just can’t!”

“Wait, are you…”

“Yes, I am. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before; I didn’t think you’d help me if you knew.”

My father then looked at me with wide eyes as he gripped his knee. “You’re my daughter?”

“Shut up, I’m not your daughter! Not after what you did to my mother.”

“I… I’m so sorry, my—”

I shot him twice more in the chest before he could finish his sentence. I didn’t want to hear his excuses. Dave stood there motionless as he watched what unfolded before his eyes. My body began to tremble and the gun fell out of my hand. I dropped to my knees, unable to control the tears that flooded my eyes. I wasn’t happy that he was dead, nor was I relieved. I was just overwhelmed.

Dave checked my father’s pulse and confirmed that he was dead. He led me back to the car and said he’d be right back. I sat there and gazed out of the window. I didn’t know how much time had passed before he got back. I don’t even remember if I was lost in my thoughts or was just staring into blank space. Dave got back in the car and looked at me before holding my hand.

“We were never here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got rid of the body and cleaned the place up. No one needs to know that we were here.”

I said I should turn myself in, but Dave talked me out of it. He told me to take the car and go back home. Dave stayed behind to cover the tyre tracks and footprints; he said he’d walk to the nearest bus stop and get a ride home.

—The End—