Alive

Chapter 22: Not Guilty

A sickening realisation dawned on me as I lay in the hospital bed, staring at the flickering yellow light down the hall. My trophies. They were in my bag, and my bag was in my car, and my car was at the gas station. The gas station that would have had police crawling all over it given my failed attempt to get away with all the money. Fuck.

Sure I'd been fairly lucky in my life in terms of getting away with crimes, but the hope that they hadn't searched the car was a little too optimistic for me to fall back on. The police would have checked inside my car for some form of identification when the ambulance took me away.

This was it. This is where it all comes crashing down. All I could do now was wait. Wait for the police to show up and interrogate me, wait for them to connect the miscellaneous items in my bag to the 'missing' persons, and wait for it all to be over.

Maybe it would've been better if I'd died before the paramedics got to me. I would've most likely still been found out, but at least I wouldn't be around to suffer the consequences. Incarceration was particularly unappealing. I'd mentioned the metaphorical boxes that society crammed people into, but I would be crammed inside a very real, very secure one. 3 walls and an army of metal bars is what my future now held.

At 3:20 pm it was set into motion. I saw 2 police officers being led by a nurse down the corridor, heading in my direction. How would I play this? I hadn't yet decided if I was going to confess and accept my fate, or plead my innocence and act completely dumbfounded by their accusations. I'd already had my moment of panic, now I just wanted to get the questioning over and done with since I felt sick with pain.

I was taken to a private room, still restricted to the uncomfortable hospital bed.

"Ms Hikins, do you know why we're here?" The first officer asked, trying to sound calming. I knew what was coming next.

"I think you do know, so don't play dumb with us." The second added, her voice thick and bitter. Good cop, bad cop. How original. I looked from the second officer, the female, to the first, a young male.

"You're here because right before I got shot I tried to rob a gas station and I assaulted one of the workers." Worth a try.

"We both know there's a little more to it than that." The woman spat, her voice was laced with venom as if she genuinely hated me, on a personal level. I wondered if she'd known one of my victims or if she was just using her training to try and intimidate me.

"How so?" I asked. The male officer sighed.

"Ms Hikins, 3 months ago you assaulted Charlie Harris, do you admit to that?" They already had evidence of it, he was just making me feel like I retained some level of control. If I wasn't aware that this was a well polished act I would have quite liked him.

"Yeah. She made an unwanted sexual advance and I lost my temper."

The female officer chimed in.

"That's a bit of an understatement. You very nearly killed Miss Harris, and you tried to cover it up didn't you?" She pulled Charlie's phone out of an evidence bag that had been hidden from my view. She pressed a few buttons on the phone and held it out in her hand.

"Hey it's Rosie, you still coming over or what? Let me know when you're almost here. And can you do me a favour and grab a bag nachos from the store? I'll give you the money when you get here. Thanks. See ya." If only I could go back in time and slap my past self across the face.

"Do you deny that is your voice?"

"No."

"Ms Harris, would care to explain why this was in a rucksack in your car?" The male officer lifted another evidence bag so that I could see it. Caleb's wristband.

"Or any of these items for that matter." He proceeded to lift bags containing some of my other trophies. Ashley's football keyring, Peter's earring, the headphones I killed Hannah with. Elizabeth's 'Romeo and Juliet'.

"That's mine." I growled, angered at the thought of someone else touching it. It was my tie to her, it kept her alive. And he was just dangling it there in a plastic bag like it was trash.

"We have reason to believe that these items are all connected to a number of murders."

"Does the name Caleb Priest mean anything to you?" He asked, focusing his eyes on the wristband sealed inside the evidence bag.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Yes we would actually. We have a description of a young woman matching you, with brown hair, who was seen outside of a nightclub the night Caleb Priest went missing. The eye witness described someone dragging a young man into a car and driving away quickly." The female officer stared me out, waiting for a response.

"So you're looking for a young, brown haired woman? Well jee you've really got a lot to go off of there."

"We have a sketch of the suspect if you'd like to see." The male officer reached into another bag to retrieve it.

"Sure. Show me." He held it up. Damn. Kudos to the sketch artist.

"Yeah okay that looks like me, but that's circumstantial right? It doesn't prove I'm guilty. I could just have a lookalike who likes to break the law."

"Are you guilty, Ms Hikins?" I knew he was asking if I had committed the murders, but I chose to answer that question based on the alternative definition of the word. 'Guilty', conscious of, affected by, or revealing a feeling of guilt.

"No. I'm not guilty."