Smoke and Mirrors (DE)

60. Graces turn

Malik pinned Joseph to the ground and just as he got on top of him Grace squeezed her eyes shut tightly and pulled the trigger letting off one shot.

The gunshot made Grace's ears ring violently before a silence fell over the room and everything became still. The faint smell of gun smoke burned the inside of Graces nose as she slowly opened her eyes again with the gun still aimed in her hands at where Malik was just kneeling above Joseph.

Joseph rolled the weight of Malik's dead body off of him, sitting up. Grace shot him through the side of his neck, severing his spinal cord and blowing a hole the size of a golfball through the other side of his neck, killing him instantly.

Grace rubbed her belly anxiously, her palms clammy as she sat quietly and alone at a table in an interrogation room. A year ago she was on the other side of these interviews, doing the observing and reading— now she was the one being questioned. The only thing bringing her comfort at that moment was feeling Cataleya moving around inside her— it made her feel less alone.

All her life she'd had someone to hold her hand through her problems but not this time, she'd have to figure this one out on her own. It was time to put on her big girl panties. Grace told Joseph that she was going to her moms house to be able to sneak out without question because she knew he never would have let her go. She could've easily declined to questioning, but she knew that would make her look suspicious. They wouldn't come looking for her for no reason— they had to have something with her name attached to it.

What if they saw Malik force her into the car at gunpoint? And now he's dead. How could she explain that— they're going to know shes the one that killed him. She could say it was self defense— but it was too late for that now, and who knows what Joseph did with his body. If she was going to have claimed self defense she would have had to come clean the moment of. It was all too late now.

She was in the incubation period where detectives let suspects sit and marinate within their own thoughts quietly in an empty room with four white walls and a door that could only be opened from the outside, as they watched from another room through a small closed circuit television like some weird social experiment. It was the start of the process of mental deterioration— to make the interrogation easier they try to push their suspect to their breaking point so it's quicker to crack them.

All of this was just one big mental game, fortunately, one she knew how to play well.

The hinges of the room door creaked loudly making Grace look up.

"Sorry to keep you waiting Ms. Jon—,"

"Combs— Mrs. Combs," Grace corrected politely as both the detectives that knocked on their door took their respective seats across the table from her.

"Mrs. Combs," Det. Vargas repeated, pulling out a tape recorder. "We're sorry to have to drag you all the way down to the station and we appreciate your cooperation,"

Grace smiled small, her hazel eyes boring into Vargas deep brown ones.

"We understand you are a fellow sister in blue, you worked for the homicide department correct?" Det. Collins asked.

"I did," Grace confirmed, making sure to give direct eye contact. She kept both hands rested on her belly where they could see them, careful not to make any figgity movements that could be taken as a sign of deception.

"What made you leave the department?" Collins asked.

"I'm pregnant,"

The irony of the situation was almost comical in a way. They were trying to feel her out while she was reading them, trying to be fake friendly with her to build rapport with her like they were on the same team, so she felt like she could trust them enough to divulge them with information.