The Altercations With Distance

Rules Didn't Apply

All the noise was sucked from the room after Casey's announcement. The cops all stopped fighting to keep Marcia's dad at bay. Clark turned to face Casey, his face full of shock. Did he have hope, Casey asked herself. Did he really think the girls were alive?

Clark didn't believe what he heard. He had to have heard wrong. She didn't just say that in front of an emotional father. Clark had been the one to comfort the families after Casey was found. He listened to them recall the last day they saw their daughters. He told the families to have hope. If Casey survived, then maybe she would their girls did too. Maybe Casey could lead them to where the girls where, he told them. Now maybe she could lead the police to their bodies.

Marcia's dad, however, took the cake. If Casey wasn't so pissed she would have felt sorry for him. He looked as if all the blood had been drained from his face. His eyes filled with tears and it took all he had not to cry.

"What?" He barely managed to get out. He couldn't believe it. She had to be lying. His little girl couldn't be dead. 

"You heard me." Casey told him, the hatred clear in her voice. "She's dead. Did you honestly believe she was alive? After a year?" Casey scoffed at him.

"No, no, no." Her dad started to say. 

"Stephen, Stephen, you need to leave." Clark told the close to hysterical man. 

"Why should he? He wants answers, doesn't he? And I'm full of answers, aren't I?" She snapped. Casey was passed pissed off and was entering full blown rage. She held all the answers again. Everyone wanted to know what she knew and this time she didn't want to hold back. She wanted them to feel pain.

"You don't need to be here, Stephen. Go back to the lobby. I'll be there after I'm done." The man shook his head and glared at Casey. He looked her straight in the eye. 

"No. No. I'm staying. I want her to look me in the eye while she explains what happened to my baby." Casey rolled her eyes. 

"Is Claire's dad here? I would love to speak with him too." Clark turned to face the door and nodded at someone who Casey couldn't see. This should be fun.

When the man walked in, Casey was surprised at how he looked. He changed a lot since the last time she saw him. He was incredibly thinner, almost like a sheet of paper. And he was as pale as that sheet if paper, all traces of color wiped away. His face looked older and his skin clung to his cheek bones. The bags under his eyes were long and his eyes had a red rim around them. He looked as if he was dead, but still hanging on.

"What- what did you do?" He asked, a tear already falling down his face. Casey felt a small pang in her heart when he spoke. He sounded so broken. 

"I didn't do anything. Everyone here assumes I did something. Well, I didn't." She spat out at the men.

"How are you alive?" Marcia's dad, Stephan, asked her. 

"I'm alive because I was smart. But do you really want to hear my story or would you rather hear what happened to your brats?" She looked between the men, who just nodded for her to continue. 

"Where should this story begin? When we were kidnapped? Let me just say, they couldn't behave for shit. The again, they never could. You taught your children rules didn't apply to them."

Casey knew it was a pretty low blow, but she couldn't care less.

"I won't make that mistake with my child. I won't let him become an obnoxious ass like yours." Claire's dad flinched at the harsh words Casey was using to describe his child. 

"How can you say that? They were your friends! Casey turned to face him with a look that conveyed her angry confusion.

"I'm sorry, but how dumb are you?" She asked, not expecting an answer. "Claire and Marcia were NOT my friends. I was invited to her stupid party out of pity! She and her minions talked all about me at her stupid party. None of it nice. And you have the audacity to call them my friends?!" 

Casey hated those girls, but she couldn't accept the punishment for it. It was not her crime to confess to. It was not her confession to make. Luckily, Casey mind came up with solution to get her out of the hole she buried herself in.

Casey sucked in her teeth and looked up as if she was thinking. "But, you know, as much as I hate those girls I guess I do owe them a thank you." The fathers looked at each other confused and Clark furrowed his eyebrows. 

"What do you mean?" He asked her. Casey looked at the detective.

"They gave me my chance to escape." All three men didn't understand, so Casey continued. "As you all know by now, I was sexually abused by my uncle. The last time he raped me was the day before Claire's party. That's the only reason why I went to that thing, to get away from him."

She was right, that much her pervy uncle confessed to Clark. "So after Claire Bear's daddy was knocked out, I had a chance to leave." That was new information. 

"Why would he let you leave?" Clark asked her. 

"Because I wasn't the target." She answered.

Clark couldn't believe this. This was new. This was groundbreaking. The girls were targeted. This could mean there was a trail connecting the killer to the girls.

"I was given a choice," Casey continued. "Either leave and say nothing or stay and die with my not friends. Which choice sounds better to you?" Clark let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. 

"So you used that opportunity to run away from your uncle." 

Casey smirked at him. "Now you're getting it." 

Claire's dad let out a shaky breath. "So you don't know what happened to our daughters?"

Casey took a seat in her interrogation chair. "Not a clue. But I have heard that fire burns faster when accelerated. You guys ever find that serial arsonist? Maybe he can help you." 

The police hadn't found him yet, but Clark wasn't going to mention that to Casey. He needed time to process this new information. 

"Take her back to the asylum." Clark told one of the police officers. 

"Don't hate me because I don't have the information. If you had listened to me from the beginning, you would have known my story."

Casey told Clark this before she was escorted out of the police station. The fathers left the room without a word to Clark. They needed to get away from him. From her. From that room. But what Casey said would haunt them until the day they died. And that day would come sooner than expected.