Outburst

Chapter 15 - New Witness

“There’s gotta be some mistakes,” I said. Chad’s face during yesterday’s funeral flashed in my mind. The mix of tough and sad was reflected on his face all day, even after he dropped me at the station. “Detective Banks never mentioned about any witnesses before.”

“Maybe they finally decided to talk to the police,” Roman put his phone back to his pocket. “I don’t think there are any mistakes. They also found the murder weapon in your house.”

My heart felt like it was forcefully ripped from its place. “And that made him the killer?”

“I’m pretty sure they just brought him in for another questioning,” he said. “Whether he’s guilty or not, the court decides it. And seeing the situation... it’s not good for him.”

I inhaled deeply. I didn’t know how to feel right now. Roman said my uncle was just arrested, but my phone was still silent—no one informed me about that.

“Do you want to go see him? I can take you there,” he offered.

I was in a state of confusion as I paced back and forth on my current place. “If no one tells me about this, it means they don’t want me to know,” I said. “Besides, you’re practically banned from the station.”

“No worries, Flint can help us,” he said as he walked back to his car.

I winced. A thick mustache on a calm and flat face was pictured in my mind.

“He’s the reason why I’ve been keeping up with this investigation,” said Roman. He looked like he was caught when he slipped off that name, but in the end he decided to tell me anyway. “He’s my junior in college. Since I found out that he worked in the same town as your uncle, I asked him to keep in touch with anything related to him, in case something happened.”

“And that’s why you were at Margot’s crime scene,” I finished his sentence after he took a short pause. “Why... would you do that?” I stopped myself from opening his car door when I realized that his explanation showed how creepy he really was.

“The outbursts,” he said, “as I told you, could harm himself and the people around him.” He finally opened that door for me because he didn’t like the way I looked at him. “I’m not a crazy stalker, if that’s what you’re thinking. I did that because I still cared about him. I don’t want him to be wrongly accused of something he did out of his own control.”

The image of Kurt Roman the jerky FBI agent was slowly erased from my conscious mind. He risked his job as a federal agent only to protect his best friend—but Uncle Luke never saw it like that, probably because of that vase-throwing accident many years ago.

And that one thing Roman still hid. I knew there was something more that happened between them at that time.

***

I thought the station would be swarmed by reporters, but it wasn’t. Detective Banks might decide to not draw the attention of the press until he was really sure that my uncle was the man behind all of this.

Roman parked his car quite far from the station. Flint approached us, said that I could get in as long as I kept myself in the waiting room. I left Roman and went inside with Flint after thanking him awkwardly. Prior to this, I always thought Roman was never in ‘good agent’ circle. But, telling me the possibly biggest secret in his life meant that he trusted me, and that’s why I should try to do the same to him.

At the station, I saw Grant standing unsettled in front of the waiting room. He should’ve waited inside, but I knew that he wouldn’t sit still in this kind of situation. Going to the police station two days in a row was not a pleasant experience, whether you had some businesses here or not.