The Other Side of Everything by Lauren Doyle Owens

Author:Lauren Doyle Owens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

“CAN YOU REALLY just . . . hold somebody like this?” Amy asked. She sat in a gray room, across from a gray-faced detective.

“I just need you to tell me what you know,” he said.

“But I don’t know anything.”

“Just walk me through it,” he said. “Who was Adel Minor?”

“She was my neighbor,” Amy said, and recounted the night of the fire and the time Adel had given her mangoes.

“And Helen Johnson?”

“I didn’t know her.”

“What else? Think. Tell me about the paintings.”

“They just . . . came to me. The ideas. I just painted the scenes as I imagined them.”

“What about the portrait? The one of the man.”

Amy looked down at her hands. She was embarrassed. “It was supposed to be Charles Abbott. But when I painted it, the other face came through.”

“Another face?” he asked skeptically.

“Yes.”

“Are you on any medication, Ms. Unger?”

“No,” she said defensively. “It was just a mistake. He delivers pizza to my house.”

“Who does?”

“The man in the painting. The face that came through.”

“Pizza,” he repeated. His voice was flat, his face expressionless. “Where did you say he worked?”

“Gianni’s on Second.”

Gonzalez walked in, whispered in the detective’s ear, and walked out.

“Have you ever been in Adel’s house?”

“No,” Amy started, before remembering that she had. “Yes, but . . . it was after.”

“What’s going to happen when they search your house?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“They’re going to do it anyway, OK? Just to be sure. We’ve got three women dead and a neighbor with a bunch of paintings depicting the murders.”

Amy nodded. “I understand.”

“Who’s that guy outside? Your boyfriend?”

“No. He’s . . .” She shook her head. “He’s a reporter.” She then repeated the story she’d been telling since they’d sat down together. “He did a story about me on his blog, and then my studio was broken into, and then I called the police. Remember? I called you.”

“I get it,” he said. He shook his head. “I still have to check.”

Amy spent the next few hours in a cell, slumped against a wall. She’d been arrested once, for marijuana possession when she was a teenager. Then, her father had picked her up and driven her home, lecturing her all the way about the dangers of drug use. Now, she realized, she had no one.

A different officer drove her home the next morning along with her paintings, which had been photographed and catalogued.

“It’s not evidence,” the officer said, handing them back to her. “But they still had to photograph them, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

He shrugged. “You want a ride home or not?”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.