Rushing In by Alice Winters

Author:Alice Winters [Winters, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

***

When Tanner shows up at the station, he looks nervous. I decide to send Bradley over to fetch him since Bradley radiates good feelings and calmness. Or maybe it’s my love blindness talking again because just seeing him puts me in a good mood and I’m trying to force that on others.

Bradley says something that makes Tanner smile and relax a little. Then he leads him over to me. So maybe he’s good at doing that to everyone.

“Good afternoon, Tanner, thanks for coming in,” I say with a smile.

“Of course. Anything I can do to help,” he says, and he sounds legitimate.

“Let’s hope.”

We walk Tanner back to a conference room as he nervously looks between us. Bradley goes in first and waves to a seat that Tanner immediately takes. After asking if he needs water or anything else, Bradley takes the seat across from him and I sit down next to Bradley. We talk about mundane things for a moment to get him to calm down before turning on the recording device.

“I know you already gave us your statement about the night Jamal disappeared,” Bradley starts. “But I want to run through things one more time.”

“You think I had something to do with it?” Tanner asks as his eyes get wide. He begins to fiddle with the water bottles sitting in front of him, telling me that he’s getting nervous again.

Bradley gives him a soft smile as he leans forward, but it just makes Tanner lean back, like he’s trying to get away from Bradley’s questioning. “We’re just trying to help,” Bradley says.

“Tanner, we know that something else happened. All we want to do is help Jamal so that none of this ever happens again,” I say, hoping to play into Tanner’s desire to keep Jamal safe. “Next time it could be worse. Next time it could be more severe or it could even end in something more life-threatening.”

Tanner fiddles even more with his water as he begins to bite his lip, and I know that we have him. The only issue is that Tanner might not know what we need to know. Jamal might be keeping that from him as well. “It was just like any other night,” he says. “We saw each other for a little bit, but then he went to take a nap around seven-thirty and I started working on school stuff. It’s not uncommon for him to take a nap since he works third shift… I don’t want to go over all of this.”

“I know,” Bradley says, voice soft. “But we have to check everything. So what’d you do when you thought he was asleep?”

“I went right to the computer room and started working on my homework. Around nine, he told me he was leaving, and after our goodbyes, I made my way up to my room. I never looked back outside to make sure his car was gone, and I would’ve thought that if something happened, he would’ve called me. That’s why when I

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