“Yes, we were lucky enough to move in straight after high school, weren’t we, Bobby? The previous owner let us do a buy-to-rent scheme, so we’ve been here for as long as we’ve been married.”
“I’m not sure if they do those schemes anymore. I think in Seattle I’d be renting forever,” I say, despite owning my apartment in the city. I worked hard to get it. Using the chunk of money I got when I returned from overseas as a down payment. But letting them know that won’t helpthem relax around me.
“The country is best if you want affordability. But there’s not much in the way of work around here. Not since the steel factory closed down. Bobby here got a big payout from them. We were lucky. Not everyone was so fortunate.”
“Was money tight when the kids were young?” I ask, my eyes darting to Katie to check how she’s faring. The slump of her shoulders tell menot well.
“Not really. We were always very comfortable,” she says, nodding at her husband, who gruffs in agreement.
“What was Connor like when he was young?”
She pauses now, looking at Mr. Maddox, who squeezes her hand.
“He was a good boy, lively,spirited. The army gave him a good sense of direction and purpose. He was doing so well...I just, I just can’t believe this is happening.”
Mr. Maddox leans forward and pulls a few tissues out of the tissue box and hands them to her, slipping his arm around her shoulder as she sobs into his neck.
I press on. “Did he get into trouble a lot as a kid?”
“No.” Mr. Maddox snaps, finally entering the conversation without prompting from his wife.
“Bobby . . .”
“They’re going to use everything we say against us, Christine,” he gruffs out, a slighttremor in his voice.
“Mr. Maddox, I promise you, we just want to get an overall picture of Connor. This chat isn’t to determine whether he’s guilty,” I try to reiterate.
“He was naughty in school. But it was class clown kind of stuff. Nothing that we were concerned about. He just loved to chat and play. Part of being one of five is that you’re always fighting for attention in the house. He loved being the center of attention in class, which meant he was often playing up for a crowd.”
I nod, jotting down a few notes, and notice Katie doing the same. I steel myself for the next question and nervously tap the end of my pen a few times on my notepad. “Now, this is part of our standard questions that I need to ask, but has Connor ever physically harmed anyone?”
“No,” Connor’s father says as his mother looks down and away.
“Christine?”
“In his last year of high school—”
“No, Christine. That was a misunderstanding.” Mr. Maddox’s face is red from embarrassment or anger, but either way, this is something that is not going to be in Connor’s favor.
“Bobby, please.” Her tear-filled eyes stare at him until he reluctantly nods, picking up his coffee mug and taking a sip. “In his last year of high school, Connor had a girlfriend. They were spending a lot of time together, and it turned out she was seeing a few people behind his back.Connor was heartbroken, of course. He started drinking a lot, got very angry. Quite rightly so, the girl had hurt him. And he was humiliated. But one night, at a party, one of the other boys she’d slept with confronted him, made jokes about him. And he punched the guy in the face, broke his nose. We had to go round and speak to his parents to stop them pressing charges. It would have hurt his chances of enlisting, and he desperately wanted that. He spent his whole summer working in their house free of charge just to make things right. They’re friends now, the boys, I mean. That Charlotte moved out-of-town years ago.”
“It sounds like it all worked out in the end.” I smile gently, and she lets out a low breath.
“Aside from that period, has Connor ever had any drinking problems or drug problems?”
“No, he was very set on joining the military. Despite that brief period, he was laser-focused on doing everything right to get in.”
“Okay, and after that incident with Charlotte, did Connor begin to not trust women? Was there any anger there?”
She sits up a little straighter now, pursing her lips. “Connor was raised with three sisters and one brother. Those girls were more furious about the whole Charlotte incident than his brother was. They were ready to go round there and tell her exactly what they thought of her. Connor has plenty of women in his life who love him forexactly who he is. His family and his girlfriend, Hannah. Have you spoken to her? She’ll tell you this just isn't possible. I’m sure of it.”
She looks to Katie, who is jotting down a few notes and nodding. As she looks up toward Christine, she pauses. With eyes full of tears, Christine reaches out to Katie and takes her hand. “Please help our son; he didn’t do this.”
???
Katie is starting to wane. The circles beneath her eyes have gradually gotten darker and darker throughout the day, so I make a snap decision to grab some dinner at a local diner before taking her back to the hotel to sleep.
The neon sign for Shakes Diner flickers pink, the light on the “a” not working. Despite that, it’s expectedly busy for a Friday evening, but we manage to snag a booth in the back corner. A waitress approaches our table cautiously, eyeing my uniform as if it might catch fire, and places a couple of menus on the table.
