The ticking seconds coming from the clock on the wall chime like bombs in my ears as I sit in this dim lit room waiting for what seems like a lifetime. My heart is racing and my breathing a shallow slow pace, as I think of how the one person on earth I’ve been wanting to speak to since the day this all started is taking steps towards this room. It’s no secret why I am here, but he has no idea I am here. I sit back in the chair and take a sip out of the bottle of water given to me by the detective. My mouth is dry and no matter how many sips I take, it doesn’t help. The water is not cold but it’s a good distraction to calm my nerves and to occupy my hands. I go over the questions that I want to ask this man in my head and wonder if I will get any answers. I hear the door handle jiggle which startles me and makes me jump in my chair but then the handle sits still. “What is taking so long?”, I say quietly to myself and then I hear voices in the hallway and I start to panic. My mind goes blank, I begin to shake and the ticking in my ears from the clock is no longer present. “Why am I even doing this?” I say to myself, my fight or flight instincts have come to the light, but the pain and curiosity also comes to the surface reminding me exactly what my motive is today. I needed to know the truth. I needed closure for my family and for myself.
I hear his voice outside the door, one that is unfamiliar, but I knew it was his from the yelling and cussing. I realize he is yelling at the detectives asking why he is here and that he doesn’t have to do this or say a word. There is a long silence and finally they open the door and all time stops. Every cell in my body freezes as the presence of this cold-blooded killer is finally standing in front of me. We stare at each other for a moment, his black eyes meeting mine. It feels as if a lifetime passes by as this man who if you passed him in the street would seem like a normal handsome person, stares back at me with all the hatred in the world. I cannot breathe, and I am frozen in my chair and then the shock turns into complete fear. This is a dangerous man, a murderer in disguise with the capability to do what he did and live on like nothing ever happened; To take someone’s life and never lose a night of sleep. Even though I had no confirmation, I knew he was guilty, I knew what stood before me.
Our lock on each other finally broke when he came closer and slumped down in the chair in front of me. His demeanor had changed, and he would not look me in the eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder if he felt anything, any regret, any guilt or if he was just so furious with the way things came together for him to be sitting in front of me. But I didn’t care how he felt because all the fear that had washed over me, had turned into rage as I stared at his face. It took everything I had to stay in my chair and not punch this man in the face. I wanted to see him hurt like I have hurt for the years leading up to this day. I wanted to make him bleed as I had imagined he made my mother, but I knew that the violence would not give me the answers I wanted and needed more than oxygen.
The detective and the officers in the room all left the room to be on the other side of the glass to give me the privacy to talk to this man, but also be there if things got violent. However, I wondered if he would ever tell me anything, if he knew that they were standing on the other side of a wall that looked normal. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and tried to focus on the objective at hand. The tension in the room was overwhelming, my hands were shaking and sweaty and I wondered if he could see the fear on my face. The silence was broken when he opened his mouth and said, “What do you want?”, with the tone that sounded as if the devil had spoken himself. “I came for answers.”, I said quietly looking down at my hands. Laughing is all I heard after the words had left my mouth. “What makes you think I would ever say anything to you?”, he said looking at me as if I was a two- year old. “Do you know who I am?”, I ask, and I could tell he didn’t want to answer so I stood up and said it again this time with force behind my words. Silence still rang out through the room as I waited. “Fine, I will tell you who I am!”, I said. “I am HER daughter!”
There was no need to explain who “her” was, he knew exactly who was sitting in front of him because unfortunately for me, I look a lot like my mother. I looked at him with a face that could shatter even the strongest of men, trying to understand why someone could take someone out of this world. But he stayed cold and stared down at the table and then he then said, “I want to leave now.” He proceeded to walk to the door, but it was locked from the outside. He struggled and pulled against the door but there was no movement. “The only way you are leaving here today is if you give my family and I the answers we need”, I said and the amount of fury that crossed his face made me wonder if I was in any danger. His face became red with rage as he realized the situation he was in. “You will never get anything out of me.” He said. To me this confirmed everything I had always wondered to be true, if he was the person that had killed my mother.
The room was cold, but I had no feeling except the overwhelming emotions surging through my veins. I had prepared myself for this, for him to fight to give us answers that were desperately needed. But the feelings that were associated with this were surging through my veins from the wound I had sewn shut so many years ago. “Don’t cry, don’t cry”, I kept telling myself, “Be strong.” I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out no matter how much a willed the words to come out. I was still in shock that the man I had dreamt about with his hands around my mother’s neck, him with a shovel in his hand and her in the ground, or him stuffing her body somewhere for me to find was sitting in front of me. “Why did you do it?” I finally got out, but there was complete silence in the room except for the sound of my heart pounding in my chest in my ears. He laughed and said “Did I not make myself clear? I am not telling you anything.” I felt helpless, why would this man talk to me? He had no reason to incriminate himself, he had felt as if he had won this long and if he was invincible. He knew that a confession was the only thing keeping him from a life in prison.
He seemed to look straight through me as if he knew he could get away with this and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Infuriating as it was, I didn’t break my stare from him and asked the question again only this time, he just kept twiddling his thumbs counting seconds before he would leave. “You know what I’m asking you. You may think you can play games with me, but I think you have done enough of that to my family and I already. The pain, the torture, the agony and the pure shock you have put my family and I through gives me the right to ask these questions or any others and expect an answer.” I said with no emotion on my face, but a lump in my throat from trying not to cry in front of this man.
The silence was killing me, not the silence in the room, but the silence of 3 to 4 years of no answers, of wondering what had happened to my mother and where she is. I had spent countless nights thinking of different places she could be, but the worst were the nightmares that haunted my days. Suddenly I couldn’t control myself and I rose from my chair and screamed at him letting all the rage, pain and just pure agony from the years of not knowing what happened to my precious mother come out with tears streaming down my face. “Why would you kill such an amazing woman!? Why was it necessary to take someone that I love so much out my life at the moment when I needed her most!? She will never meet her grandchildren that I bring into this world! She will never see me grow up to be the woman she always wanted me to be! Why have you let this family suffer for so many years with no answers, no closure and no hope?! Why?! Where is she?!” He stayed still and had no emotion on his face as if he had no feelings, as if he was the devil himself sitting in the chair, an empty shell.
I kept asking the same questions repeatedly, screaming it at him as I had wanted to do for years but no response was being given from this demon. The exhaustion fell over me and I finally slumped down in my chair fighting for breath. I knew that I looked like a psycho, but I needed the answers, I needed to know the truth, I needed to know what he had done with her, that all the scenarios I had come up with in my head would be narrowed down to one, that I could know where my mother is, and I could FINALLY put my mother to rest. After a moment, his black eyes met mine giving me chills as if a ghost had just entered the room and it had. A ghost of the sin he had committed and stuffed deep down had reentered his life with a burning rage from my words being screamed at him. But he stayed completely still opened his mouth then shut it again. The suspense was killing me, “Just tell me!!!” I screamed and finally he said, “Because I could.”
The cold, disrespectful and hateful words rang out in the small interrogation room. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard, a confession. Tears started pouring down my face as the reality of her being gone hit me in the gut like a punch from a world class boxer. “I’m so sorry.” He kept saying, He had finally broke, tears rolling down his face as he knew his life was over, but I couldn’t help myself. “You actually believe that that is enough? I have no sympathy for you, God is the one that will judge you one day.” Every cell in body was aching with the pain of the sudden shock of it being true. But all I wanted to do is continue to ask him questions, wanting to know every detail of what he had done to her, to put the visions in my head to rest. “How did you do it?” and as soon as I asked the question the detectives came in stopping which caused him to freeze in his chair. “What are you doing, I need the answers to the million questions I have in my head!” I said with more force than I should probably have behind my words towards the detectives. One detective put him in handcuffs and took him away and Warwick, the detective that had become part of my life many years ago came and grabbed me by the shoulders and said “You don’t want to know these answers, it will only haunt you for the rest of your life. We will get them from him in another room, but for now take a seat, you are shaking”
I hadn’t realized that my whole body had gone into shock before now, and the effects of it were washing over me quickly. I suddenly felt weak at the knees and took a seat before my body decided to do it for me. I sat there with my head in my hands and wondered if they would get the answers, if I would ever know what had happened to my mother, but in that moment a new feeling washed over me. I knew my mother was in Heaven now and an overwhelming feeling of peace and tranquility came over me and I began to sob thanking God it was finally over.
