Read Online Clouded Vision by Linwood Barclay - Free Book Online

to eat the right things so the baby will be healthy, you know, even though I’d rather just be eating pizza and burgers, but I’m trying, OK? I’m really trying.’
    ‘Sure,’ the detective said.
    ‘It’s like she was checking up on me all the time. She was always asking me these questions, like what’s happening with Lester and was he going to marry me and help me take care of the baby. She’d say, maybe I could move in with him and his mom and dad, then she’d be able to help me look after the baby, like I was really going to do that, right? And then she wanted to know if I’d applied to the vet school I was talking about, because I happened to mention it, you know. I said, not yet, but I was thinking about it. She said, what’s the hold-up? She wanted to know why I couldn’t just go on the computer and press a couple of buttons. Then I’d be enrolled. If it was that easy, she said, I should just go and do it now.
    ‘I said, Please Mom, will you just give me some room to breathe, you know? I’ve got a baby coming in a few weeks and I’ve got a lot on my mind. OK, maybe I’m thinking about it, but do I have to do something about it right this very second? And she said, it’ll take you just two minutes, so why don’t you do it? I’ll cut up your celery and your carrots for you. Then she tried to take the knife from me. I don’t know what happened but I kind of snapped or something, you know?’
    ‘I hear you,’ the detective said.
    ‘So, I don’t know how exactly it happened, but the knife went into her. Then I guess I must have put it into her a second time and then she looks at me and she’s all, like, what have you done? Then she falls down and she doesn’t move or anything.’
    ‘So what did you do then? Did you think about calling for an ambulance?’
    ‘I guess I went crazy for a while, you know? But I managed to call my dad.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘I said, something’s happened to Mom. You have to get over here. He said, is it a heart attack or something? I said, no. He said I should call the ambulance. Then I said that I’d stabbed her, and he shouted ‘‘What?’’ Then he told me I shouldn’t do anything and he’d come right over.’
    ‘To help you out.’
    Melissa nodded. ‘So he came over really quickly, and he was kind of all freaked out. He took one look at Mom and he could see that she was dead. He said he had to think. I asked him, was I going to go to jail? Was I going to have my baby in jail? He kept telling me to shut up, because he was thinking, and then he had this idea. He took Mom out of the apartment the back way and got her into her car. Then he told me I was going to have to follow in his car and drive along after him. I followed him up to this lake. He put the car on the ice and it went through. I guess I already told you about that part.’
    ‘And then what happened?’
    ‘Dad came back to my place and cleaned up. There was blood all over the place. It was horrible. It took hours to clean up the blood. I couldn’t do it. I stayed in my bed, under the covers. When he was finished he told me everything was going to be OK. He said I wasn’t going to have to go to jail.’
    She smiled sadly. ‘He said he loved me very much and he wanted everything to be OK for me. He said I’d done a bad thing but sometimes people made mistakes and he didn’t want my whole life to be ruined, you know? He’s a really good dad. He said the police would just think Mom ran away, or maybe she got killed by that car-jacker guy. He said they’d never really know what happened because they’d never be able to find Mom’s car. And if the police didn’t know what happened, they couldn’t really charge anyone.’
    Melissa shook her head.
    ‘He’s going to be so angry with me, because he did all this to protect me, and now … Well, here I am. But I just … I can’t do it. I feel bad about what I did. I really loved my mom.’
    Detective Marshall reached out and touched her hand.