Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The police car smelled like stale coffee and leather.

Karma sat in the back seat, hands folded in her lap, watching the city pass through the tinted window. Buildings blurred into each other. 

Traffic lights, people walking in a hurry, an old woman walking a dog almost like she was crawling and the dog was frustrated with her, everything moved at its normal pace, as though the world was carrying on without her. 

“Noah knows. Shit!” She whispered under her breath. 

The thought sat heavy in her chest, pressing down like a hand around her throat. 

Not squeezing, just resting there. Reminding her she was in trouble. 

She replayed the phone conversation she had with Noah in her head. 

Which strip club? What kind of grieving daughter asks which strip club? She had been so focused on getting the information that she had not thought about how the question would sound later. How it would sound when a man as sharp as Noah replayed it in his own head at 3 AM, staring at the ceiling, putting pieces together.

“Aaarggh!!!” She muttered under her breath in frustration. 

The officer who was driving, took a glance at her, whilst the one sitting at the passenger's seat looked awkwardly at her.

The car slowed to a stop outside the station.

Detective Inspector Brennan opened her door. She stepped out, smoothed her dress, and lifted her chin just enough to look confident. 

Grieving but composed. 

Shocked but cooperative. 

The kind of woman who had nothing to hide.

Inside, the station buzzed with the particular energy of a high profile case. Officers moved with purpose, and tension filled the room. Eyes turned toward her as she walked through. She caught fragments of whispered conversation, her name used as a topic for gossip, as she was ushered into a hallway. 

They put her in a very small room that looked like a clinic where atrocities were committed. A metal table bolted to the floor, two chairs, a mirror that was obviously a window. She had seen enough crime dramas to know.

“Hmmm.” She scoffed.

Folding her hands on the table, whilst trying to stiffen her butthole from releasing the deadly fart she had held for about 30 minutes, the door opened suddenly— making her fart uncontrollably. 

Thankfully, it was silent. So the damage was minimal, but the look on the officers faces showed that the rotten egglike smell was definitely deadly. 

Karma laughed in her head, whilst trying to maintain a sober composure on the outside. 

Brennan entered first, followed by a woman Karma didn't recognize. Dark blazer, no jewelry, her hair— scraped back into a ponytail so tight it looked like it hurt. She carried a manila folder and set it on the table without introducing herself.

"Dr Kuntz." Brennan pulled out the chair across from her and sat. "Thank you for coming in."

"Of course." Karma's voice was soft. "I want to help however I can."

The woman opened the folder, then slid a photograph across the table.

Karma looked at it and immediately felt another heavy fart forming in her insides.

It was her, standing outside The Velvet Room, caught by a camera mounted above the entrance. The timestamp read 7:43 PM. Her coat, her heels, her hair loose around her shoulders.

She did not change her expression.

"Is this you?" Brennan asked.

Karma leaned forward slightly, squinting and very composed. Then she sat back. "Yes. That's me."

"You were at The Velvet Room last night."

"I was." She met his eyes. "I went looking for my father."

Silence.

"You said you hadn't seen him in ten years," the woman said. Her voice was flat and precise. 

"I hadn't. Not until yesterday." Karma folded her hands tighter. "He came to my hospital. A patient of mine—a boy—his mother is friends with my father. He walked in with her. I saw him for the first time in a decade and I—" She paused, pressing her lips together. "I panicked. I left the room. I went to my office and I sat there for a long time."

"And then you went to a strip club."

"I called an old friend first. Someone who knew my father from the force. I asked about him. I was trying to—" She exhaled. "I had spent ten years telling myself I had moved on. That I did not need closure. And then I saw him and I realized I was wrong." She looked down at her hands. "I wanted to confront him. I wanted to look him in the face and say the things I never got to say when I was eighteen and too frightened to speak."

"But you didn't confront him."

"No." Taking a deep breath in and exhaling slowly. "I sat in that club for over an hour and I watched him, and I realized I wasn't ready. That nothing I said would change anything. So I left."

Brennan studied her. "What time did you leave?"

"Just after ten." She held his gaze. "I drove home. Took a bath, and went to sleep."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"No one who can confirm your whereabouts between ten PM and three AM?"

"No. I live alone."

Another photograph slid across the table. The strip club manager, speaking to someone on the phone. A still image from security footage, grainy but clear enough.

Her heartbeat quickened.

"The manager confirmed a woman matching your description paid for a private booth. 

“You also paid for one of the club's performers to sit with you." Brennan tapped the photograph. "He said the two of you spoke for several minutes."

"Yes. We did." Karma nodded. "Her name was Mia. She told me my father was a regular. I asked her if he ever gave her trouble." She paused. "She said he watched her but never approached her. I left after that."

The woman with the tight ponytail leaned forward. "Why ask a stripper about your estranged father?"

"Because she knew him in a way I didn't. In a way I never wanted to." Karma's jaw tightened just slightly. Enough to look like suppressed grief, not suppressed triumph. "I was trying to understand who he was. Whether he had changed. Whether I was holding onto anger about something that no longer existed."

"And had he changed?"

"No," Karma said quietly. "He hadn't."

The door opened. A uniformed officer leaned in and murmured something to Brennan. His expression didn't shift, but something behind his eyes moved. He stood.

"Excuse us a moment, Dr Kuntz."

They left her alone.

She sat very still. Breathing in through her nose, and out through her mouth. She stared at the photographs on the table—her own face, frozen in a timestamp, looking like evidence.

The door opened again.

But it wasn't Brennan.

“Noah!”