Right Where We Belong

“Just after Christmas. That’s why I’ve been so desperate to reach you. She’s admitted it. You can call my defense lawyer if you don’t believe me. He’ll tell you it’s true.”

“You gave her a ride,” she said skeptically.

“Yes. To that restaurant where she worked.”

Savanna covered her left ear so she could hear above the engine of a semi that rumbled past. “Because...”

“It was snowing out! I saw a woman trudging through the storm in her little waitressing uniform with barely a sweater on and felt sorry for her. So I pulled over and gave her a lift.”

“Then why didn’t you say that from the beginning? You told me the police planted the evidence. Now you’re saying she was in our van but for something completely innocent?”

“It took me a while to remember that I had seen her before. She was so bruised in the pictures the cops showed me I didn’t recognize her. We’d only crossed paths once, and for such a brief time. I couldn’t place where. You know I’ve picked up a lot of hitchhikers over the years. Doing so helped relieve the boredom of all the driving I had to do.”

She was aware of that. They’d talked about it before. Savanna remembered warning him of the danger involved in picking up strangers.

“But once my confusion and panic subsided, and I could think clearly, I realized she was the same woman,” he went on. “So I told my attorney, and after he reminded her, she remembered it, too.”

“Was she bleeding when you did that?”

“Not that I could tell, but I didn’t check her for injuries. The drops of blood the police found were so small, who knows how they got there? You could barely see them with the naked eye. For all I know, they were planted, like I said before.”