sutton

There was nothing more alarming then seeing police officers outside of your apartment door, and nothing more terrifying then learning a vital piece of evidence was found inside of your store. The knock had startled her, having been hauled up in her apartment most of the day. She hadn’t been excepting any visitors, and hadn’t placed any food orders. So, when she opened the door and caught sight of the two police officers, May couldn’t help her initial confusion. 

Mayella, of course, didn’t believe them at first. Thinking they had gotten the wrong store, and that this was all one big mistake. That this was some cruel joke that she was needed down at the police station for questioning, because, what are the chances? What are the chances that a missing girls name tag would be found, hidden between a stack of erotic novels in her store? 

Pretty fucking good apparently. 

She hadn’t even stepped foot inside of store since the girls had gone missing, having been scared of stepping outside of her apartment. May wasn’t about to take any chances, seeing as the shadow was capable of anything. The only time she left her apartment was to check on her neighbors cats, and even though it was a two second walk, May had been looking over her shoulder the entire time. It was hard not to live in fear nowadays. Living in fear had come second nature to her, and May was constantly greeting it like an old friend. 

What really scares Mayella the most is the fact that the shadow must own a copy of her store key. She never let that key out of her sight, and somehow they had managed to get a copy of it. How the shadow managed to do that, Mayella would probably never know. It was frightening to think the shadow was able to get something like that from her without her knowledge. She kept all of her keys on the same ring and it never left her sight. As she grabbed said keys before leaving with the police, there was no evidence of tampering that she could see. So, the question of how did the shadow manage to either make a copy of her keys, or get inside of her store without triggering any alarms, lingered hauntingly on her mind.

The fear coursing through her grew stronger the longer she sat inside the interrogation room, and just like at the wedding, the frustration of the cops as her answers gave them nothing to work with, was fairly evident. Mayella didn’t know why Heather’s badge was hidden within erotic novels, she didn’t have a relationship with Heather, and she’d been asleep when Sofia went missing. May didn’t have any involvement with anything going on, she unfortunately, had been caught in the cross fire. Her quiet little bookstore was now a crime scene, meaning she wouldn’t be able to step inside of it for awhile, or so she assumed. She’d read enough mystery novels to grasp the concept of how all of this works, and the seasons of Criminal Minds she binged watch filled in any cracks. Of course, she was quickly realizing how inaccurate her assumption was of interrogations. How spoiled she’d been by make believe cops and scenarios, whilst wrapped up in blankets in the comfort of her home. How experiencing the real thing wasn’t as thrilling, the stare down from officers, the typical good cop - bad cop routine, and the water cup trick, it was all too real and terrifying.