I leaned forward, ignoring the pain that shot through my back.
“Wade Prescott has a lawyer. A good one. He’s going to file for custody of Colton Decker, and if he gets in front of the right judge, he might win. I need to make sure that doesn’t happen. So I need your department to file charges. Not just for the shooting—for everything. Domestic violence, criminal conspiracy, assault with a deadly weapon. I need a case so solid that no judge in this state is going to hand an eight-year-old boy over to a man facing twenty years in prison.”
Marchetti was quiet for a long time. Then she nodded slowly.
“We’ll need to see your foster care paperwork. We’ll need to verify that Colton is legally in your custody. We’ll need to talk to him—gently, with you present—about what happened at the diner.”
“You’ll have everything you need.”
“And Mr. Decker? He’s going to need to come in for questioning. His… associates are going to raise flags.”
“I’ll handle Mr. Decker. And I’ll handle the questions about his associates. They’re private citizens who provided shelter to a wounded woman and a child in danger. Whatever else they may have done in the past doesn’t change what they did here.”
Morrison closed the folder and looked at me with something that might have been respect.
“You’re not what I expected, Ms. Whitfield.”
“You expected a victim. What you got is someone who’s been fighting this fight for twelve years and finally has the evidence to win.”
COLTON’S STATEMENT
They let me sit with him when the detectives talked to Colton. We were in a small room off the main warehouse space, a converted office that someone had furnished with a couch and a table. Colton sat beside me on the couch, his hand gripping mine so tight his knuckles were white.
Detective Marchetti had taken off her jacket. She was wearing a soft sweater, and she’d pulled a chair close to the couch instead of sitting behind the table. She’d been doing this long enough to know how to talk to children.
“Hey there, Colton. My name’s Maria. I’m a police officer. I just want to talk to you about what happened at the diner. Is that okay?”
Colton looked at me. I nodded.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You can tell her what happened.”
He turned back to Marchetti. His voice was small but steady.
“I was eating pancakes. With Mrs. Peton. She’s my neighbor. She takes me to breakfast sometimes when my mom is… when she’s not home.”
“When did you last see your mom, Colton?”
He looked at his hands. “A long time. Maybe two weeks? She said she was going to find help. She said she’d be back. She always says that.”
Marchetti’s face didn’t change, but I saw her eyes flick to me for a moment.
“And then what happened? At the diner?”
“There was a big noise. The door broke. A lot of men came in with patches on their jackets. I was scared. And then this man—he wasn’t one of the ones with patches—he stood up and he had a gun.”
His grip on my hand tightened.
“He was yelling. And Lena—” he looked up at me, “—she ran to me. She grabbed me and held me and then there were loud noises and she fell down and there was blood and I thought she was dead.”
His voice cracked on the last word. I pulled him closer, and he pressed his face against my arm.
“I thought she was dead,” he whispered. “Like my mom. I thought she left too.”
Marchetti waited. She was good at waiting—the kind of patience that comes from years of sitting with people who need time to find their words.
“And then what happened?”
