Betrayed in Blood

Chapter Seven

"Miss Gardener," the officer said, "you are free to leave."

Amy nodded as she stood, announcing, "Thank you for listening." Her piercing, grey eyes locked with Camilla's deep blue pair, but she turned away because she didn't want to linger there any longer. She quickly pushed the door open and greeted her parents that were waiting for her.

"We're going to give them a moment to leave before you are all released," the officer explained.

Camilla's mother finally snapped, shouting, "There's no reason any of us should be in here at all! You're basing the entire conviction on what one of Camilla's peers said about her! What kind of reasoning is that?"

"Please calm down, ma'am," the officer urged her, but she didn't pay any attention to him.

"I'll have you know that my daughter is top of her class, is skilled in every extracurricular activity she takes part in, and has a spotless record! She has never done and will never do anything to ruin what she has! She is on a straight path to success; there is no real logic for putting this accusation on her shoulders!"

"Please, Tina, hush," Camilla's dad, Burton Green, requested, placing a calming hand on her arm.

She swung her head around to face her husband. "You know that they have no reason to accuse Camilla of this crime!"

"They don't, darling, but-"

"Exactly!" she exclaimed. "No one has the right to make up lies about my daughter! She never misbehaves!"

"For all we know right now," the detective retorted, seeming aggravated, "Camilla could very well be responsible. We know that Amanda is missing, Tiffany is traumatized, and Amy had a red mark on her neck. However, we don't know what the cause of all of those things is. That's what we're trying to figure out, so please, don't make it any more challenging for us. Let us figure out if your daughter is innocent or not. It's our job, not yours."

Tina sucked her cheeks for a moment. "Regardless," she continued persistently, "this entire investigation is taking place just because one of Camilla's peers claimed she saw my daughter in the act of committing a crime. This is ridiculous!"

"You're free to leave, now," the detective growled, glaring at Tina.

"Just because I'm free to leave, that doesn't mean I have to," she rudely remarked. "I have a lot more I have to say to you-"

"Get out!" the detective hollered, pointing towards the door.

Camilla immediately stood up, eager to have her mom follow her out of the room. Her dad stood and attempted to usher Tina out of the room. At first, she kept herself planted where she sat, but she finally decided to exit, but not before scoffing in disgust at the officers.

Camilla exited first, only to be met with stares from Amy and her parents. Amy's pupils dilated significantly as she recalled the traumatic events of the day. Despite the heavy temptation to glare at her, Camilla managed to offer Amy a confused gaze before breaking away, not anticipating her reaction.

Camilla's parents followed behind their daughter, and as soon as Tina's eyes caught onto the Gardener family, she shot a ruthless glare their way. While Amy instantly reacted with an offended expression, her parents looked uncomfortable by the situation, seeming to want to depart.

As the parents turned around, wanting to leave the situation as soon as possible, they were stopped by Tina's accusatory tone that shrieked across the hall, "You, as her parents, should be ashamed of the daughter you've raised!" She whipped her index finger at the short, teenage girl, continuing, "This disgraceful child is trying to ruin my daughter's spotless reputation out of pure jealousy, and you're just sitting back and letting it happen! What kind of parents raise their child to make up lies about other people because they feel insignificant in comparison?"

Burton groaned in frustration as he placed his hands on his wife's shoulders, trying to both soothe her and hold her back from lashing out anymore. Amy's parents, however, hosted a look of both sympathy and confusion.

"Please understand," Amy's dad reasoned shortly, "that we are just as shocked by this situation as you are. We don't know the entire story from either perspective, so we can't base what we believe on much. We have no idea what happened today, so we are just going to wait for any evidence of Amanda's disappearance before jumping to any conclusions-"

"Yet you decided that calling the police without any evidence or reasoning would be a good idea?" Camilla's mom shot in response.

"We didn't call the police," Amy's mom, Kristy, replied, drastically calmer than the tension in the room should have made her. "The police contacted us, saying that our daughter and her friend claims to have witnessed Camilla Green commit murder on Amanda Banks."

At those words, Tina opened her mouth to protest, but was interrupted by Mrs. Gardener hastily continuing her train of thought, saying, "Had we known that she was calling the police, we would have stopped her and asked for any evidence of this."

Tina scowled before snapping back, "I don't care what you would have done! It's your fault that your daughter is behaving this way, making false accusations. If she'd been raised right, she wouldn't have!"

Mr. Gardener appeared to be gritting his teeth in frustration, but he managed to announce, "Regardless, Amanda Banks is missing. Whatever the details of her disappearance are, the police are on the case, so as long as she's innocent, there won't be any evidence against her that will convict her of this crime. I think that, since your daughter is so well-behaved, you don't have to worry about the possibility of her being convicted."

Tina sucked her cheeks angrily, but she didn't utter another word. Amy's parents took this as an opportunity to slip away, so they did just that. With one final glance at Camilla, Amy's piercing grey eyes finally broke away as she whipped her short, auburn hair around with the rest of her body to depart. Despite the clear sound of doors swinging open and slamming closed after the family rounded the corner and made it out of sight, the tension in the hallway still weighed heavily on the remaining family's shoulders.

Tina let out a huff, one that sounded almost like a scoff, and turned to her husband with her hands on her hips and a stern expression plastered on her face. Burton tried avoiding eye contact at first, but the heavy atmosphere pressured him to look at her until he finally gave in.

Camilla, already knowing what was about to transpire, pointed out, "Maybe we should get home before we talk about this. It's...it's been a long few hours for all of us." She swallowed hard and dabbed at the inner corner of her eyes, attempting to fool her parents into believing that the accusation was getting to her.

And it was getting to her, just not in the sense that she was innocent but being accused as guilty. She had a completely clean record and an excellent reputation before, but the knowledge that two of her peers were going to ruin all of her carefully crafted image was hammering her brain. She knew that, had she done it a different day, asked to leave sooner, or been quicker when skinning Amanda's body, she could've eliminated the conflict completely. But she hadn't.

Even as she left the police department, those realizations gnawed at her mind. Her head pounded with frustration, heat, and ache seeping from the node at her temples to her entire skull. The rest of her senses became foggy, blurring the car ride home and leaving her in the toxicity of her own anxious thoughts.