Chapter 14 - Sheriff at the Double Doors
The double doors opened and the cold from the lobby pushed in before the man did.
I heard his boots first on the marble. Not dress shoes. Boots. He was older, with a short gray haircut and a brown county sheriff jacket over his uniform, a star on his chest and a radio crackling low on his shoulder. A venue staffer in a black vest held the door for him and then let go like he didn't want to touch any of it anymore.
Maya pressed harder into Dad's side. Dad had one arm around each of us and hadn't let go since the thing with the phone. I could feel his breathing in his ribs, fast but trying to stay slow for us.
The whole hall got quieter in a different way. Before it had been that shocked party quiet, everybody whispering. This was heavier. Glasses stopped clinking. Somebody back by the sconces turned off half the music system so only a low hum was left.
The sheriff stopped a few feet from us and looked first at me and Maya, not at Dad, not at her. His eyes went to Maya's wet cheeks, to my hands still locked on her sleeve, to the floor where the bat lay inside a clear plastic bag now. One of the staff guys stood over it, not touching it.
"I'm Sheriff Cole," he said, and his voice was plain and even. "Are you Leo and Maya?"
I nodded. My throat felt stuck. "Yes, sir."
"You hurt anywhere?" he asked.
I shook my head. Maya shook her head too, real small. She didn't look up.
"Good," he said. "You're safe right now. You stay right with your dad, okay?"
"Okay," I whispered.
He turned to Dad. "You called through venue security?"
Dad nodded. "I asked them to call. I'm Daniel." His voice was rough. "This is my son and my daughter. That woman is my wife."
The sheriff glanced over at her. She was still sitting off to the side near the dropped bag, her burgundy dress pooled around her knees, her hair messed from before. Her heels were scuffed. She had her arms crossed tight and her mouth set like she was trying to hold a look on her face.
Dad pulled his phone from his back pocket with his free hand. He didn't let go of Maya. "I have photos of where the bat was. And video. A guest recorded most of it."
The sheriff held out a small notebook. "I'll need that sent to me, and names of who saw it from the start."
A woman in a dark green dress stepped forward a little. She was one of the ones who'd had her hand over her mouth. "I saw her raise it," she said quietly. "Over the kids. Twice."
An older man next to her cleared his throat. "I saw the boy pull his sister back. And I heard the father yell."
Sheriff Cole wrote it down without rushing them. "Names?"
They gave them. He repeated each one back to check the spelling. Then he looked at the staffer by the bat.
"Who bagged this?"
"I did," the staffer said. "Clean bag. Didn't wipe it. We didn't move it except to slide it in."
The sheriff crouched down and looked through the plastic at the dark wood without picking it up. "Leave it there for now. I'll log it."
My stepmother made a sharp sound then. "This is insane," she said. She tried to stand but her ankle wobbled in the sandal and she caught herself on a chair. "He's turning a family discipline moment into — do you know who was here tonight? This was a charity gala."
The sheriff stood back up and faced her fully. "Ma'am, I need your name."
She stared at him. "You can't be serious."
"Name," he said again, same flat tone.
She swallowed. "Vanessa."
"Vanessa, I'm going to have you step over to the side with me and give a statement separate from them," he said. "That way everybody gets heard clear."
"I'm not going anywhere with —" She looked at Dad, then at us. "Tell him, Daniel. Tell him the kids were acting up and I grabbed what was by the door for the display. It wasn't —"
Dad cut her off, low. "Don't."
The sheriff lifted a hand, just a little, to stop it from going further. "We'll do this calm. Kids don't need to hear the back and forth."
He nodded toward the far side near the sconces, away from the chandeliers and the middle of the floor. Another deputy I hadn't noticed came in through the same double doors, younger, and waited there.
Vanessa laughed once, short and wrong. "Fine." She grabbed her purse from the floor. Her hands were shaking so bad she dropped the strap and had to pick it up again.
As she walked past us with the deputy, Maya flinched and turned her face into Dad's shirt. I felt it through my own shoulder.
The sheriff watched them go, then turned back and crouched again so he was closer to our height. His radio crackled and he turned the volume down.
"Listen to me," he said to us. "An official report is started. That means what happened tonight gets written down and looked at right. Nobody's going to make you go with her tonight. You will go home with your dad."
Maya's fingers loosened just a little on my sleeve. I breathed out for what felt like the first time since the doors had opened.
May you like
Dad squeezed us both tighter. "You hear that?" he whispered. "I've got you."
Outside the double doors, red and blue light started flashing faint against the white marble, pulsing through the crack. The sheriff stood and pulled a form from his pocket, and the staffer stayed by the bagged bat, and I kept my eyes on Dad's hand on Maya's back, holding steady.
