Ned: Like six thirty. I work a shift at Target later today… Oh, I’ve got to call them.

Castillo: We’ll have Mrs. Pollitt call them for you.

Ned: You get more Critters the earlier you go, in the park, and the game was offering bonus points before noon today, and so that was our plan. Play the game, go have a doughnut together at Donut Shack—it’s right by Target—then I’d go to my shift. I told Mom last night that was what we were doing. Oh, I forgot. I went into the garage this morning to get my charger out of my car. Her car was there. So that’s why I thought she was there, too, I guess. I for sure didn’t think she’d gone for a walk.

(Sounds of crying)

Castillo: Can he have a minute?

(Break, interview resumes)

Ned: I just don’t understand who could hurt my mom. She didn’t have any enemies. Everyone loved Mom. No one hated her. Ask Mrs. Pollitt. They’ve been friends forever.

Detective Ponder: We found an inexpensive phone under the park bench. This is a photo of it. I’m showing Ned Frimpong a picture I took of this phone.

Ned: That looks like the phone she was using last night. Who was she calling?

Detective Ponder: I can’t share any information about this with you right now.

Ned: Tell me! Was she calling the person who killed her?

Detective Ames: We don’t know yet.

Ned: I’ll find out. I’ll find out who it is. She can’t…She can’t be dead. She’s my mom. My mom can’t be dead.

(End of interview)

7

Kyle

Kyle has, very quietly, destroyed the phone. He did it with a hammer, and on a towel, spread out on the master bathroom floor. Trying to make sure that Grant doesn’t hear. Dad, what are you doing? Why would you destroy your phone—wait, whose phone is that?—all questions he cannot bear to answer right now. Kyle wraps up the shattered screen and the SIM card and the other components and dumps them all in a plastic grocery trash bag, then puts them in another bag. Then he folds up the towel and puts it back in the bathroom closet and hurries out to the garage, putting the hammer back in its little outlined spot on a board where all his tools are mounted. He wonders if he should rinse the hammer or wipe it down, if there can be traces of phone components on it the way there could be traces of blood on a weapon. He decides not and leaves the hammer in its place. He cannot imagine his kids or Iris finding him, on this dark day, washing off a hammer, doing something so odd without a real explanation.

You just have to get through today.