August 1, 2018 AD
The Third Step
Minutes after being sent out of Gladys Cramer's interview, Sarah Lahey shut herself in the staff bathroom at Hobart Police Station and broke down under a scalding shower. For about ten minutes she wept over everything she was now carrying: a body she had hidden for Karl Jenkins, a dead man who now had a name, a suspicious sergeant and a stolen device in her jacket. She dressed, pocketed the device again and walked out unseen, with nothing changed.
Sarah Lahey went straight from the interview corridor to the staff bathroom at Hobart Police Station, having just lied to Sergeant Charlie Claiborne about what she had promised Gladys Cramer. She managed three steps inside before her legs gave way, and she held herself up against the sink.
She went through to the shower cubicles and undressed. Her jacket spilled its contents onto the bench: her phone, and the device she had taken from Cody Jennings' body, which she still took for a USB stick. The bandage on her left hand snagged as she stripped. She turned the water on as hot as it would go and stepped under it before it had settled.
The breakdown lasted about ten minutes. Sarah sobbed against the tiles as everything she had been holding off arrived at once. Karl Jenkins had killed a man. She had moved and hidden the body, and her own blood was on his clothes. Claiborne was suspicious, Gladys knew she had been at the house, and Luke Smith was still missing. Gladys had given the dead man a name, and Sarah could no longer think of him as anything but Cody Jennings.
When the crying stopped, nothing had been resolved. She dried off, dressed again in the same clothes, rewrapped the bandage and returned the device to her pocket. Her eyes were red and her hair was plastered flat. The corridor was empty when she came out, and everything waiting for her outside was exactly as she had left it.
