I grit my teeth. Frustrating that my best defense is “I didn’t kill her because I wouldn’t have done it that way.” Not exactly an argument I’m eager to make.
“Am I under arrest?” I ask. Another tidbit that I’ve learned from living with Chessa—I don’t have the right to a lawyer if I’m not under arrest, but I also don’t have to stay here.
“Should you be?” Morales asks, leaning forward across the table. She hasn’t even opened her notebook.
I study her. Young, maybe only five or six years older than I am. But there’s an eagerness glinting in her eyes. Not many murders in Beecher, and definitely not many “might be” murders. It’s probably a prime opportunity for Morales to prove herself.
“I’m sure you’re going to run tests on the blood on my face,” I say finally. The officer in the squad car had handed me tissues to wipe my face, taking them back with gloved hands and stashing the used tissues in a bag. Not a coincidence, surely. “It’ll be mine. You might also want to take a look at the windows in Branwick. They don’t open far enough for anyone to jump or be pushed out. Safety precaution.” Also a pain in the ass when it came to trying to get decent cross-flow in the warmer months.
“So you lured her to the roof,” Morales says.
“Through a door that I don’t have a key for?” I ask flatly. “Besides, aren’t there security cameras in the lobby? And outside by the main doors?”
“She called you. Seven times, early this morning,” Morales says with a shrug.
My heart stutters.She did?Before I fell asleep last night, I thought about texting Lennie a dozen different times to apologize. Even had my phone in my hand to do it.
But I didn’t, thinking that giving her some space was the better choice. Now I won’t ever be able to again.
And apparently she was trying to reach me? Oh, God.
“I didn’t hear it,” I say hoarsely. “I was asleep.”
“That’s what you’d say, of course,” Morales agrees. “But her car was found in the open lot across the street from your dorm. You’re smart enough to know how that looks.”
“Residence hall,” I correct automatically. So there were calls. Maybe. Police can lie, another Chessa-sourced nugget. “But then I was dumb enough to kill her at my building?” I ask.
Morales shrugs again, as if to say,you said it, not me.
In that moment, I can see exactly how this is going to go—Morales countering everything I say with another possibility that leads to me being culpable, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.
I wrap the crinkly blanket tighter around myself and then shove back in my chair. The metal legs shriek on the tile floor. “If I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving.” I sound more confident than I feel, knees wobbling as I stand.
But Morales doesn’t object. “We’ll give you a ride.”
And find myself in the back of a police car for hours withMorales at the wheel taking the “long route” back to Branwick? “No. I’ll find my own way.”
A flicker of hardened amusement crosses Morales’s face. “You don’t have your phone. You don’t have shoes. We’re four miles from campus.”
And whose fault is that?
“I need to make a call,” I say.
Morales pulls a phone from her pocket, taps on the screen to unlock it, and then places the device lightly on the tabletop. A silent challenge.
I only know a few people on campus with cars, even fewer whose numbers I know by heart. One of them, the one I would have called first, is likely in the morgue or on her way there.
The other… is even more complicated.
I take the phone, punch in the number. What I hope is the number. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it on my screen.
“Memorized,” Morales notes. “Must be someone important.”
I don’t owe Morales an explanation. Don’t need to tell her that I refuse to save certain numbers in my phone because it screams permanence, a symbol of attachment and closeness that I’m more than a little uncomfortable with.
The phone on the other end begins to ring.
Please pick up, please, please.
