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Detective Cawood stood and crossed the room, standing slightly behind me. She put one hand on my shoulder and, with the other, flipped the photo over.
The air in the room vanished. The noise outside the interrogation room—phones ringing and murmuring voices—ceased. For a moment, the whole world muted, as if its breath were bated. I looked away, toward the featureless cinderblock wall before me. Then I turned to peer over my shoulder at Detective Cawood.
“Are you okay? Shall I take it away?” She squeezed my shoulder with the gentleness of a mother.
“No.” I shook my head to emphasize my refusal. I turned and forced myself to look.
There he was.
I gasped.
My husband. My love. His face was chalky, lips blue, eyes open, filmy, and staring at nothing. His lips were parted as though he had some final words to speak, but had never got the chance. His hair clung to his head. There was a very slight spray of blood droplets on his neck.
In my mind, disco music played—Sylvester singing “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” Marc and I had danced to it on crowded dance floors up and down Halsted, the main street of Chicago’s Boystown—at Roscoe’s, at Hydrate, even at the more alternative and mixed-crowd Berlin.
I replaced the gruesome image before me with Marc’s face on those dance floors. He always had eyes only for me when we danced. I’d once asked him why, when we were often surrounded by sweating hunks who’d shed their shirts to gyrate and grind their hips.
“It’s like Sinead sings, honey. Nothing compares to you.” I’d rolled my eyes at the comment, thinking it saccharine, but now I clung to it. Had he meant the words when he said them, or was he trying only to make me happy? Either way, the memory was bittersweet. I looked down at eyes that had once regarded me with passion, with love, with anger, with resignation, with annoyance, with joy, and now they looked back up at me from a crime-scene photograph with no life.
He was gone.
I bent my head low over the photo, shuddering, but not yet allowing myself to weep.
The world filtered back in, the sights, sounds and smells of the precinct—the laughter, the voices, the phones, the gray walls surrounding me, the odor of burned coffee over disinfectant.
I sat back up, straighter, squaring my shoulders.
“All right.” I slid the photo back across the table to Cawood, who had resumed sitting in her chair. She took it quickly, slid it back into the folder, and shoved the folder back into her black bag. “What can I tell you, Detective?”
The warmth and concern she’d shown when she’d allowed me to look at the crime-scene photo all but vanished. She moved her phone a little closer to me on the table. “Why don’t you start with telling me where you were last night?”
My stomach, already knottedandchurning, if that was even possible, dropped. I had to suppress a gasp.Where was I last night? I was at the very park where Marc was murdered, for Christ’s sake. Can I tell her that?I recalled all the detective and courtroom shows I’d watched on TV over the years and how the adage always went the spouse was responsible for most murders, or at least a family member. Evidence bore this out—it was much more non-fiction than a plot device, that much I knew for sure.
What could I do? Lie? Sure, and I might even get away with it. But even that much was doubtful. If I could manage to spin a tale giving myself an alibi, how would I frame it when Cawood would surely ask, “Do you have someone we can talk to to back that up?” Who would I say? Hunter? I had no way of contacting him. He hadn’t even told me where he was living. And even if they could find him based on his name,wouldhe back me up? Or would he simply tell the truth and say he’d left me alone near the beachwhere Marc was stabbed to death? If I didn’t go down that road, what would I say? “I was home alone, watching television and then I went to bed.” Who would alibi me for that story? Vito? I let out a short burst of laughter at that thought, a little giddy and bordering on hysteria.
“Something funny?”
“No.” There was nothing funny in my world, not anymore. I wasn’t certain there ever would be again. Should I ask for a lawyer? Should I simply clam up? Should I tell her I was leaving? After all, no one had said I was a suspect. I was free to leave at any time, right?
But how would that look?
Despair washed over me. All the weird occurrences of not just the past few months, but of my entire life, going back to the night Jeb disappeared after the Fourth of July fireworks, drowned me in anxiety and fear. I felt hopeless. I sighed. “I was home alone until I took my dog out for a walk.”
“Where’d you go? About what time?”
Oh God, if get arrested now, so be it. What do I have to live for, anyway? My world has been ripped to shreds and then stomped on. My only worry—who would take care of my little Vito?
“I walked down to the lakefront and then south, to the gay beach.”
Her eyebrows went up, but she said nothing.
I realized then her sitting there, hands in her lap, simply waiting, was a technique.Keep quiet and let them talk.
“Yes. Kathy Osterman Beach, as the sign says. Yes, where Marc was killed.” Even though I knew it would do me no good, I added, “But I swear I didn’t see him, and I certainly had nothing to do with what happened to him.” I drew in a shaky breath, wondering if she’d say, ‘That’s what all the killers say.’ The tears I’d suppressed earlier were close to falling. My voice broke a little on the words, “I loved him.”
“What time was this?”
“Late. I wasn’t paying much attention.”
