After Her (29 page)

“Murder?” I say, wincing at the word. “They didn’t tell me it was murder. They said it was accidental.”

“They found signs of foul play, Cassandra,” he retorts. “Drugs were in her system.”

“I didn’t know Carlson. I swear I didn’t know.”

“
You
were at this party with her.” He steps closer to me, towering over me in a wall of wrath. I glance at his quivering shoulders and I recoil backward, fearing that he, like Helen, will lash out and punch me instead of simply slapping me. “Where the fuck were you?” he asks.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I-I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t—”

“Dammit!” he snarls while inching back from me, wringing his hands as if he’s afraid of what they might do. With his back to me, his fingers claw at his hair, tugging angrily at the thinning strands.

“What happened Cassandra?” he asks after turning to me, his cheeks sodden with a stray tears. I rewind the night through my memories, wanting to summon an answer. I replay every conversation, every happenstance and encounter through my thoughts, but can’t find a single clue in the fragmented images. I shake my head and inhale the tears.

“I don’t know,” I say through quivering lips. “I wish I did, but I don’t.”

“Then answer my first question,” he orders. “Where were you? Where the hell were you when my Sasha was…dying?”

This thought comes to me much easier than the others. Adrian’s hands come to mind.

I see myself in his arms, kissing him in a drunken fit, completely out of control, relinquished of my usual senses.

The voice of commonsense was not with me that night. I’d gotten high and kissed the man Sasha ordered me to stay away from. If I had listened to her, maybe she’d still be alive.

I exhale and right on cue, tears cloud my vision and topple down, down, down, like a stack of Jenga sticks. 

“I don’t know,” I repeat while staring at the hardwood, unable to look him in the eye.

“I don’t know.”

With a face of fractured hopelessness, Carlson sighs, “When they release her remains, we’re planning to have her cremated. Sasha would want to be scattered around the old oak tree back home. She wouldn’t want a funeral. We are having a memorial instead. It’d be best for everyone if you didn’t attend.” 

“Carlson, I loved Sasha too,” I say. “You know she would want me at her memorial.”

“Cassandra, I can’t look at you right now. If you love her as much as you claim, you will stay away.” He marches out of the police station in a huff, leaving me to face Helen alone. She singes me with a resentful glare before exiting behind her husband.

32

I remain seated, nailed to the plastic chair.

Even as I come to my senses, I don’t notice Karen standing nearby until she touches my shoulder. I flinch away from her touch, startled. As she kneels down to eye-level in front of my chair, I take one look at her and completely unravel.

“Oh, honey, I'm so sorry,” she whispers as I latch onto her, burrowing my face into her chest, blubbering into the fabric of her blouse. My fingers clasp handfuls of her shirt, binding me to her as I soak in the warmth of her maternal presence.

My body doesn’t belong to me anymore; someone is trapped in this skeleton of tissue and muscle and veins, someone who's just been robbed of her strength. I inhale, but can’t subdue the breathy tears. Karen pries me off, pulling back to examine my fractured expression. Her rueful stare coaxes a meek voice from me, allowing me the comfort to speak, though not coherently.

“S-Sasha’s…parents were…just here,” I say in one sniveling breath. I can only speak in starts and stops, sputtering like a car with a dying engine. “They…hate me.”

“Come with me,” Karen says while helping me out of the chair, steadying me to my feet. We saunter side-by-side out of the lobby toward the back then down the middle of the sparsely populated police station.

The midsize room contains nothing, but desks cluttered with stacks of manila folders and disheveled piles of paper. Several phones ring in unison like a chorus of trilling birds. A mesh of voices answer the calls, speaking in authoritative tones. Uniformed cops dressed in their regulatory palettes of blue, monitor most of these hotlines.

Karen escorts me through the chaotic area toward the centerpiece of the room—a massive bulletin board with thousands of WANTED posters announcing this month’s batch of uncaptured criminals and unsolved cases. I tense upon seeing Sasha’s face staring back from one of these menacing posters. This is what makes it official.

Seeing her picture as background to the words “Unsolved Homicide,” brings my heart to a momentary standstill. I stop midstride to gaze at that photo, instantly remembering the day it was taken. Two years ago, at some crappy photo booth we’d found on the Newport Pier, Sasha pleaded with me to participate. Her hair rests in platinum pigtails—some crazed result of a bad dye job that left most of her hair frayed.

Somehow, she wasn’t ashamed to go out in public with that white hair. She took it in stride and told anyone who asked that she’d dyed her hair in preparation was some Halloween party. I remember begging her to go to a professional stylist to fix whatever she’d fucked up. It took almost a year for those platinum tips to grow out.

“Cassandra?” Karen calls. Her voice anchors me back to reality, reminding me of the present. I turn to her like a battery-operated toy, as if someone pulled a string on my back, triggering my reaction.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Where’d you get that picture of her?”

Karen glances at the spot on the bulletin board I point to. With a frown, she turns back to me.

“Her parents brought it down to aid in the investigation,” she says. “I’m sorry for not mentioning them on the phone. They arrived this morning and were the first ones at the station.”

“They hate me,” I say. “I don’t blame them.”

“You mentioned during the last interrogation that what happened to Sasha was your fault,” she says. “What did you mean by that exactly?”

I feel an imaginary tug at my arm, urging me to shut up just as Adrian had the first time this question was asked. I deliberate what I’ll say in my own defense, though I can’t figure out why I feel like I have anything to hide at all. I didn’t kill Sasha, not with my own hands, but being with Adrian instead of her, contributed to her death. I'm at fault no matter who actually perpetrated the crime.

“I should have been looking out for her,” I say. “We promised to look out for each other, especially at parties. I wasn’t with her when she died. Her parents know that and they blame me for what happened.”

Karen’s eyes narrow; suspicion blooms behind this sidelong gaze.

“Cassandra, I don’t want to sound accusatory, but I have no other choice,” she says.

“If you weren’t with Sasha that night, then where you exactly?”

I glance back at the photo of Sasha pinned to the bulletin board then at Karen who’s expression is one of formality. She is no longer in the maternal mood to comfort me. She has put on the cop hat. Those eyes now see a murder suspect, not a troubled youth grieving a dead loved one.

“You think
I
killed Sasha, don’t you?” I ask outright, wanting to clear the air.

“I don’t know what to think,” she replies. “You’re not exactly giving me much room to form an opinion. You need to tell me the truth about what happened that night. Everything you remember, every person you spoke to, every conversation you had—all of it needs to be put out in the open. Otherwise, I won’t be able to help you.”

“Help me? With
what
? You mean to tell me that I actually am a suspect?”

“I think we should take this conversation somewhere more private,” she says after noticing the heads of every nearby officer turning in our direction to eavesdrop on the commotion I’ve caused.

“Before I go anywhere with you, I need to know whether or not I should call a lawyer.

If you have any proof that implicates me in what happened to Sasha, I damn well deserve to know what it is!”

I ignore the bystanders, setting my focus solely on Karen. A small audience pools around us—listening and whispering. All I can see are condemnatory eyes staring back at me. Do they all know what Karen isn’t telling me?

“We interviewed everyone at the party,” she says. “Most of them have alibis.”

“What about Francesca?” I ask abruptly.

“Who?”

“Francesca, Adrian Lynch’s receptionist/ex-girlfriend. We talked at the gala. She was really bitter and pissed at everyone. She warned me to take care of Sasha an hour before I found her body. Did you check her story out?”

Karen gives this some thought then nods. “Francesca Evans was seen on surveillance at a local convenience store around 8:50 that night, half-an-hour before Sasha’s time of death. She left the party early. She couldn’t have committed the crime.”

“Are you sure? What about Vivian? Or the hundreds of other guests? Surely, someone saw
something
,” I say.

“Of the four-hundred guests that attended Vivian Lynch’s gala, you are the only one that hasn’t been very forthcoming with me. The way you and Mr. Lynch reacted to my questions led me to be suspect the worst. With his reputation and history with the law, I almost understand
his
reluctance to cooperate, but why you? Why did you insist on having him sit in during the first interrogation? Why did you leave the party with him? Witnesses saw you two getting into his car around midnight.”

I feel these words stab into me, puncturing arteries and vital organs. If words could kill, I’d be lying in a pool of my own blood right now. More eyes find their way to me. More whispers erupt throughout the room, gossiping and speculating about me. I shake my head, wanting to them all to shut up.

“I had just discovered my best friend’s dead body,” I retort. “I was a little traumatized. Wouldn’t you feel the same way under similar circumstances?”

Karen shakes her head. “That doesn’t answer my questions. I need you to be upfront with me.”

“I wanted Adrian there because I didn’t want to be alone.”

A look of
Aha
sparks in her eyes. I catch only a glimpse of it, but I know what she’s thinking.

“Do you have a habit of ‘confiding’ in Adrian Lynch whenever you’re feeling…alone?”

I glare at her, infuriated by the insinuating tone of her voice.

“You’re not
just
accusing me of Sasha’s murder,” I say. “Are you?”

“I only want the truth Cassandra, but I will say that things don’t look very good for you.”

“Ask the question you really want to ask,” I snap.

“Does this mean you’re waiving your right to an attorney?”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”

“This line of questioning can’t proceed until you do,” she replies. “Your choice. I can either help or hurt you.”

I glance at the assumptive faces of every cop in the room. I'm out of my element. Completely outnumbered.

“Fine,” I say. “I waive my rights. I did nothing wrong and I'm not gonna let you people make me feel like I have.”

Karen offers me a tentative smile and saunters away, prompting me to follow her.

“We’ll continue the interrogation in a proper setting,” she says while escorting me down the corridor. We reach a dead-end after a short walk. More cops stop midstride in the hall to gawk at me, each one more presumptuous than that last.

Karen leads me into a small room with faulty lighting. A single bulb flickers from a cord overhead. A chill lingers in the air. I shiver on cue, caressing my arms with my hands to generate some warmth. In the center of the room, there’s a metal table accompanied by two matching metal chairs sitting on opposite ends. To my left is a large glass wall, possibly some two-way mirror monitored by whomever is standing on the other side.

“Don’t worry,” says Karen. “No one will be listening to this interrogation. I figured you’d appreciate the privacy.”

“What makes you think I need privacy? I already told you I have nothing to hide.”

“Good, then there should be no room for hesitation,” she says. “Let’s get to business.”

She sits at one of the chairs then gestures for me to take the other. I try appearing nonchalant, to fix my face so that it exposes nothing. As a cop, she’s bound to know bullshit when she sees it, so I don’t lay it on too thick. I don’t put on a cheesy smile or rely on some crappy ass-kissing façade.

Her trusty tape recorder makes a reappearance. I watch her remove it from her jacket pocket then sit it atop the table after pressing the PLAY button.

“You don’t mind if I record this, do you?” she asks.

“Does it matter if I mind? Aren’t you gonna do what you want to do regardless of how I feel about it?”

She doesn’t reply to that. Her silence is enough of a YES for me. At least this time, she doesn’t have the notepad.

“First things first,” she announces abruptly after rubbing her hands together. “Are you having an affair with Adrian Lynch?”

“What?
No!
” I say in a high-pitched yelp. “What kind of question is that? The man is married!”

“Married men have affairs all the time,” she retorts.

“Not with me, they don’t!”

She reaches for her tape recorder and presses the STOP button.

“Cassandra, I'm gonna be straight with you,” she says after an exasperated sigh. “I know that you’re lying about something. I can’t confirm or deny that until you tell me otherwise, but woman-to-woman, I know that
something
is off about your story. Just call it…female intuition.”

“Your automatic assumption is that I'm fucking a married man? You’d rather believe
that
over the truth?”

“Off the record? I think you and Adrian Lynch might have gotten a little
too
close in the heat of the moment and now you regret it. To reconcile those feelings of remorse and guilt, you’re in denial about the entire incident.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s not true.”

“It’s alright Cassandra,” she says in a patronizing voice meant for a child. “I’d understand if you admitted it. I don’t even blame you. Adrian is a handsome, more experienced older man. You are young, naïve and impressionable. It wouldn’t surprise me if you fell for his charm. To be honest, I don’t even care if you’re sleeping with him. I just want the truth.”

I shake my head again. “No.”

“Adrian Lynch is an affluent and highly publicized man with a lot to lose if he becomes embroiled in another scandal,” she says. “If you were sleeping with him and Sasha somehow found out, I imagine him jumping through many hoops to ensure that she didn’t tell anyone. If he killed her and you witnessed it, you won’t be charged.”

“It’s not true!” I say after slamming my hands onto the table to shut her up so I can think. Karen silences. I sit, rubbing my eyes, imagining familiar judgmental faces around me.

She watches intently as I collect myself.

“Cassandra, I'm trying to help you. You need to let me.”

“You’re painting me out to be Adrian Lynch’s whore,” I say. “I feel like I'm being railroaded.”

She sighs again and leans back in her chair, folding her arms.

“I’m not the one painting this picture.”

“What?”

She rises from her chair and leaves the room without saying another word. The seconds of solitude leave me fidgeting in my chair, paranoid that they are watching me from the other side of that glass. When Karen returns, she’s carrying a laptop. I watch her take her seat and sit for several minutes typing something.

“Perhaps it’s time you see the verdict from the court of public opinion,” she says before turning the laptop toward me. I glance at the screen and something lodges in my esophagus, something that feels like a punch to the throat.