Nine Years Gone (26 page)

“You sure about that?” asked Olivia.

“Yeah. She’s got a scholarship to play tennis at Purdue University next year, and her high school tests randomly to make sure the kids aren’t doping. My sister would have said something if Rachel wasn’t clean.”

Olivia bit her lower lip. “We’ll see how things go, then,” she said. “You hang around here. I’m going to wait downstairs for Meyers to show up and get this started.”

Olivia left shortly after that. I sat and waited, staring at the monitor. Robbie looked thin and awkward. Appearances could be deceiving, but I doubted he was Islamic. That wouldn’t sit too well with Rana and Nassir, which might have been part of his appeal to my niece.

I leaned back in my chair, wishing I had thought to grab a cup of coffee on my way in.

Approximately five minutes after leaving the observation booth, Olivia entered the interrogation room with John Meyers in tow. Meyers looked to be in his fifties. He wore a lustrous blue suit and carried a soft leather bag over one shoulder. He sat at the table in the interrogation room beside his client while Olivia sat across from him with a file folder in front of her. The microphones inside were sensitive enough that I could hear the clatter of the metal buckles on Meyers’s bag strike the steel table.

“Okay, so why don’t we get this started,” said Olivia. “For the record, it’s eleven in the evening on August nineteenth, and this is Detective Olivia Rhodes interviewing Robbie Cutting. Sitting in on this interview is Mr. Cutting’s lawyer, John Meyers. Is that correct?”

Robbie mumbled, “Yes,” but didn’t meet Olivia’s gaze. I took a closer look at him then. He had bags under his eyes, and he swayed as if he were being buffeted by wind. He looked lost.

“Good,” said Olivia. “Right now, this is an information-gathering interview. I’m trying to figure out what happened. You’re not under arrest, but I can use what you tell me here in court. Just to be clear, you don’t have to say anything, and you’re free to leave at any time. Do you understand these rights, Mr. Cutting?”

Robbie looked up, hope in his eyes. “Does that mean I can go?”

Meyers reached over and squeezed his client’s shoulder. “We can leave now, but we should answer Detective Rhodes’s questions first,” he said. “The sooner we get the questions out of the way, the sooner you and your parents get your lives back on track. Okay?”

Robbie nodded for Olivia to continue. She smiled at him.

“Tell me about yourself. You’re in high school?”

“I’m a senior, but I take mostly college classes.”

Robbie’s voice was so soft that even that short answer seemed labored. I shifted, unsure what to make of his apparent anguish.

“Any thought about where you’re going to college yet?”

“Purdue. With Rachel.”

Olivia and Robbie went back and forth for a while. His shoulders relaxed and his answers became more verbose the longer Olivia questioned him. She was a good interviewer. She established rapport and common ground before diving into her questions. More than that, she listened sympathetically to Robbie’s answers. If I didn’t know her better, I would have thought she actually cared about him.

“Okay,” said Olivia after a few minutes of conversation. “What was your relationship to the victim?”

Robbie looked down. “She was my girlfriend. I’ve been with her for about two years.”

I paused. My sister had never told me Rachel had a steady boyfriend. I doubted she knew, making me wonder if Rachel had anything else to hide.

“What can you tell us about her death?” asked Olivia.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

“Rachel came over at four this afternoon while my mom and dad played golf. She’s not very good at math, so I was tutoring her. We did that for a while and then we played a video game.”

That at least sounded like my niece. She played with my family’s Nintendo Wii more than my daughter did.

“Okay,” said Olivia, nodding. “What happened after you guys played a game?”

Robbie looked down again. “Rachel got sick in the bathroom. I don’t know what happened. Then she died.”

“So she puked and then she died. And you have no idea why.”

Robbie didn’t answer, so Olivia opened the file folder in front of her and began to pull out pictures. They were probably the originals of which I had copies. She laid them in an array in front of Robbie. His lower lip quivered, and his lawyer put a hand on his shoulder.

“I think we’re done here,” said Meyers. “If you have any need to question my client further, I expect you to call me at my office.”

Meyers stood, but Robbie didn’t move.

Olivia pressed a headshot of my niece under Robbie’s gaze. Rigor had contracted her face into a grimace, closing her eyes in a pained expression.

“I bet she was a pretty girl,” said Olivia. “At one time.”

“She is pretty,” said Robbie, a tear streaming down his cheek. “I loved her.”

“This interview is over,” said Meyers, his voice strained. “Get these cuffs off my client. Unless Robbie is under arrest, we’re leaving.”

Robbie still didn’t move. Meyers said the interview was over, but it wasn’t his call. If his client didn’t want to take advice, Olivia had little reason to stop.

“Look at her, Robbie,” said Olivia, tapping the picture she had slid toward Robbie. “If you don’t tell us what happened, we’re going to cut her open, we’re going to photograph her, and then we’re going to put her on display. Is that how you want to remember her?”

Robbie didn’t say anything, but another tear slid down his cheek.

Olivia continued. “We haven’t found the girl’s underwear, and I know you redressed her. If you don’t tell us what happened, this girl you supposedly loved will be forever known as the bimbo who died with her pants down in your bedroom. Is that what you want?”

I winced. I’m not a prude and I’m not naive. Rachel was seventeen and had apparently been dating the same boy for two years. Of course they were having sex. Rana wouldn’t see it like that, though. Hopefully we’d be able to keep that detail out of the papers.

“Don’t say anything, Robbie,” said Meyers. “Let me handle this.”

I thought Robbie would take his lawyer’s advice, but then his lips started moving. No sound came out for a few seconds.

“She wasn’t supposed to die,” he said. His voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it above the ambient room noise.

“No, I’m sure she wasn’t,” said Olivia, matching Robbie’s voice. Meyers rubbed his brow, his eyes closed. Olivia ignored him. “What happened? Did you have some kind of accident?”

Robbie closed his eyes, his lips moving before he spoke. “Rachel was a sanguinarian.”

“I’m sorry?” asked Olivia.

“She drank blood. She drank part of a vial of blood. That’s when she started puking. Then she died.”

Robbie didn’t say anything after that. I took a deep breath. As a detective, I’d been to more death scenes than I cared to remember, thirty-four of which had turned into criminal homicide investigations. Even with all that experience, this was my first vampire. I doubted Hallmark made cards to commemorate the occasion.

“Okay,” said Olivia. “Let’s start at the beginning and go from there.”

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