Текст книги "If You Dare"

Автор книги: Alessandra Torre

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

CHAPTER 56

Present

THE POLICE CAR smells, the handcuffs put my wrists at an uncomfortable position, digging into my spine, and I can’t evade the glare of the afternoon sun. None of it matters. I close my eyes against the sun and rest my head back, the hell in my head drifting down into a muted chaos. I climb the mountain of thoughts in my head and try to find the top. A lie. Brenda had lied. Deanna Madden, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of Jeremy Pacer. No. Never. Attempted murder. He is not dead. One good current in a sea of bad.

Seconds pass in the silence of the car. I turn my head and shift in the seat. Rotate and crane until I can see the huddle of cops, Chelsea on its flank. The car I sit in is on Glenvale Street, the front of Mulholland Oaks stretched out in all of its depressing squalor along the side of the car. We’ve got blood. The man had yelled from the front of the building, from the place around the corner of where they now stand, looking behind the pitiful bushes that lie in front of the brick, in the thin alley of nothing where bums like to sleep and cigarette butts and beer bottles collect like leaves in a neglected gutter. We’ve got blood. There?

I think of the cop, her point, focus, examination of my window. The slow turn and stare she had given me. We’ve got blood. Oh. The tumblers of my mind finally line up, the pieces turning into place, the door to awareness opening. I lift my eyes from the group, traveling slowly up the building, my stomach dropping as my eyes rise. They think he jumped. They think he fell. They think he was… pushed? A cop turns away from the group, ziplock bag in hand. Evidence. I lean closer, my breath fogging the glass, my eyes burning as I try to focus, try to see… a flash of metal, a bit of yellowwwwww… no no no no no no noooooo… my Spyderco Pacific. A bright yellow handle, short sharp blade. Online reviews swore it was one of the sharpest knives on the market, with an added bonus of being rust-free. I hadn’t expected a true rust-free product, my mind pushing that aside with the exuberant joy of its razor-sharp edge. It’s one of my favorite knives and it’s in an evidence bag. We’ve got blood. I had to unlock the safe in preparation for the cops. I had to unlock the safe to pack up its contents and ship them to Mike. I had, at some point in the night that Jeremy broke my nose, locked the safe. The Spyderco Pacific, at some point in that night, had ended up outside my apartment. Covered, best I could tell from my awkward place three parking spots up, in blood. I turn away from the window and drop my head against the seat. My window. My knife. We’ve got blood. Deanna Madden, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of Jeremy Pacer. Attempted. He is not dead. Attempted. He is still alive.

The doors open and shut with quick efficiency, the two detectives getting in. I wait for the car to start, for the pull away from the curb. Sit on my question for three blocks, then speak. “Where is he?” A question I’ve been asking myself for two days and I may have finally found someone with the answer. The car turns left and my body rolls right, my right sneaker pushing out and finding the floor to brace myself. I was locked in all night. Before, I thought that proved my innocence. Now, with him lying underneath my window, everything in my world is unsteady. I need to remember, I need to find my footing, but I’m worried that there is nothing solid and good for me to stand on.

“Hillcrest South.”

I swallow. “And he’s alive?” You know he’ll die. That’s what she had muttered to me on their first visit.

“He’s in a coma.”

A coma. My heart falls another story. “From what?”

“I’m sorry?” the woman turns her head and her profile is ugly.

“What caused his coma?” I roll my lips and inhale a deep breath. My nose screams in pain.

“A six-story fall from your window, along with six stab wounds.”

The fall I survive, the stab wounds pry open my chest and ravage my soul. My Spyderco. Stab wounds. I run my whole life and end up slamming into my enemy head-on. Anything but stab wounds. My Spyderco, covered in blood.

The bitch reads my mind. “You like knives, Deanna?”

They’ll find the order; I paid with a credit card. Even worse, my prints are all over that baby. I look out the window. “My mother did.”

“But you don’t?”

“I avoid them.” When I can.

“Interesting choice of words.”

I turn my head and see her watching me in the rearview mirror. “I’d like to speak to his doctor.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”

She laughs and pushes on the brake, the car jerking to a stop at a red light. “That’s funny, Deanna. I feel the exact same way about you.”

A car pulls up next to us and I turn my head, a boy in the backseat leaning forward, his breath fogging the glass, his eyes widening when they meet mine, a criminal in the backseat of a police cruiser. “I’ve never lied to you, Brenda.”

“Maybe because I haven’t asked the hard questions.”

The car pulls forward, and I lose sight of the boy.

CHAPTER 57

Present

SOMETHING IS WRONG. Brenda felt it before, felt deep in her gut that the girl was guilty, the girl was evil. But now… having her in cuffs, in the back of the car… something is off. She turns into the precinct’s parking lot and glances at David. He winks at her and rubs his hand on the knee of his pants. He always loves a collar. She parks and turns the key, looking up and into the rearview mirror, at the side profile of the girl.

I’ve never lied to you, Brenda.

She is too old and too smart to be jerked around. Huffing out an irritated breath, she shoves the door open and kicks a black-toed boot outside. Time to get this bitch behind bars.

CHAPTER 58

Present

I THINK, AS I walk down the white hall, following the detectives, a stranger’s hand pushing on my back, willing me forward, about my mother. Had a dozen tiny details been different, she’d have walked down a hall similar to this. She’d have pushed out with her wrists, and realized the futility of movement. She’d have heard her shoes slap against dirty floors and recognized her end. She’d have been alive and imprisoned instead of dead.

I am not my mother. But like her, I belong here. I inhale air that smells of cigarettes and cheap labor and wonder if this is the end of my story.

We turn left, a foursome of silence, and Brenda stops at a door, twists the knob, and pushes it open with her foot. “Sit down in here. I’ll bring in a phone, we’ll knock out some questioning, and then move you to general pop. You’ll have an arraignment in a few days to determine bail options.”

A few days. A hand pushes gently between my shoulder blades, and I step forward. Cross into a gray room with a black floor and sit carefully on a folding chair that creaks. They shut the door and I hear the turn of a lock.

Locked in. Some people would feel claustrophobic. For me, it’s freeing.

I spend the long minutes in the room deciding whom, once my one phone call privilege is allowed, to contact. I decide upon Jeremy’s sister, the only member of Jeremy’s family I am really aware of, and someone who, given the circumstances, probably knows the most about his health condition. I also decide that, given our complete lack of proper introduction prior to now, I should have gone to her damn dinner. Go figure.

When Brenda walks into the room, a phone in one hand, both of my cells in her other, I sit straighter. Put my feet on the ground and try to scoot the chair forward. Start to reach forward toward the phone and stop myself. Search for patience and find none. I hold one fist in my other hand and watch her sit down in the seat across from me.

“Here’s the deal. You can’t touch your cell, but if you need some numbers out of it, just let me know and I’ll pull them for you.” She pushes the phone forward, pulling a line from the wall and plugging it in.

“Numbers?” I look up. “I thought I get one phone call.”

“That’s Hollywood. In the real world, as long as you’re not a pain in the ass, you can make a reasonable number of calls to get your affairs in order. You also only get privacy when you speak to your attorney, so keep that in mind when making your calls.”

A reasonable number of calls. I look at the bare table between us and try to think. One phone call was easier to navigate. “Okay. Do you have a phone number for Jeremy’s sister? Her name is Lily.”

“No.”

Very helpful. “May I have a phone book?”

That got me somewhere, her head dropping, hands moving, the screech of a drawer and then, the deposit of a large book, its spine worn, cover showing its age: four years old. I pull it to me and flip through, finding the number for Hillcrest Hospital South and dialing it slowly. Underneath my hand, the receiver feels dirty.

It takes twelve minutes and two calls to get to someone who knows who Jeremy Pacer is. When I ask about his condition, I am asked to leave a message; I glance at Brenda and she shakes her head. I ask to speak to any visitors in Jeremy’s room and am patched through, the ringing of the phone terrifyingly bleak.

On the ninth ring, a woman picks up. “Hello?”

I swallow. “Is this Lily?”

“Yes.” Short. Concise. I close my eyes and choose my words carefully.

“My name is Deanna, I am Jeremy’s girlfriend.” I am, not was. Am. Forever and always. I pause and she says nothing. I glance at Brenda and wish I had asked more questions in the car. “Can you tell me how he is?”

“It’s nice of you to call, Deanna. It would have been even nicer for you to visit. He’s been here for three days.”

Three days. When I come to, the apartment is dark and I am on the floor. I swallow. “I didn’t know—no one told me.”

Silence. She whispers something to someone else, and the words are muffled. Then, she is back. “I don’t have much to tell you, Deanna. He has a subdural hematoma, a buildup of blood in the brain. At the moment, he’s comatose. The doctors are going to reduce his meds over the next few days, see if they can pull him out of it. He’s not”—she sighed—“not in great shape.”

“But he’ll live?” I wrap my finger around the cord of the phone, then release it.

“I—the doctors say it’s too early to know for sure. They’ve told me that the brain is fickle. He could wake up tomorrow and be fine for the rest of his life, or he could have a sudden rebleed and go comatose again. Or he may never wake up.”

Or he may never wake up. I try to think of something else to say but come up blank. When I hang up, it is to her breathing.

I push back the receiver and look up to Brenda. She raises her eyebrows. “Who next?”

I shrug. Try to speak but can’t form a word. The doctors say it’s too early to know for sure. Try again. “I’m done.” The words rasp out of me, like a gate that hasn’t been opened in some time.

She frowns. “You sure? No lawyer? No house sitter? No boss or bail bondsman?”

I shake my head. “I’m sure.”

A short, lonely sentence. She yanks at the cord, gathers the phone in the crook of her left arm, and heads for the door. “I’ll be back.”

I listen to the door slam behind her and close my eyes. Questioning, she had mentioned, would come next. Then, general pop. It will be a very long night.

CHAPTER 59

Present

MY DEFINITION OF time doesn’t match Brenda’s. “I’ll be back,” in my world, refers to fifteen minutes, a half hour. Maybe forty-five minutes if I take an extra-long bathroom break, or get distracted on Pinterest. But I have now been in this tiny room for, according to the clock on the wall, three hours. I shift in the seat, lifting my right butt cheek, then my left, off of the hard plastic, my muscles cramping from the unforgiving chair. I lean forward and lay my head on the table. Close my eyes. Roll my wrists and wiggle my fingers.

He’s in a coma. The doctors are hoping to pull him out of it in the next few days. He’s not in great shape.

I’ve tried not to think about Jeremy for the last three hours. I’ve thought of nothing but him during that time.

The doctors say it’s too early to know for sure.

The last time Jeremy was in the hospital, it was from my actions. And I thought he was dead. And I cried when he lived. And now, he’s back. It hasn’t even been a year.

A six-story fall from your window, along with six stab wounds.

They will question me next. But I have questions too. Questions I am terrified of, but also need answers to. Stab wounds. I wouldn’t have. Not with Jeremy.

I fumble with them briefly, then flip the blade out and straddle his body, bringing both hands together above my head. Bringing my hands down together, in one quick motion, the sharp point descends toward his neck.

I squeeze my palms together behind my back. That was before. Way before. I am not her anymore. I am more in control. I have been around him a hundred times. I have bought a car. Grocery shopped. Walked around humans and came back with clean hands. I wouldn’t have hurt him. Not six times. He is stronger than me, he can control me; he’s done so many times before.

A blur of his face, concerned, his grip on my skin, a tightening of his features, the hard jerk of his elbow across my face, and a blinding sea of red pain.

I push my face into the table and wince at the pain that courses from my nose. Why can I not remember?

The knob jiggles and then the door swings open and both detectives fill the doorway. I take a deep breath.

She sits, he stands. I slouch back in my seat and stare at the floor. Think better of it and lift my head. “May I ask a few questions?”

The woman stops some complicated process of shuffling papers and looks up. “Not right now. After our questioning, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions. That’s assuming your questions relate to the nature of the crime, and not to your rights or your judicial process. Those questions should be answered by an attorney.”

I nod, she nods, and we’re one big nodding family. I look at the man but he doesn’t participate. “Are you waiving your right to an attorney?” the woman asks.

“For now.”

She sets down the final piece of paper and looks at me. She has a fresh pimple, on the right side of her chin, and I perversely wonder if the stress of this entire investigation is what put it there. Probably not. My attempted murder charge is most likely small potatoes in her world of crime. I feel, for one ridiculous moment, criminally inadequate. She probably wants to wrap this baby shit up and go tackle a real danger to society. She lets out a breath and it sounds like a sigh. “Everything you say in this room is being recorded and can be used in a trial. Should you decide you’d like an attorney, we will stop questioning you until the moment upon which an attorney is secured. Do you understand?”

“I’d like to go ahead and get this over with.”

“As would we. This will go a lot quicker if you are honest with us.” She looks at me and I wonder what she doesn’t understand about getting this over with. After a long, wasteful moment, she continues.

“Where were you Sunday night?”

“At home.”

“Were you alone?”

I hesitate. “Yes.”

A blur of his face, concerned, his grip on my skin, a tightening of his features, the hard jerk of his elbow across my face, and a blinding sea of red pain.

I bite my lip. “I think so.”

“Explain.”

“Jeremy had come over… earlier. I mean, I spent that day with Jeremy and he dropped me off at my house that night.”

Brenda had pulled a pen out and held it to the paper, scribbling down words as I spoke. She stops, the pen tip pausing. A red pen. Those notes would be hell to read later, like lines of blood. “Did he come into your apartment?”

“I love you too.” I grabbed his hand and pulled, his back lifting from the wall as he followed me.

“Yes.” The crack in the wall of my memories crumbles, and a fresh wave pushes through. Nothing new, information I’ve known. Information I’ve hid from. Information that runs without brakes down a path that falls off a cliff.

“What time was that?”

I blink and twist my lips, considering the question. “I’m not really sure. Before nine. Probably seven or eight. I remember thinking we’d have time… before Simon locked me in…”

“Time for what?” The man steps forward, leaning over the table and placing his hands on the surface, his left pinky on top of one of Brenda’s pages. I see her glance at it and look away. I don’t look away. I look up, into his dark black face, and wonder if he has a daughter, one my age. He’s certainly old enough. That’s gray in the sides of his hair.

“To fuck.” I enunciate the answer and watch him flinch. I like his flinch.

“And did you?” the woman drawls out the question, without missing a beat.

I look away from the man. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s not the sort of thing most women forget,” he says quietly.

“No.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “We didn’t.”

“Why not?” God, this woman was pushy. And nosy.

Yes, Deanna, why not? I remember stepping in the apartment, my hand in Jeremy’s. Then… all I can remember is red. And Jeremy swinging. And… somewhere at some point…

Closing my hand around the butt of the knife, feeling the indents in the grip when I palmed it, a surge of pleasure at the illicit contact.

I swallow the memory and taste bile in my throat. “Sometimes,” I say slowly, “you know… you just don’t.”

My bones crunched, like potato chips under the heel of a boot, and my fury, in that moment, exploded.

“Deanna? Deanna?” a hand waves before me and I focus on it. Dark palm, strong fingers, a wedding band. He probably does have a daughter. He should get home to her, and leave me alone. Brenda and I will be just fine.

“What?” I snap.

“You came home and did what?”

“He just dropped me off.” If I say the words slowly, they will be more true. “Then he left.”

“And Simon locked you in.”

“Yes.”

The man sighs. “Deanna, we’ve spoken to Simon.”

This is news. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Alibis need to be verified, words can’t be trusted. But it’s as if the sentence opens up a new door of invasion. I suddenly remember Dr. Derek’s call. They had spoken to him. And now Simon. Who else? How much of my inner circle had been touched? And what had they discovered in the process? I push back the handcuff on my right side. It’s irritating, like a heavy bracelet that I keep forgetting I can’t slide off. “So? What did he say?”

“He said he didn’t lock your door last night. He said that you told him not to.” The woman’s eyes watch me closely, each dart of them quick and precise.

I frown. That’s… odd. I’ve based so much of my innocence assumption on the fact that I was locked in. I wonder, a piece of my brain breaking off and skittering off on its own path of worry, if Simon mentioned, during this voice vomit, any other nights where he didn’t lock me in. That could be problematic, a loose thread that, if pulled, could lead to… Wait, what? Could lead to me, sitting in a police station, being questioned? Could lead to my sins being exposed, my punishment delivered? I am already here, the house of cards has already fallen, my dam has broken and all of my safeguards are gone. I left the apartment. I got into a stranger’s car and am in a strange room with a new fate. The what-ifs of my past… I can’t worry about them now. I have bigger problems here. Like why I told Simon not to lock me in. “I thought you said that Jeremy fell from my window.” Fell. Not pushed. Never pushed.

The woman nods.

“So…” I shift in my seat. “No offense, but why do you care if Simon locked me in? The lock on my door doesn’t affect whether or not I pushed Jeremy from the window.” Fell. Not pushed. I pinch the thin skin on the inside of my wrist as punishment.

“He was moved. After he fell.”

I see the tension in the man’s frame when the woman speaks, the quick turn of his head in her direction. He didn’t want her to say that, to share that, to give me that piece of the puzzle. I want to join him, to go another step further and hold my hand over her mouth, shove back the words deeper down until they stay. He was moved. I close my eyes and try to remember if my bare feet had pricks of asphalt. Try to remember if my tennis shoes had moved, if my clothes had had anything on them other than the blood from my nose. I work through the layers, try to find my thought process though… when I’m red, there is often none. “So… you are saying that I asked Simon to not lock my door, then I pushed Jeremy out, ran downstairs, and moved his body.”

“After stabbing him.” The man interjects.

“I moved him after stabbing him?”

They look at each other, then at me. “Pretty much,” Brenda says.

Pretty much. No, I wanted to say, not pretty at all.

Throughout the questions I was strong. Cool. Collected. And there was a moment when I thought I might survive the interrogation. Then they pull out the photos and I break.

I recognize the Dumpster. That is my first thought. The green slope of its front. The black lids of its top. I once stood, hands on hips, chest heaving, before this Dumpster and analyzed its feasibility as a body dump site. The funny thing is that I had discarded it. Deemed it too high in its top for me to heft a body over the side. Thought that its location, stuck behind the twenty-four-hour Quik Mart, at the end of an alley, was too public, the chance of a discovery before pickup too high. So I’d stretched before it, savored one last what-if fantasy, then jogged away. And now, here it is. In a glossy four-by-six, the photo pushed forward by one of Brenda’s chewed-to-the-quick nails. I lean forward, look at the photo, and nod. “I know it.”

“Here is where Jeremy was found.” She pushes forward a second photo and I keep my position, expecting to see the lid open, a bird’s-eye view looking down, an imprint in the pile of trash. I am surprised when I see the back of the Dumpster, in the space between it and the concrete wall. I am surprised when I see Jeremy’s hat, lying on its side, the Sooners S half-hidden, the curve of its brim squashed.

When I pulled off the wall, he smiled at me from under the brim of his baseball cap.

He’d been wearing that cap, that day. I remember pulling it off his head and onto my own, when the whip of wind in the convertible had been too strong, my hair everywhere, my hair tie lost to the wind. At some point he’d gotten it back. I stare at the photo. “I was driving,” I mumble. “So…”

What had been our plan? For him to stay the night? For him to take my car home? Had we discussed that? I didn’t remember doing so. But he could have taken my car; it wasn’t like I was driving it. And I feel, in that afternoon, that perfect Sunday we shared… that we hadn’t wanted to part, not even for the short half hour it would have taken to follow each other to my house. We had ridden together, and then… I look up and they are both staring at me. Waiting.

“Where’s his truck?” I ask.

“At his house,” Brenda supplies.

At his house. And my car was at my apartment, the three of us, just hours ago, standing next to it. So he didn’t get home. He couldn’t have. He was too busy falling, breaking, bleeding, and lying behind the Dumpster, waiting to be found.

Brenda pushes forward a final photo, and my world goes a little blacker.

When blood dries, it darkens. Not to black, that would have been more fitting, for Jeremy’s face to be the color of my soul. But its loss of oxygen produces a darker hue, not the bright red cheer of fresh carnage. When this photo was taken of J, his eyes were closed, his cheeks bruised, his nose unnatural, blood caked and dried in rivers along and over his lips. He looks, in this photo, dead. And I feel, as it slides toward me, as if I am looking into his future.

One day, if something doesn’t change, I will kill him. Maybe not intentionally, maybe it will be a side effect of my other actions, but he will, as a result of our union, die. It is a fact I am almost certain of, a truth I have run from since the first moment that I allowed him to kiss my lips and bring joy. I stare down at the photo and let reality fully sink in.

He deserves better. He deserves life.

She pushes another photo forward, this one showing more of his surroundings, I can see the white of a hospital bed, bandages and stitches, the blur of a hand as it attends to him. I see the places the knife went in, six clear points of attack. The photo must have been snapped in haste, for no other purpose than to document. I glance back at the initial photo and wonder how long the blood sat before it was wiped clean. I wonder how long his eyes were closed, and if he gasped for breath or lay still as if he was dead. I wonder if, before the coma, he spoke.

I look away from the photos and up into her eyes.

He deserves better. He deserves life. I deserve containment. I deserve punishment. It doesn’t matter if I don’t remember it. Either way, innocent or guilty, I am dangerous—for this man and for everyone else.

I swallow and squeeze my hands together behind my back. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if you did it.”

I stare at her chapped lips because her eyes are too sharp. “Yes.”

“You did?” She sounds surprised and the man coughs, and I force my stare back to her pupils.

“Yes.”

“You stabbed him?”

“And pushed him out the window.” I filled in the blank.

“Hmm.” I don’t know why she doesn’t like that. Doesn’t every cop love a confession?

The man steps forward, his thigh resting against the table. “How’d you get him to the Dumpster?”

I look up. “Would you believe I carried him?” I smile; he doesn’t. A shame. He smiled once during the invasive search of my property. It was a nice smile. I sigh and buy myself a few seconds. How did I get him to the Dumpster? I have no idea. I sigh again. Look down, like I am hesitant to say. “Someone helped me.”

She leans forward and her breasts brush against the top of my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Definitely. Relationships don’t survive this. “Who?”

Yes, Deanna. Indeed. Who? “A black guy. I don’t know his name. He was there, I offered money, he took it.”

“A stranger?” David doesn’t sound all that surprised, and he shouldn’t. Not in my neighborhood. In my neighborhood it’d be odd for someone to walk from any cash, for any reason. In my neighborhood it’d be just as likely for them to help me carry the body to the Dumpster, then rape me behind it.

“Yes. I paid him five hundred bucks to help me carry him to the Dumpster.”

“And no one stopped you guys?”

I look up with an expression that I hope accurately embodies my opinion of their intelligence. Brenda laughs. “Okay, ignore that. So this helpful black stranger shows up, carts away this body, and takes your cash. Then what?”

When I come to, the apartment is dark and I am on the floor.

“Then I went home and went to bed.”

“Why’d you let him live?” David pulls out the ignored second chair and sits down.

“I didn’t know he was alive. I stabbed until he stopped moving, then stopped.” A rookie mistake I would never make. Or did I?

Brenda moves her chest off of Jeremy’s face and sits back. Taps her pen tip against the desk in an irritating fashion. “Anything else?”

I look at the photos. “Not that I can think of.”

“So we can go ahead,” she says slowly, “and charge you with the attempted murder of Jeremy Pacer?”

I lift my wrists and put my hands on the desk, the cuffs clanking loudly in the now-quiet room. “Go for it.”

Jeremy deserves better. He deserves life. A life away from me. I deserve punishment.

I killed him. Or rather, I attempted to. I pushed him to his death from my window. I stabbed him six times in the chest with my favorite knife. I dragged his body behind the Quik Mart’s Dumpster and left it there. Then I washed down my apartment with bleach to hide any evidence.

I understand that I have broken the law.

I have not, nor have I ever been, mentally unstable. I was acting on my own accord and had full knowledge of my actions.

Statement: Deanna Matilda Madden

I sign the bottom, above my name, the pen biting into the cheap white paper. Then, I look up into Detective Boles’s face.

She smiles. I don’t. I may never smile again.