by R. J. Jacobs
“Oh, thank God. Jessie, are you okay? Where are you now?”
I feel my eyes start to water. “Just here … at home.” I don’t know what to say about how I am, or how to begin to talk about the night before or the police visit just now, but her concern—the sincerity of it—touches me and I thank her for asking.
She lets out a small breath. “Can you come in?” she asks. “How about near the end of the day? Four-thirty.”
“It’s Sunday,” I say.
“I’ll come in,” she answers.
The green numbers on my bedside clock read one forty-nine. I tell her I’ll be there, then shower, put on fresh clothes, and wait. I want her to know I didn’t hurt Shelly James. I trust Ms. Parsons to listen to me—even while a tiny part of me worries if she can anymore. I wonder: Will there be too much doubt in her now? Replaying how the police reacted to my telling them what I knew only makes me more confused. Especially Williams’s hurry just before they left. Who had called him when he was standing outside? My throat feels tight, nervousness making it hard to swallow or draw a full breath.
I drive to her office and park at the far end of the lot. I log my gas, put down my window because of the heat, and stare at the sun’s reflection in the rainwater pools on the black asphalt. At a quarter past four, I go inside.
Ms. Parsons is sitting on the bench outside her office—the place where I listened to her and Ms. Carr talking. She wears what some people call a “hippie skirt” and holds her hands in her lap. When she sees me come into the hallway, she stands up and opens her arms like she means to hug me, then drops them to her sides. Her eyes shine as she guides me inside her office and pulls the door closed.
We sit in our usual chairs among her stacks of books and I inhale deeply to take in their sweet, dusty smell. Through the window behind her, I see only bushes and trees, not the police cars from my dream. Ms. Parsons’s eyes tell me that if she has doubts about what happened the night before, they haven’t made her turn her back on me.
“It’s been all over the news,” she says, just as calmly as that. “You weren’t mentioned by name, but I saw the logo of the company you work for. I assume you were there.” She raises her eyebrows in a way that asks for confirmation, and I nod, solemnly.
“I can’t believe you did that, considering the risk involved. But before I start lecturing you, are you okay?”
I clear my throat, force words from my mouth. “I had to go. Robert Holloway—But I didn’t know—I wouldn’t—I didn’t hurt Shelly. I …”
Ms. Parsons leans forward, her eyebrows drawn together. “Jessie, I’m here for you. I know you wouldn’t do anything like that. No judgment, okay? You know that.”
I remember a week earlier, when I expected to have a different conversation during my appointment. I imagined telling Ms. Parsons how the first party changed my sense of Owen and Shelly, and that being recognized was the shock I needed to put that part of my life to rest once and for all. A week ago I’d felt, briefly, like I’d just grown up—a realization that seems naïve and self-centered now that Shelly is dead. I wanted to let go of last week. Now, it wouldn’t let go of me.
I look into Ms. Parsons’s eyes and start again, slowly. Gripping the front of the chair cushion, I tell her everything, from the start of the Petersons’ party through the police visit to my apartment. I can’t believe how much I talk, like I’ve somehow forgotten the problem of my voice and how bad I am with words. Pieces of sentences keep coming out, fragments, but Ms. Parsons nods like she mostly understands. Once, her eyes bug out a little with disbelief even though she doesn’t mean for them to. I tell her about seeing Robert whisper in Ken’s ear, and about the look in Ken’s eyes when he talked to me outside after putting everything together. After he understood who I was. I try to forget the squeak of his shoes on the pool tile, him following me those few steps, then letting me go.
Ms. Parsons lets out a small sigh. “The job part will be okay, I’m sure. Even if you don’t stay with the same catering company, there’s a lot of work in Nashville. Sometimes jobs come and go you know.” She waves her hand like she’s shooing a fly. “I promise, that will be alright.”
I try not to show my heartbreak. I try not to feel it, either.
Ms. Parsons takes a lot of care not to treat me like I’m damaged, but sometimes she gets a worried look on her face, and this is one of those times. She leans forward, resting both hands flat on the arms of her chair. “I know you wouldn’t hurt Shelly James. But I also understand why the police wanted to talk to you. And you get why too, right?”
“I get it.” And I do understand about why me. “I’d have interviewed me, too,” I say.
“How did the questioning go?” she asks, a wrinkle of worry between her eyes.
“Detective Marion wanted …”
Her face tenses. Not a wince, less than that. “Detective Marion was there this morning, during the questioning?”
I nod, curious now. She obviously knows something I don’t.
“Was there anyone else there? Another officer?”
I tell her about Detective Williams, and Ms. Parsons leans back slightly, glancing at the door, like someone might come in. “Has anyone contacted you since then about Detective Marion?”
My words begin slipping back inside me, as though gravity were pulling them down. I shake my head.
“Detective Marion has been taken off the case, Jessie. He’s being questioned for possibly having a role in Shelly’s death.”
My stomach drops into freefall.
This was why they left, I think. This was what Williams heard about on the call he took on my porch.
Ms. Parsons looks the way people do when they realize they’ve caused hurt feelings. “I thought someone would have let you know, or that you’d have seen the news yourself. He hasn’t been formally charged yet, I think. But his being taken in means the police have a good reason to talk to him.”
In my head, the world becomes a buzz. I replay what Robert Holloway said about Marion no longer working for the family and try to fit it together with him reporting me for being at the party. I think back to the way Marion treated me earlier, and how Williams glared at him when he said they had to leave.
When Detective Marion questioned me, he’d seemed sincere. He asked questions he didn’t know the answers to, like he really was trying to figure out if I had been in the woods the night before. Like he hadn’t been there himself.
But maybe he’s just a skilled liar. Police lie, I remember one of my early foster roommates telling me. They trick you with half-truths. I have the bewildering feeling of being lost in a crowd. There has to be a way it all makes sense, but I can’t see how yet.
Ms. Parsons tilts her head sideways and asks if I am okay, then if I am thinking about Detective Marion being questioned, and I say I am.
She pushes a tissue box toward me. “I’m sure your thoughts are crowded right now with everything going on. But the police talking with Detective Marion is good news in a way. It means they’re moving the investigation forward.”
She means to be helpful, I know, by saying it’s good the police are not focused on me. And it is. I feel tears starting to well up behind my eyelids and a sense of lightness from the relief. What she’d said a moment earlier about me finding other work flashes back and I see a way that maybe, for me, what happened can be left behind. Calling the police, telling them what I’d seen, was the right thing to do, I think, even if they had a reason to suspect me. Still, I don’t like picturing Marion being led into his own department for questioning. Despite my relief, I can’t put together him defending me to Williams with him becoming a suspect. It feels wrong, even though I doubted him a little bit too. If he was guilty, wouldn’t he have encouraged Williams’s suspicion of me to keep the focus off himself?
When it’s time for the session to end, Ms. Parsons says in a slow, calm voice: “Jessie, I’m here for you. I’ll be here all day tomorrow. If you need anything at all, tell the front desk it’s
you and they’ll interrupt me. I want them to interrupt me, okay? This is important. You’re going to get through this. Everything is going to get back on track.”
Back on track.
When we stand, I try to make my face look normal, to not show how lost I feel. I wave good-bye, close the door, and make it no farther than the bench in the hall before pulling up the local news on my phone.
(NASHVILLE)
At the top of the news story
The body of country music star and national celebrity Shelly James was found by Nashville police in Percy Warner Park on Saturday evening. The remains were discovered near a park trail while a party was being held at James’s residence less than a mile away. The Metro Police Department is investigating the death as a homicide. An autopsy has not yet been performed, but a police spokesperson indicated that her head sustained multiple blunt traumas …
It doesn’t seem possible, and yet here it is—right on the screen.
In my head, I hear Finch’s voice saying, “He chased me,” and anger flies from my stomach to a place behind my eyes, burning red like butterflies on fire. Could Marion have done this?
I can’t imagine Shelly James not being alive. She could stand in front of fifty thousand people and make them feel whatever she wanted them to—emotions they didn’t know they had. She filled auditoriums with fans who felt she was talking directly to them, people who sang her songs back to her, every word.
For a summer, I was one of them.
I scroll down. Just below the first article is another, an update:
NASHVILLE
A Metro Police Detective is being questioned about the murder of Shelly James. Sunday afternoon, Detective Jason Marion was questioned at the Downtown Precinct about his possible role in Shelly James’s murder Saturday night. Investigators say Marion has been employed part-time as a security officer for the James family for the last year. Marion is being questioned about the extent of his relationship with Shelly James and his whereabouts over the weekend, though police say no formal charges have been filed at this time. The investigation remains open.
There is a photo of Detective Marion climbing the police station steps, two other policemen right behind him. My eyes jump around the page, picking up only a word here and there. I draw in a deep breath, let it out, and force myself to read slowly enough to understand. I read the story over and over, taking in a little more each time. I try to piece together the facts with what I saw that night and what I know.
I never saw Detective Marion at the party, which means he could have been anywhere else—including in Percy Warner Park waiting for Shelly and Finch. But he doesn’t look like the man I saw standing on top of the hill. And why would Detective Marion kill the woman he spent a year protecting?
I push open the door and step outside, where the light is still strong. While I was in Ms. Parsons’s office, the traffic picked up on Charlotte Pike—horns are honking, an engine revs. I don’t know how much gas I have, since I didn’t log any of last night. I’m not sure I want to go home, but I don’t know where else to go.
As I get close to my car, I notice another car parked next to it. It’s backed in, facing the street. I don’t know cars very well, but it’s old—an American car, avocado-colored, rusted around the bumper. I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it hadn’t been right beside mine.
And then Detective Marion opens the passenger door, blocking me. It opens with a creak as he looks past me, up toward the building.
“Jessie, get in please.”
Earlier this morning he’d looked tired and on edge. Now, his eyes radiate intensity even as the dark circles beneath them have deepened. He wears a faded denim shirt and dark brown cowboy boots that seem to make him lean forward slightly, like he’s ready to jump at something. My head spins with the fact that only a minute before his picture was on my phone. He was in my apartment this morning, and then later in my dream.
I hear the putt-putt engine of the car. He’s left it running. I remember the way he held me to the ground during the arrest, and my dream from earlier. I feel a quiver in my stomach as my legs turn heavy and I wonder, Am I in danger? I look behind me, wondering how far I could get if I were to take off running. Far enough to get away from him? Back to the Center’s door, to bang on it? I know he would catch me before I made it halfway up the steps. I briefly imagine being dragged backward, the pavement scraping my palms. He could catch me if he wanted to—there would be no point in trying to get away.
If I could scream, would anyone even hear me?
Marion looks around, his eyes showing worry, impatience. “Please,” he says again, then points. When I look inside the car, I seem to fall forward—maybe with a gentle nudge at my back. The door closes behind me. I search for a handle, but instead pull a crank that drops the window some while Marion comes around to the front of the car. He gets in, slams his door, and we start moving. Suddenly, my insides feel like I’m flying, dropping—almost disappearing into nothing. I know the sensation from the dark. The fading sensation is something like blacking out, something like going outside my own body. Ms. Parsons told me it is a coping mechanism, protecting me from the full force of reality.
My heart pounds as the mental health center shrinks in the rearview mirror and we merge into traffic and speed away, because now I have no idea what is about to happen. I press my hands against my knees to stop my dizziness. I look at Marion, trying to match the shape of his head and shoulders with my memory from last night. I thought it didn’t fit, but was I wrong? Was he the man on top of the hill? In my gut, I don’t feel that he means to hurt me or that he killed Shelly, but I can’t help the fear that at any moment I will feel his hand on my shoulder, or a sharp point of a knife in my ribs, or the rough push of gunmetal against the base of my skull.
He’s taking you somewhere to kill you.
The only witness.
I know that’s not fair, but I also can’t help but remember Ms. Parsons’s cautious tone as she told me he is a suspect. And after what I saw the night before, and after being tricked by Robert for whatever reason, I’ve run out of trust.
“I’m sorry,” Marion says. “I didn’t mean to catch you off guard. You’re safe, I promise. I know this is scary and not what you’re used to. I just don’t have a lot of time to work with.”
“Don’t touch me again,” I say.
He looks back and forth between me and the road. He grips the wheel. “You’re right, I know better. I’m sorry. I won’t, you have my word.”
“Where … are we going?” I manage to ask.
Marion tugs at his ear. “Just up the road here, to a safe spot. I just need to talk, to ask you a few questions.” He glances over both his shoulders. “I don’t mean to be mysterious, Jessie, but I also want to avoid a lot of attention. I’m not here right now. You know what I mean?” A vein twists down his temple like a river.
I’m not here.
The words slip out of my mouth. “You mean because you ran from the police.”
He winces, like he hates how it sounds. He rubs his eyes with his knuckles, then his muscles seem to relax, just slightly.
“I’m not running from anyone. Not exactly. I’m not going to be arrested. There’s no problem verifying where I was last night. But I have been kicked off the case, and as of right now I’m suspended indefinitely.”
Around us, the low branches of trees move as wind whistles through the half-open window. When Marion glances over at me again, I see something shift in his expression.
“Jessie, are you going to be sick?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I realize I’m clutching my stomach.
“Hang on, okay?” The car slows. We buck over a small curb and stop under the shade of a pine tree in a parking lot for some sort of business with no real storefront. No other cars are around. I pull the door handle and lean over the pavement, my stomach roiling as I try to catch my breath. I smell the sweet-bitter asphalt as the warm air rises over me despite the old, chugging
air conditioner. Marion rests his hand on the back of my seat as he looks behind us.
“I know you’re nervous but I won’t let anything happen to you.” He holds up his palms as if showing they are empty. “I know all of this must be a lot to take in. But please, just hang in there with me a little while?”
I draw a breath and the world’s spinning begins to slow down. The edges of everything lose their blur. I nod and tell him “okay,” and the car door, made before I was born, creaks loudly when I pull it closed.
“I’m going to start driving again, alright?” he asks, and I nod again.
We start down a series of side streets. To slow my breathing, I make my chest so still my heart begins to burn. I let my breath escape, slowly. The car smells like newspaper and oil and it squeaks on even the smallest bumps. I realize that it probably doesn’t belong to him but I don’t ask. At a red light, he turns right and we rumble over train tracks before cutting down a service road. I remember my eagerness for the comfort of Ms. Parsons’s couch an hour earlier. Now I’m headed to who-knows-where, my head is buzzing with confusion, my heart is hot with fear.
Eventually, I find a way to say, “What do you want to ask me about?”
“I need to hear more about what you saw last year during the tour. I guess you could call it an informal questioning. I need your help. And I happen to know you need mine. Officially, I’m off the case, but I can’t not work on it. Even though they questioned me, I know they still consider you a suspect, which I also know is off base. They think they’re following sensible lines of motives, but they’re not seeing the full picture.”
Is this a trick? He seems too nervous, too sincere to be deceptive. On top of that, he sounds exhausted.
We drive a little farther, and I stop recognizing the neighborhood. The houses turn older; the tree branches seem long and rain-heavy and untended. The road slopes down a steep hill as we pass a church with bright white paint and beet-red windows. We slow as we approach another intersection, then speed up again to cross when Marion sees it’s clear.
