Elixir

by Ruth Vincent

  His voice was firm, but not unkind, and I nodded.

  “I just don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up,” I said, but the ambulance was already pulling out of sight. Obadiah put his hand on my shoulder again.

  McCleary interrupted.

  “Sir, ma’am, if you would come with us to the vehicle please?”

  I didn’t see why any of this was necessary, but you don’t argue with a cop.

  “Okay,” I said. “But . . .”

  McCleary turned to Obadiah. “We will need to obtain a warrant for the Crime Scene Unit to investigate the premises.”

  Obadiah nodded, and I could see the fear in his eyes. What if the cops found a way into his secret room?

  A huge crowd of gawkers had poured out the door of Obadiah’s club. They were all humans—­the supernaturals seemed to have slunk away at the sight of the cops. The human crowd was loud—­talking in fearful voices and pointing at us and the officers.

  “We’d like to talk to you further, but we can’t do that here,” said McCleary, gesturing towards the noisy crowd of bystanders. “If you’ll please come with us. Once we get to the precinct, the investigating detective will want to meet with you and ask you a few questions as well.”

  Investigating detective? Crime Scene Unit? I didn’t understand. This was an accident, and they were treating us like we were criminals.

  “Before you enter the vehicle,” said officer McCleary, “we need to do a pat down for security purposes.”

  “But . . .”

  My voice trailed off. If I started arguing things would only get worse for us. Mutely, I raised my hands over my head and peeled back my coat as instructed, and winced, shivering, as Officer McCleary patted me down, his fingers rough on the delicate fabric of my dress. I felt suddenly self-­conscious about what I was wearing. The way McCleary looked at me, it was like this short dress was “evidence” of something. I scowled up at him.

  “Aren’t you supposed to have a female officer do this?” I asked as he ran the backs of his hands over me.

  “Ma’am, in the absence of a same-­gendered officer on the scene, an opposite-­gendered officer is legally allowed to perform a noninvasive pat down for security purposes,” said McCleary. It sounded as if he was quoting that statute verbatim.

  At last he was done, and I quickly buttoned my coat, crossing my arms tightly over my chest. I watched Obadiah undergoing his own pat down with Officer Diaz. Obadiah was shooting daggers at McCleary—­the officer’s touch had been professional enough, but I could bet they didn’t manhandle ladies like that in Obadiah’s time. The chivalry was sort of touching.

  “No weapons,” I heard Diaz say.

  Headlights flashed on the brick wall of Obadiah’s building as a second cop car pulled up. Two more NYPD officers got out.

  “Miss Jones, you’re going to come with us. Mr. Savage, you’ll go with my colleagues.”

  The two new officers approached us.

  I exchanged a panicked glance with Obadiah. They were going to drive us to the precinct in separate cars—­and probably question us separately too—­to see if our stories matched! Obadiah and I hadn’t had any time to talk since Eva’s fall; we’d had no chance get our accounts straight. What were we going to tell the cops? We couldn’t tell them the truth—­that Eva had been flying! Surely Obadiah knew you couldn’t say something like that? But if he said she flew and I said she’d fallen—­or if I said she’d fallen from the fire escape and he said she’d fallen from the roof—­if our stories didn’t match up, this was going to seem really suspicious.

  I wished I could do something, say something to Obadiah, at least mouth the words “she fell off the lower fire escape, right?” but now all four officers were staring at us. There was no way to communicate, not even a wink.

  The two new cops were leading Obadiah over to their patrol car. He turned back and looked at me over his shoulder. I could see the fear in his eyes.

  “Miss Jones?” said McCleary. He had opened up the passenger door to his. Diaz was already inside.

  What could I do? You don’t argue with a cop.

  Feeling sick in my gut, I got in.

  Chapter 8

  I’d never been in the back of a police car before. It was nothing like a regular vehicle—­the whole backseat area was made of hard plastic, and was incredibly cramped, even for a petite person like me. I couldn’t imagine how squished Obadiah must be right now. Underneath the smell of the officers’ coffees in the front-­seat cup holder, there was an ever-­present odor of stale sweat—­all the bodies who’d been crammed back here before me had left their scents haunting the air. It was incredibly warm—­heat was blasting through the small plastic vents, and I felt claustrophobic, nauseous and numb, wishing I could open the window and just feel cold, clean air on my face.

  When I turned my head to look out the rear window, I could see that several more cop cars had pulled up in front of Obadiah’s club—­the blue-­uniformed officers moving amongst the crowd of gawkers. Maybe they were questioning these ­people too?

  Officer Diaz was silent as he drove—­it was like some twisted version of being in a taxi. I was silent too, too upset to try to make any conversation with Officers Diaz and McCleary. We drove for what seemed like a long time, though in reality it was probably only about fifteen minutes. At last we pulled up to a large brick building—­built in the neo-­Gothic style with a redbrick turret. I’d walked past this building before and admired it—­I always thought it was an odd place to house one of Brooklyn’s main police precincts. I never dreamed I’d be going inside.

  Diaz parked the car, walked around to the back and then opened up my car door. He told me to follow and I walked behind the two officers up a long flight of steps to the heavy brass double doors of the grand entryway.

  Despite the ornate exterior, the inside of the building was depressingly institutional. Long rows of fluorescent lighting cast a harsh white glow over everything. The building was bustling with officers, even though it was almost 1:00 a.m. A few heads rose as we walked by, but most barely paid attention to us.

  I looked around in the crowd for Obadiah, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he was already being questioned?

  “Come this way,” Officer Diaz said. Mutely I obeyed, walking slowly behind him, down a long, dingy corridor all the way to a door at the very end. Diaz opened it.

  It was a small, windowless room. A lone fluorescent strip cast a dim flickering light over its contents: a battered Formica desk and two blue plastic chairs.

  “Wait here,” Diaz said gruffly to me, gesturing to one of the chairs. “The detective will be in to speak with you.”

  I glanced in at the Spartan interior. Obadiah was probably being held in a room similar to this—­perhaps very close by—­but it might as well be across the universe.

  Diaz was glaring at me so I entered the room. The door shut behind me with a loud click, leaving me alone.

  I sat down and waited, trying not to let my fears get the best of me, trying to think my way out of this. But every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was Eva—­her splayed-­out limbs, her blank, unconscious face.

  I continued to wait. The chair was stiff and uncomfortable. I kept shifting my body around in different positions, trying to find a comfortable one, but there were none. I felt like some sort of animal in a holding crate. There was nothing to do in the room, nothing of visual interest, not even a clock on the wall to mark the passage of time. I could only stare down at my hands and listen to the buzzing of the fluorescent light strip, which was starting to get to me.

  How long was I going to have to wait here? Maybe I hadn’t been sitting here that long, and it just felt that way—­time passed so slowly in this stuffy windowless room.

  The image of Eva’s body—­limp and broken in the middle of the street—­kept flashing through my mind’s eye. How ba
d were her injuries? Had she hit her head when she fell? Was she going to wake up? What was she going to be like when she woke up? I was so numb from shock I could barely even process these thoughts.

  That was the problem with this room. There was nothing in here to distract me from my worst fears.

  I rubbed my eyes.

  I needed to be at the hospital. I needed to be with Eva. I wanted to call the hospital, to see if she was still in the E.R., to see how she was faring, but I’d had to surrender my phone to the cops when I went into this room. I felt handicapped without it.

  Then the thought occurred to me—­that they kept ­people in these windowless rooms with no clocks and nothing to do precisely to make them more anxious. By the time the detective comes in, the suspect is so cowed and vulnerable they’ll say anything.

  The thought only increased my anxiety.

  I jumped as I heard the door click open. A man walked into the room—­fifty-­something, African American, his hair shaved close to the head, wearing a slightly wrinkled suit. He gave me a brief nod of acknowledgement and held out his hand.

  “Miss Jones, Detective Shawn Foster,” he said, his voice crisply professional. He took a seat in the chair opposite me.

  I attempted to give him a friendly smile, but all I managed was a grim twitch of my lips.

  “Miss Jones, I just spoke with Officers Diaz and McCleary, who brought you here, and the detectives we dispatched to the scene. They told me the whole story.”

  His voice was devoid of emotion.

  I didn’t know what to say. What “whole story” had they told him? They didn’t know the whole story—­only Obadiah and I did.

  Detective Foster gave me a pointed look. “You said that your roommate Eva Morales’ fall was an accident?”

  I nodded.

  Foster’s brow furrowed, and he jotted something down on a small pad.

  “Was Eva on the roof with you and Obadiah Savage?” the detective asked.

  “No,” I said. It didn’t seem right to lie about that part. “She wasn’t with us. She must have fallen from the fire escape.”

  I had chosen this version of events, so I had to stick to it. But it didn’t like it. My cheeks were starting to get hot, my body betraying that I was lying. I wondered if it was visible.

  “So, you saw Eva fall from the fire escape?”

  “No,” I said, “I never saw where she fell from. I just saw her falling and I saw her hit the ground.”

  The detective frowned, and made another notation.

  “But she must have fallen from the fire escape of the building, or the balcony below it,” said Foster. “Where else could she have fallen from?”

  Crap, what should I say? I hated lying. I wished I could just tell him what I saw. But I could never tell the detective the truth—­that Eva had been flying. He’d have me locked up in a mental ward.

  “Um . . . yeah, of course, she must have fallen from the fire escape.”

  “You’re certain?” said Foster.

  “Yes,” I muttered miserably.

  There was a beat of silence between us. The fluorescent light flickered and buzzed over our heads. I felt like the detective was carefully constructing a trap for me, slowly backing me into it, and I knew at any moment it would spring shut. But I wasn’t sure exactly where he was going with this, so I didn’t know how to respond.

  “Well, there’s one problem with all of this, Miss Jones,” said Detective Foster.

  I froze, waiting for him to go on, my stomach clenched.

  “My team examined the exterior of Obadiah’s establishment, including the fire escape. As you know, it snowed heavily last night. If your friend Eva Morales had leaned too far over the railing of the fire escape, causing her to fall, her body would have left a mark in the snow on the railing.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t come up with an explanation. I could feel the panic rising in my chest.

  “If your friend had slipped on the ice and slid underneath the railing,” he continued, “there would be marks in the snow of the fire-­escape floor, indicating a slide. But of course there are none of those either.”

  Crap, what could I say? My mind was spinning. Of course there were no such marks in the snow on the fire escape, because Eva had never touched it. But how was I going to get Foster to believe me? How would anyone ever believe me that her body just fell from the sky?

  I stared at my hands, clenched white in nervousness on the Formica tabletop.

  “I don’t know where she fell from,” I said at last. I could feel my face turning red, because my body, unlike my mind, was unable to lie. “I never saw her fall,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t the fire escape. I don’t know . . .”

  “Do you know what the medical examiners said, Miss Jones?” said Foster, interrupting me.

  I shook my head, feeling sick.

  “They confirmed that Eva Morales’ injuries reflected a fall from at least fifty feet.”

  I nodded. I was so sick at heart that I could barely process what he was saying.

  “The height of the lower fire escape is only twenty-­five feet,” said the cop, his voice raised now. “Fifty feet is the height of the rooftop.”

  “But she wasn’t on the roof with us, I swear,” I protested. “Maybe she was on the rooftop across the street?” I said, my brain wildly trying to think of something. “She could have fallen off the roof of the opposite building?”

  It was a poor defense and I knew it. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

  “We already investigated that. The building across the street is empty and the door is locked with a chain. Eva Morales would have had no way of accessing that roof.”

  Foster paused and leaned back in his chair and examined me. The fluorescent light flickered on his face.

  “If someone falls off the roof of a four-­story building, Miss Jones, their body will land directly below where they fell. In this case, that would have been on the sidewalk, outside Obadiah’s establishment. But instead, Eva was found in the middle of the street, at least ten feet from the sidewalk.”

  His eyes narrowed. “In order for her to land in the middle of the street, there would have had to be another force acting on her body, enough to propel her an additional ten feet.”

  I saw where he was going with this now, and yet I didn’t know how to stop it.

  “I don’t think Eva Morales fell by accident,” said Detective Foster.

  I was hyperventilating. I knew what he was about to say.

  “I think Eva Morales was pushed.”

  “That’s not true!” I protested. “I would never, ever do that to anyone, certainly not my best friend.”

  I looked imploringly up at Foster. But his arms were crossed over his chest and there was a hard, cold expression on his face. I could tell he didn’t believe me in the least.

  My mind was whirling, trying to think of any way out of this, any explanation other than the truth—­that Eva had flown.

  “I bet you didn’t find any skid marks in the snow on the roof either,” I said at last.

  Foster eyed me keenly.

  “You didn’t find signs of a struggle on the roof.”

  Foster uncrossed his arm and sighed.

  “That is correct,” he said at last, “but it doesn’t matter. Here’s what I think happened, Miss Jones. I think you and your boyfriend, Obadiah, put something in Eva’s drink. You drugged her, and then you carried her up to the roof of the building. Then you threw her off with such force that she landed in the middle of the street. You were intending to kill her . . .”

  “That’s not true!” How could he think I would try to murder my best friend? “I’m worried sick about Eva right now. I just want to be out of this room, so I can go to the hospital and check on her.”

  My heart
was pounding in my chest. As much as I knew we were innocent, I had to admit, I could see how this must appear from Foster’s perspective. In his mind there could be no explanation other than that we pushed Eva off the roof. How could I convince him otherwise?

  I had an idea.

  “Look at me,” I said to the detective. “I’m four feet, eleven inches tall.” I gestured to my petite frame. “Do I seem like someone who could carry a person up three flights of stairs and throw them off a roof?”

  The detective scrutinized me. His mouth was still set in the same hard, impassive line, but something had changed in his eyes. He was trying to hide it, but I could see that he’d been asking himself the same question.

  “No, but I bet your friend Obadiah could,” he said.

  It was true. Obadiah could have carried Eva with ease. Except that he hadn’t.

  “I was with Obadiah the whole time. He was standing next to me. He never touched Eva. He’d never even seen her before, until he saw her on the ground.”

  The detective folded his hands. There was a beat of silence between us, and I could hear the fluorescent light buzzing over our heads.

  “How do you know your roommate had never met Obadiah before?” he asked.

  “I just told her about his club tonight. She came because she was worried about me. They didn’t know each other.”

  “But she could be lying,” countered Foster.

  “I guess . . . but I don’t think so. She was only there tonight because she was trying to rescue me . . .”

  Foster unfolded his hands and leaned forward, closer to me. The expression on his face and his whole demeanor changed. There was a sympathetic look in his eyes, which had been so hard and cold moments before. When he spoke, his voice was soft.

  “Listen, Mabily. I don’t believe any of this was your idea. I know you care about your friend, and you’re devastated by what happened. I’m sure you didn’t want any part of this. But Obadiah Savage”—­his eyes narrowed—­“he’s very persuasive, isn’t he? He intimidated you? Threatened you?”

  I could see where Foster was going with this. He was trying to be good cop and bad cop at once. I didn’t like it.