But he’d said lives.
I swallowed the saliva that had all of a sudden filled my mouth and asked, “Killed?”
“Do you have time to come down to the station and answer a few questions?”
I didn’t.
Who did?
Who had time to go to a police station and answer questions about their dead friend? Questions they didn’t have answers to because their friend should not be dead.
But I wasn’t surprised.
God.
Diane.
Why did you make me not surprised you were dead?
Worse.
Why did you make me not surprised you’d been killed?
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you okay to drive? Or would you like an officer to take you?” he asked.
“I-I . . .” I stammered. “I just need to breathe.”
He gave me a smile. It was also tight. It didn’t reach his eyes. It was still attractive but that wasn’t the reason it soothed me.
His eyes were kind.
It was his job to be here.
But somehow I knew, even if he saw this every night, he knew precisely what I was feeling and he didn’t like it.
Not at all.
And he wished I wasn’t feeling it.
Not feeling it at all.
“Breathing would be good,” he said on what sounded somewhat like a brotherly tease. “Do that. Coupla big ones for me, yeah?”
I nodded again and did as told.
It was really hard. There seemed to be something obstructing my lungs.
“It’s not easy,” I whispered.
Oh shit.
Something was happening to my eyes.
With a practiced hand, a dark-blue handkerchief was out of his pocket and he was offering it to me.
I shook my head.
“I’m not gonna cry,” I told him.
“Then breathe, Rebel. You with me? Breathe.”
I breathed. In. Out. Shallow. In. Out. All shallow. Try again. In. Out.
There it was.
I drew a long one in.
Then let it out.
“Good,” he murmured, stuffing the handkerchief back in his pocket. “Again.”
I did it again.
Okay.
I had it together.
“I’m all right to drive,” I told him.
“Right. I’m Lieutenant Hank Nightingale. You go in,” he was pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, “you tell them I asked you to come talk to me. I’ll call it in. They’ll be waiting for you. They’ll take care of you. But I won’t make you wait long. Okay?”
I nodded and took the business card he offered me.
“Hank Nightingale,” he repeated.
“Hank Nightingale,” I parroted.
“See you soon, Rebel.”
More nodding and, “Yeah.”
He was waiting for me to make a move, either his cop-handling-a-shocked-and-newly-grieving-friend schtick or he was a gentleman.
Or both.
I turned to my car. Got in. Switched on the ignition. Looked up at him through the window and did more nodding.
He nodded back and I saw him mouth, Breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
Big ones. Deep ones.
I was good.
I put the car in gear.
He turned and moved back to Diane’s house.
“Rebel?”
I looked up from the black coffee mug that said Denver in white on the side with some white stripes under it, through which there was a gold badge, to see Lieutenant Hank Nightingale striding toward me.
I grabbed my bag, shoved the strap on my shoulder and popped up out of my seat. “Hi. Uh, hi. Hi.”
Goddamn it.
I waved.
Goddamn it.
He gave me another smile, this one partially amused, partially pained, partially forced. It appeared he wasn’t a big fan of women made nervous due to the fact they were sitting in a police station at four in the morning due to another fact, that one being their friend had been killed.
He still thought I was funny.
Shit.
“Would you come with me?”
I nodded.
I forced myself to stop doing that and said, “Yes. Sure. Yeah.”
He swung his arm out and I moved toward him, but he didn’t lead. He fell in step beside me.
He also didn’t take me to an interrogation room, which was what my mind, for the last fifteen minutes I’d been sitting in the waiting area being brought coffee by a nice Hispanic cop in a uniform and assured “Hank” wouldn’t make me wait too long, had conjured was the next step.
But of course I didn’t have anything to be interrogated about.
He took me to a large room with a lot of desks, some offices that had walls of glass on one end and rounding this out there were a bunch of file cabinets and whiteboards and one couch.
It wasn’t teeming with people, but it was bustling more than I would think it should be at four on a Thursday morning.
Then again, Denver was a city, not a Podunk town. Crime happened in cities.
It just never involved me.
And then there was Diane.
He took me to a desk another Hispanic man was sitting on. This Hispanic man was in civvies, and if I was in another frame of mind, I’d happily turn that mind over to trying to decide which of them looked better in their jeans: linebacker sweetheart who carried handkerchiefs or edgy Latin hottie who some might say needed a shave, but I would not.
“Have a seat.” Nightingale gestured to the chair sitting next to the desk.
I sat, tucking my purse in my lap and setting my mug of coffee on his desk.
“This is my partner, Lieutenant Eddie Chavez,” he introduced.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” Lieutenant Chavez replied.
Nightingale sat in the desk’s swivel chair, not close to me, but turned to me.
“We’re not gonna take a lot of your time. We’re gonna ask some questions. I’m gonna take notes,” Nightingale stated, reaching a long arm out for a worn leather-bound pad and the pen sitting beside it on the desk. “And we’ll get you home as soon as we can.”
“Who’s gonna tell Diane’s folks?” I asked.
Both Chavez and Nightingale focused on me.
Whoa.
I had a hot flash I didn’t quite understand, outside the fact these two men could focus in such a way half the energy in a room was sucked into their effort.
“Do you know Diane’s folks?” Chavez asked.
I nodded to him. “And I should . . . we’re . . . I know them. We’re close. We worked to try to get Diane . . .”
I trailed off.
“To try to get Diane . . . what?” Chavez queried.
“To uh, stop what she was doing.”
“What was she doing?” Nightingale asked.
I drew in breath.
Then I looked him in the eyes. “Drugs. Porn. And I mean starring in porn movies. Not watching them. Chantilly. Chantilly and porn. Google those words. You’ll see a different picture of Diane than whatever you saw tonight.”
Nightingale’s jaw got tight, and when I looked to Chavez, I saw his stubbled one ticking.
“So I should . . . I feel like I should be there when they’re told. Diane’s folks, I mean,” I finished my earlier statement.
“We’re locating next of kin. That was next on our list. To do the notification,” Nightingale shared. “If you’d come, and you think it would be of comfort to them, we’d appreciate you being there.”
“I’ll do that.”
Nightingale nodded.
Chavez cleared his throat and spoke.
“You were at her house tonight. Can you explain why?”
“I got a call,” I told him.
“From who?” he asked. “And what did they say?”
“I don’t know. It was a female. Her voice sounded familiar, but I don’t remember how. She also sounded really scared. Sh
e called on my landline.”
“Your landline?” Nightingale asked, having an uncanny gift of being able to write in his notepad even as he was looking at me.
Cop skills.
I nodded to him. “Yeah. No one uses that. I only have it because I got it in a bundle with cable and Internet, and then I told my brother about the bundle and he said I lived alone, do I keep my cell by my bed when I’m sleeping? And I said no. And he said he wanted me to keep my cell by my bed. And I said I didn’t want ugly cords around my bed and I charge my cell at night. So he said to get a regular phone and have it by my bed. And I said why? And he said because I live alone and he’d feel a lot freaking better if I had a phone close in case anything happened in the night, I could—”
I cut myself off.
Both men watched me patiently, and I made the decision to stop babbling about Diesel, my protective brother, and definitely stop talking about things happening to women alone in the middle of the night.
I went on, not babbling this time. “So I think, I mean, thinking on it, maybe I’m listed. And obviously my cell isn’t. So whoever it was, was trying to find me and that’s how she found me.”
“What did she say?” Nightingale queried.
“She said, ‘If you still care about Chantilly, you better come and see to Chantilly.’ Then she hung up. And that creeped me out not only because it was two in the morning and I had a call on my landline, or because she said that, and it was clearly a warning. But she called her Chantilly. No one calls her Chantilly.”
“Even at work?” Chavez asked.
I shrugged, shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to her . . .” I swallowed, “work.”
“Of course,” Nightingale muttered. “So you went to Diane’s after the call?”
“I called her,” I told him. “She didn’t answer. I called her again. She didn’t answer. I was creeped out enough to get up and go. So I went. I called her again on the way.”
“She didn’t answer,” Chavez finished for me.
And again I was nodding to Chavez.
“We’ve listened to the 911 call,” Nightingale stated. “You didn’t go inside?”
I shook my head. “I got to her house. The lights were on. But when I got up to the door, it was open.” I shook my head again. “Not open, ajar. Not much, a few inches, but it freaked me. She doesn’t live in a good ’hood. No one leaves their door ajar in the middle of the night. I looked into the window, you could see light through the blinds, one blind was not all the way down. I saw a lamp that was lit, but it was on the floor, the shade off, but still, it was lit. It tripped me out. I got worried, Diane didn’t keep good company, and not just the porn variety of not-good company. So, I ran back to my car, got in and called 911.”
“That was the smart thing to do, Rebel,” Chavez informed me.
“Was she . . . was she, I mean,” more swallowing, goddamn it, “should I have gone in?”
“No,” Nightingale said. “Like Eddie just told you, what you did was right.”
I looked in his eyes again. “What I mean to ask is, could I have helped her?”
Nightingale leaned back in his chair, sorrow filling his eyes for a second before he blanked it and answered gently, “No, Rebel. She was gone before you arrived.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
It was his turn to nod. “I’m sure.”
“You’re sure,” I pushed.
“I’m sure, Rebel,” he said quietly.
I looked to my purse in my lap and tried deep breathing again.
It came shallow.
And more shallow.
Then came my eyes feeling funny.
“Rebel—” Nightingale called softly.
I aimed my gaze at him and snapped, “Why is it so hard to breathe?”
“We’ll give you a minute,” he offered. “You want more coffee?”
“I want my friend not to be dead,” I told him.
He glanced at Chavez.
“She was going to be a goddamned therapist,” I shared.
Nightingale looked back at me.
“She didn’t know, physical, occupational, even speech. She was leaning toward physical. She already had her psychology degree. But she wasn’t into it. Her folks and I thought she just wasn’t coping. You know, not having the challenge of school. Getting good grades. Working hard at something. Then she took that bad fall. Playing volleyball. Fucking volleyball. She was into sports. So fit. God. Always running or hiking or playing tennis or volleyball. Goes up for a spike, runs into the other chick, bam!”
Nightingale and Chavez were silent.
“Docs give her Oxycontin.”
“Damn,” Nightingale murmured.
“Yeah,” I spat. “Next thing you know she’s on oxy, on meth, smoking pot, and starring in porn movies as Chantilly.”
I shuffled my ass back in my seat, tucking my purse deep into my abdomen. So deep, I could feel the clasp digging into my flesh.
Neither man spoke.
So I did.
“You know, I watched one. I watched her have sex and give blowjobs to four different men in forty-five minutes. She took it everywhere. And the whole time she was gone. Diane was not in her eyes. She was spaced out. Doped up. So damned high, my girl, my Diane had left the building. I don’t even think she knew what was happening to her. Like a trained dog, going through the motions, moving and moaning, just to get her fix. It made me sick. Literally. I haven’t vomited in years. That DVD ended, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.”
After offering that morsel, it happened.
I dropped my chin into my neck and there was no holding it in by pressing my bag to it. The pain tore up my stomach, burned through my lungs and forced its way out of my mouth laying waste to my throat as it came out on a ragged sob.
My purse was gently pulled from my hand and a dark blue handkerchief was pressed into it.
I bent forward, lifted it to my face and pushed it hard against my mouth as my shoulders shook with silent sobs.
“She was . . . she . . . she was . . . sh-she was gonna be a physical therapist,” I whimpered into the blue cloth.
“I’ll get her some water,” Chavez murmured.
“Yeah,” Nightingale murmured back.
Eventually, I saw the toes of his boots close to mine. I sniffed, wiped the cloth on my face, tipped my head back and saw Nightingale had wheeled himself close, elbows on his knees, not in my face but encroaching my space.
This was soothing too.
Shit, he had this down.
“You hear these stories a lot,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“How do you do it?” I asked.
“Someone has to do for them what they can’t. Make things as right as they can get after they’ve gone so wrong. Find justice. And someone has to find answers for people like you.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Most people surprise themselves with the stuff they can do,” he told me.
“Both the good and the bad.”
He did a slow nod. “Both the good and the bad.”
“She was good,” I told him quietly. “Honest to God, however you saw her tonight, that wasn’t the real her. She was good. She was sweet. She was funny and smart and hard working. She was a great friend. She loved her folks. God, she loved her folks so much, Lieutenant Nightingale. They were so close. I was jealous of that until she gave me them too.”
“Hank.”
“What?”
“Call me Hank, Rebel.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not sure you should go with Eddie and me to see them.”
I straightened and shook my head.
He straightened with me.
“I’m not certain they should learn this at all if I’m not there when they do,” I returned.
“So, you’re tight with them too.”
“That happens when you wage war against addiction,” I educated him, though I reckoned
he probably knew that a lot better than me. “We did interventions. All the shit. But they’d already adopted me before.” It surprised the hell out of me when I felt myself grin shakily. “Her mom and I’d sneak a flask of mojitos into her volleyball games. Made them a lot easier to watch.” I tipped my head to the side as I did a one shouldered shrug. “Neither of us are into sports.”
He grinned back. “Mojitos help make a lot of stuff a lot less boring.”
“Word on that, policeman.”
His grin got bigger.
“I see Hank has worked his magic,” Chavez remarked as he re-joined us carrying a paper cup of water.
He handed it to me.
I took it, thanked him, and took a sip.
Then I held Hank’s handkerchief to him.
“Keep it,” he said.
Yeah, I should keep it. We weren’t quite done with our thrill-a-minute night and I had a feeling the best was yet to come.
“How many of these you lose in a year?” I asked.
“Enough my wife keeps boxes of them in the linen cabinet next to the toilet paper she’s obsessive about never running out of, due to her mother’s decree we’re always prepared for a blizzard.”
I hoped his wife was awesome.
I had a feeling he deserved awesome.
Really, freaking awesome.
“We live in Denver, not Alaska,” I noted.
“We just stock toilet paper. Trust me. It’s better than rubbing up against Trish,” Hank replied.
Chavez settled back down on Hank’s desk and I looked to him before I said, “We probably should keep going. There are, um . . . things to do that need to get done.”
“You’re right,” Chavez said. “You good to go on?”
I nodded.
“Just the routine questions left, Rebel. Like do you know anyone that would want to hurt Diane?” Chavez asked.
I shook my head. “Not that I know of, but I wasn’t a part of her world anymore. I don’t know what she was into, outside of what I told you. But she was so deep into what she was into, who knows what else she got herself into.”
“This voice on the phone,” Hank put in. “You think you might remember who it is?”
I shook my head again but said, “I hope so. If I do, I’ll tell you. But it isn’t coming to me now.”
“It might,” Chavez said. “Things are extreme now, Rebel. Your head clears out, it might happen. My advice, don’t try too hard. Just take care of you, Diane’s parents, and let it come if it comes. No pressure.”
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