by Cj Omololu
Escorted by all the cops, I walk through the silent hallway with my head up, looking straight ahead, fully aware of the eyes that are on me as we pass several open classroom doors. As we get to the large circular driveway out front, I see a big yellow tow truck with a white car attached to the back of it.
“My car!” I say, watching the truck pull it around the corner and out of sight. It feels like it’s being stolen from me right in front of everyone.
“Part of the warrant,” Detective Naito says.
I hesitate, feeling like I’m surrendering everything right now. “But Casey was never in my car.”
“Then you don’t have anything to worry about,” he says.
“Watch your head,” the woman cop says as she opens the back door and lets me slide awkwardly into the squad car that’s parked at the curb.
Detective Naito sticks his head into the backseat. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.…” I tune out the rest of it. I’ve heard it recited countless times on TV shows and in movies. I never thought I’d hear it in real life.
I feel a sense of expectation, and I focus on him again.
“Do you understand these rights?”
“Yes,” I say, even though I haven’t heard a word he’s said in the past couple of minutes. I look beyond the front of the cop car and see crowds at every window, and Ava, Principal Forrester, and a small knot of people at the top of the steps. Slater leans over and says something to Ava, but she just shakes her head frantically.
“Let’s just go,” I beg the detective.
“I’m calling Dad too!” Ava shouts, already tapping her phone. “He’ll know what to do.”
I allow myself a small feeling of relief as the car door is shut and I can’t hear anything else from outside. Dad will work it out. He’ll be pissed, but he’ll get this all figured out. Ava’s on the phone, one hand waving in the air as she tries to explain what’s going on to Dad. I can only imagine what’s happening at the other end, but I really don’t care. All I want is for him to hurry. As I shift in my seat and look behind me, I catch sight of Zane in the side doorway, his eyes full of concern as they lock on mine.
For once, Zane is right—I’m in way over my head.
I rest my forehead against the front seat for the entire drive. I don’t want to look out the window and see anyone I know. Just being in the back of a cop car with handcuffs on makes me feel a guilt that’s hard to shake, no matter how many times I protest that I’m innocent.
The car stops, and I look up to see the brick building from last week, only this time things are so different. That day, I could turn around and walk out anytime. The heavy, warm metal around my wrists reminds me that this is no longer true. I’m silently grateful that there’s nobody waiting out front as the woman cop opens the back door and walks with me into the side entrance of the station. No orange plastic chairs this time, no slightly surly greeting by the desk cop. Just harsh fluorescent lighting and what looks like miles of shiny linoleum leading down a long hallway. There are no sounds but the clanking of keys and the occasional squawk of noise from the cop’s radio. I look around, but I don’t see Detective Naito and the others anywhere, and I wonder if we beat them here.
I expect to get fingerprinted and have my mug shot taken, but to my surprise we take a right at the end of the long hallway and stop outside another interrogation room. The cop unlocks it and ushers me inside. It looks just like the one I was in the other day, right down to the hard plastic chair, which she now motions me into. As soon as I sit, she unlocks the handcuffs and pops them off my wrists. I suddenly feel like I can breathe again.
“We don’t have to worry about you, right?” she says, tucking them back into her belt.
“No,” I say. “Ma’am,” I add quickly, because it seems like the right thing to do. I shake my hands out to get rid of the feeling of heaviness that’s still on my wrists.
“Sit tight. Someone will be with you in a moment,” she says, and heads for the door.
I think about asking her about the booking and the mug shots, but then I decide that it’s probably better to just sit here and shut up. No use reminding them of the technicalities if somehow they forgot. I sit back in the chair and wait, staring at the ceiling and at the clock over the door—everywhere but at the big mirror on the wall in front of me. I don’t have to see behind it to know I’m being watched.
After what seems like an eternity, Detective Naito walks in, followed by another, slightly taller cop. “This is Detective Richardson,” Naito says as he sits down next to me and the other detective takes his place at the other end of the table.
I nod, guessing correctly that handshakes aren’t really part of the arrest process. “Am I under arrest?” I ask.
The two detectives exchange a glance. “That depends,” Detective Naito says. He leans forward on his elbows across the small white table. “Why don’t you start by telling us about Alicia.”
I sit back and relax just a little. If I were seriously in trouble, I’d be backed up to a yardstick on the wall getting my picture taken right about now. I just have to explain it so they understand. “There is no Alicia. Ava and I made her up.” I smile a little but get no reaction from either man. “It started out as just something fun. You know, we’d take turns being Alicia and go out with different guys. Well, Ava mostly went out with them. I … filled in for her sometimes.”
“So you lied to me the last time you were here,” Detective Naito says, his eyes crinkling with concern.
I have no good excuse at this point. “I did—about my name. But everything else was the truth. I went out with Casey the night before he died. I didn’t see him after that.”
The other cop flips through a manila folder. “We have eyewitnesses that put you on the beach last Thursday when an altercation broke out with Dylan Harrington and a young woman named Selena Lee.”
I feel an icy shiver work down the length of my spine. I don’t know how to get out of this without implicating Ava. If they find she was out with Dylan, they’ll haul her in here for sure. If she is involved in this, I can’t be the one who sells her out. I take a deep breath and dive in. “He was cheating on me,” I say quickly, before I have time to think about it. Now I’m in too deep to turn back. “I caught him, we had an argument, and we broke up. But that’s it. He was alive the last time I saw him.” I pause, but I have to know. “What happened to him?”
I can feel Detective Naito watching me carefully. “Preliminary reports say that he was stabbed in the back of the neck.” He tilts his head. “Exactly the same as Casey Stewart.”
Bloody images flash through my mind. “That’s awful,” I say, the emotion behind it genuine. Neither of those guys deserved to die.
Detective Naito brings out the photo of the girl with the red jacket. “So you were with Casey Stewart the night he was killed?”
I stare at him. They’re trying to trick me. “No—it was the night before. In the parking lot of the Cheesecake Factory.” I point to the photo. “But I don’t know who that is, because it’s not me. I was telling the complete truth about that.” I hesitate, but I have to account for any of my DNA that they might have found on his body. “Look. I didn’t tell you everything about that night.” They don’t say anything, so I continue. “I met him there after he got off work at ten. We walked on the beach and had some ice cream. It got cold, so we went back to his car to talk some more. The restaurant had closed by then, so the parking lot was pretty empty.” I hesitate, but then continue, knowing I’m already in this far. “Things … um … things got a little bit crazy. I tried to get out of the car, and he … he …” I can’t bring myself to say it. Even bringing it up makes scenes from that night flash through my mind.
The two detectives are leaning forward, listening intently. “He what?” Detective Naito finally asks.
“He wouldn’t let me go,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut as the images from that night replay i
n my brain. “He wouldn’t stop when I told him to.… He held me down against the seat.” I stop here to catch my breath. The image of Casey looming over me, the feel of his teeth on my skin, the sound of his laugh are all too vivid.
“But you got away?” Detective Naito asks.
“Yes.” I nod. “My dad is big into self-defense. He made us take classes to learn what to do if we were ever in a situation like that.”
“What did you use?” Detective Richardson asks.
“My keys,” I say.
Detective Naito’s head snaps up, and he glances at the big mirror on the opposite wall. “Your keys?”
“Yes.” I hold up one fist. “You put them in between your fingers like this. I knew I only had one shot at him, so I took it. Right across his cheek.” I look at the two of them. “Not enough to make him stop, but enough to slow him down so I could get the hell out of there and back to my car.”
“And that’s it?” Detective Naito asks.
“That’s it,” I say.
They glance at each other. “Starting to sound like motive to me,” Detective Richardson says quietly.
What I’ve just done starts to sink in. I’ve handed them the one thing they were missing. “Motive?” I say. “There’s no motive, because nothing else happened. I started the car and got out of there as fast as I could. The last time I saw him, he was leaning against his car in the parking lot. Alive.”
Detective Naito flips through the folder. “And what time was this?”
“About eleven o’clock,” I say.
“And then you went straight home?”
“Yes.” I look him right in the eye. “I don’t know who that is in the picture you have, but it wasn’t me. Or Ava.”
“And you still maintain that Casey didn’t scratch you? Even if evidence says otherwise?”
I remember the DNA they took from my cheek the last time I was here, and I feel set up. “The DNA you found under his fingernails matches mine?”
The two detectives exchange wary looks. “It does,” Detective Richardson says. He leans forward and puts his elbows on the table. “And from the looks of it, it would have been a fairly large scratch.”
The only thing I know is that Casey didn’t scratch me that night. And that Ava and I have basically the same DNA. I pull up my sleeves and show them my arms. “See? No scratches. I already told you that I was in Casey’s car that night, so even if my DNA is in the car, it doesn’t prove anything.”
Detective Naito flips through the folder. “Where were you around five o’clock this morning?”
“Why? Is that when Dylan was killed?”
He glances at Detective Richardson. “Approximately.”
“Sleeping. At home.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
I shrug. “Cecilia was in the kitchen packing our lunches when I got up at six-thirty. She’ll tell you that I was home, asleep.”
The detectives share a glance, and I know I’m in trouble. The university is only about twenty minutes from the house—plenty of time to get there, kill Dylan and get back before anyone else got up.
“It says here that you’re taking AP Biology. And that you’ve applied to some prestigious schools next year,” Detective Richardson says. “What’s your major going to be? Premed?”
I look at him but have no idea where he’s going with this. It seems like every time I open my mouth, I get into bigger trouble. “No. Business.”
“But you’ve taken a lot of science courses?”
“Yeah. I like science. So?”
“Interesting,” Detective Naito says. He pulls some photos from the folder and hands them to me.
I glance at Dylan’s deathly white profile and the spreading pool of black blood next to him and push the photo away. This corpse doesn’t look anything like the guy I met outside Ava’s room that night. “I don’t want to see that!”
Detective Naito pulls the photo back and looks at it as if studying it for the first time. “What’s interesting is that we’re thinking that whoever did this has some sort of a medical or science background.” He turns in his chair and puts one finger on the back of his head, just below his skull. “Because you’d have to know the exact spot to slip the knife into so that severing the spine makes the victim immediately helpless.” He turns back around. “Not to mention dead.” He leans forward on the table again. “It’s how they kill livestock on small farms. Knowing a trick like that would be the great equalizer, wouldn’t it? All it would take is a small knife and a little knowledge of the human body, and someone who is much smaller”—he looks me up and down—“say five foot two, could disable a much larger person.”
It feels like Detective Naito has already convicted me. I look at him, but there’s no sympathy in his eyes. This is all slipping out of control. “Look, there’s no way I could do that to an animal, much less a person. And maybe your sample was contaminated or your tests were wrong, but I didn’t have anything to do with Casey’s death. Or Dylan’s.”
Detective Naito puts both palms faceup on the table. “That’s what you keep saying. We’re just doing our job, tracking down leads.” He looks directly at me and takes a theatrical pause. “The only problem is that all the leads keep pointing to you.”
I can feel the panic rising in my throat as I look around the bare room. What the hell is going on here? I told them the truth. At least, most of it—I should be walking out of here by now. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, my voice echoing off the blank walls. “Yes, I went out with Casey, but that’s it. No way could I ever kill anyone.” I can feel my brain grasping at anything that might make this all go away. “What about the sunflower seeds? I told you, some strange things have been going on lately. I think someone’s been following us. Trying to set us up.”
Detective Richardson leans forward on the chair. “Funny thing about the seeds,” he says, flipping through the papers in the file. “We did get a DNA hit on them. An Alicia Rios.” He pauses. “At least, one Alicia Rios who appeared down at the police station last week.”
I look at the two of them, but neither of them smiles. “What do you mean? My DNA was on them? That’s impossible!”
“Science doesn’t lie,” the detective says.
“Maybe that was from when I picked them up off the ground. But there was nothing else?”
The door opens, and a woman I don’t recognize walks in.
“The steering wheel tested positive for blood,” she says to the detectives. “We’re getting trace on it right away.”
Frustration is flooding my body as my mind races. “I already told you—”
“In light of what you’ve told us, we’re going to need your keys too.”
“They’re in my backpack,” I say, my frustration rising. It feels like this is all an insane nightmare. “Which you already have. How long—” I’m interrupted by the door being flung open.
“Don’t say another word,” a tall woman in jeans and an off-white sweater says to me as she surveys the room. She’s not wearing any makeup, and her straight blond hair is pulled back into a low ponytail. She looks more like an elementary school teacher than a cop.
Detective Naito closes the file and leans back in his chair. “That was fast.”
“Why are you even bothering to question her?” the woman asks. “You know I’ll get all of this thrown out of court. She’s a minor, for God’s sake.”
“She’s seventeen,” Detective Richardson says. “And under suspicion of murder. When it goes to court, they’re going to request to try her as an adult anyway.”
Fear grips my chest as I hear those last words. Tried as an adult? How in the world could it ever get that far? This is all so crazy. I look from the woman back to the detectives. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry,” the woman says, walking over and extending her hand. “Elisa Alvarez, defense attorney.” She looks at me intently. “Your defense attorney.”
“I don’t need an attorney,” I say. “I didn’t
do anything wrong.”
“Actually,” says Detective Naito, pushing himself away from the table, “you probably do need one. And as Ms. Alvarez here is one of the best defense attorneys in the state, you might want to listen to her.”
“Did my dad send you?” The thought of Dad knowing that I’m sitting in jail makes me a little sick to my stomach. “Because this whole thing is crazy.”
She glances at the mirror across the room. “Let’s talk about this once we get outside.” She extends her hand to help me out of my chair. “I’m assuming we’re done here,” she says to the room in general.
“We do have a warrant,” Detective Naito says, handing her a piece of paper.
Ms. Alvarez lifts her eyebrows. “And what’s the name on that warrant?”
“Irrelevant,” he says.
“Highly relevant,” she says, tucking the paper into her bag. “You have a warrant for someone who is not my client, yet you insist on illegally detaining and questioning her.”
“We don’t need a warrant on a felony. As you well know,” Detective Naito says. “And nothing that was done here was illegal.”
“Let’s go,” she says to me, turning on her heel.
I glance at the detectives. “What about my car?”
“What about it?” the lawyer asks.
“They have it,” I say. “My backpack too.”
She shakes her head. “You guys don’t know when to quit, do you?”
“The car tested positive for blood,” Detective Naito says, the hint of a smile on his face. “And Casey Stewart had an antemortem gash on his cheek made by a set of keys like the ones Alexa has. We’re sure the DNA in her car is going to be his.”
“I already told you why!” I say. I turn to Ms. Alvarez. “I did scratch Casey with the keys, but only to get him off me. That’s it!”
She looks at the two detectives and then beyond them toward the mirror. “We’re going to need some privacy for a few moments.”
“You can use my office,” Detective Naito says.
“This way,” Ms. Alvarez says, leading me into the hallway. She heads straight for a door on the left and ushers me into it. Apparently she knows her way around the police station. “So how about you tell me what’s going on,” she says after closing the door behind us. “There are no recording devices in this office, so whatever you tell me is in strictest confidence. What have you told them?”
