3. Cassie
CASSIE
Despite what I’ve done, fortune must be smiling down on me because it begins to rain.
I didn’t even know it was supposed to rain tonight, but in the space of about a minute, it goes from a drizzle to sheets of rain hammering the house.
And the crime scene.
I had absolutely no hope of making it out of tonight without facing the repercussions of my actions. Unlike some other people, apparently, it would never occur to me that I could do something terrible and not have to pay for it. It wouldn’t occur to me to lie.
Obviously, it occurred to Tor right away.
I’m not complaining, but it is worth noting.
Outside, I hear a car door close, and then another.
I need to see what’s happening, so I go to the window overlooking the front yard.
I watch Torrance greet the officers—there are two of them, but they came in the same car.
They talk for a moment, then one officer turns on the brightest flashlight I’ve ever seen in my life.
He heads out to search the property, likely for the fictional assailant, while the other officer follows Tor inside the house.
I walk back over to the bed, snatching Tor’s bottle of water off the end table as I sit down. I uncap it and take a drink.
I can’t get my hopes up that any of this will work, but I will give it my best effort.
I go over everything Tor said to me one more time, making sure I have things straight in my head. The memory of Tim’s body springs to mind, but I shove it away.
Then I ask myself, how many nights do I think he was tortured by memories of what he did to me?
Zero. My assumption is zero.
Hell, even tonight he refused to simply admit what he did to me—and we were alone! At that point, it’s just fucking insulting. He’s trying to make me feel crazy for no real benefit.
Well, he was.
He won’t be doing it again.
Before I can think too much on that, there’s a knock on the bedroom door.
“It’s unlocked,” I answer, but don’t move off the bed.
The door eases open, and a man fills the doorway. My stomach sinks when I realize I recognize him.
It’s the same officer who interviewed me when I reported what Tim did to me last summer.
The consequences of living in a small town, I guess.
If he remembers me, I can’t tell. “Hi. I’m Officer Harris with the Holbrook Police Department. Mind if I come in?”
I shake my head, knowing my answer doesn’t matter anyway.
He steps inside, closing the door behind him. “It’s really starting to come down out there,” he comments, his gaze flicking to the window.
“Yeah, I hear that.”
He flashes me a polite smile, then asks, “Can I get your name, for the record?”
I watch as he opens a notebook and poises the nub of his pen over the pad. “Um, yeah. It’s Cassie—well, Cassandra Pritchard. People call me Cassie.”
“All right, Cassie.” He regards me, then continues, “First things first, are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Good.” His pen moves across the paper. “I spoke with Torrance Walters downstairs. That’s your boyfriend?”
Instantly, my skin warms. “He—I wouldn’t call him that, but we know each other, yes.”
He watches me but doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches on for an uncomfortable beat, then he asks, “What brings you to the Walters house tonight, Miss Pritchard?”
“I was visiting Tor.”
“Visiting.” He jots something down in his notebook. “What did you two do tonight?”
I sigh softly, deeply embarrassed, but knowing what he’s getting at. “We had sex.”
“I see.” Another notation. “Is that a regular occurrence?”
“Not regular, but it’s happened before.”
“But he’s not your boyfriend.”
“Correct.”
He nods and takes more notes. “And can you tell me what happened here tonight?”
I swallow. “I really don’t know what happened. Tor and I were upstairs. Here, in his bedroom.” I gesture to the bed. “I guess we fell asleep after, but something woke us up. A loud noise. He told me to stay here, and he went downstairs to check it out.”
“About what time was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you were up here the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear any loud noises after he left the room?”
My brow furrows slightly. “No?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I—” I open my mouth, then wonder if this is when I should cut off the questioning. “I didn’t hear any gunshots or anything like that, if that’s what you’re asking. I heard Tor close the front door. He said it was open when he went downstairs, so he closed it in case the guy was still out there.”
The cop’s eyebrows rise. “The guy? Did you see a man?”
“No. I didn’t see anything. I was in bed.”
“Did Torrance say he saw a man?”
“No. But he saw his brother… bleeding, and the front door was open. He could see that he had been shot or something. He shut the front door so that whoever was out there—if they were still out there—didn’t come in and hurt us, too.”
“Did anybody want to hurt all of you?”
“I don’t think so.”
He waits to see if I offer more, and when I don’t, he jots something down and then continues with his questions. “To your knowledge, was anything stolen from the house?”
“Not to my knowledge, but I wouldn’t have any knowledge of that. It’s not my house, and I’m not here often.”
“Do you think somebody was here tonight to hurt Timothy specifically?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you know anyone who would want to hurt him?”
That’s my cue. Sighing softly, I say, “Unfortunately, I can’t answer any more questions without a lawyer present.”
His lips press into a thin, knowing line, and he nods. It’s the first indication I get that he might recognize me. “That’s your right.” He jots one final note down in his notebook. “I’ll need you to sit tight right here for now, all right?”
I nod.
“Do you have your phone?” he asks me.
I glance at my purse. “Yeah, it’s in there.”
“Okay. Well, make sure you don’t use it to communicate with the surviving Mr. Walters, all right? We’re required to keep you two separated until we’ve had a chance to get all the information we need from both of you.”
“Okay.”
“And make sure you don’t delete anything off it,” he adds, with his fake-ass congenial smile as he prepares to leave the room. “We’ll need to look at that later.”
My phone.
I hadn’t even thought about my phone. I haven’t touched it once since I’ve been at the lake house—I even left it in my car. I didn’t need my phone or purse to commit a murder, and that was all I came here to do.
But could something incriminating be on it?
I feel insane even thinking it, but at this point, I would feel terrible if I got Tor in trouble.
I don’t know why he’s helping me when it’s his brother I killed, but he is, and he’s putting his own neck out to give me an alibi.
What if I messed it up by opening an app at the wrong time or something?
I try to think back to before I left the house. Truly, I wasn’t on it then either. With what I was planning to do, I was in a solemn mood. I was very much present, processing what I believed to be my last hours of freedom.
I didn’t use the GPS to get here. I came by memory.
For something I hadn’t given a second thought to, now I spend a good chunk of time agonizing over every single potential bit of incriminating evidence.
I’m not a careless person by any means, but I didn’t plan to get away with this.
If I had planned to get away with it, I would have made deliberate decisions to keep anything potentially suspicious off my phone.
I think I did anyway, honestly. I’m not stupid. But there could be data I’m not thinking about, maybe something the police could access that I’m not even aware of.
I have a lot of time to think about it because they leave me alone in Tor’s bedroom for what feels like hours. It could be hours. I’m afraid to touch my phone, so I have no idea how long it’s been.
One million years later, there’s another knock on the door. The same cop appears in the doorway. “Hey, Cassie. Sorry for leaving you up here so long.”
“It’s all right.”
“A lot to do, I’m sure you understand.”
I nod.
“But now it’s back to you. I’m gonna need you to come downstairs with me. We’re gonna take a ride down to the station.”
As he says this, someone else enters the room wearing paper booties and gloves and carrying clear plastic bags. I watch her walk around the bed to retrieve Tor’s blue T-shirt from the floor. Her gaze flicks to the bedsheets, but since I’m still sitting here, she heads for the bathroom.
They’re collecting evidence.
In his bedroom.
That means they’re looking into our alibi.
My gaze jumps back to Officer Harris. “Am I—Am I under arrest?”
“Should you be?”
My heart sinks, and my eyes widen involuntarily.
He smiles. “No, you’re not under arrest, but we do need to question you further and collect some more evidence to corroborate your story.”
“Should I call my mom?”
“Are you a minor?”
I shake my head. “I’m eighteen.”
“Then you don’t need to.”
“Okay.” I stand, looking around the room. I reach for my purse slowly, in case he’s preparing to tell me I’m not allowed to, but he doesn’t say anything.
I follow him down the stairs, my stomach in knots as the scene comes into view. I try not to look.
“You can go ahead and put on your shoes,” he tells me.
I took them off earlier, when Tor made me undress and give him my clothes.
He mentioned wiping down the gun, but I don’t know if he touched my shoes.
I guess if our story was true, my shoes would have been in the room when Tim was shot, so nothing they could find on them would necessarily indicate my guilt.
I slip them on now—black ballet flats, not terribly practical, but maybe that works in my favor. Who wears ballet flats to murder someone?
As I’m straightening up, I look around for Tor—and find him across the room. My gaze locks on his like a magnet.
The officer must notice because he lightly grabs my arm. “Come on. No contact.”
“Will he be at the station, too?”
“We’re bringing him in for questioning, but he’ll be transported separately.”
“Okay,” I say, because there’s really nothing else to say.
Outside, a patrol car waits, the back door already open for me.
My heart does a somersault.