JOSIE
I’ve never been to a police precinct. There’s a sense of novelty about being in an establishment you only see in fiction or on TV. With it comes a subtle feeling that you might never get out of the mess, and by all definitions, what’s happening right now is a mess.
The police brought the woman to the precinct, too.
Apparently, she’s a local. Mallory Blain, forty-three.
She was uncertain about where she was, who had taken her, or why.
They asked me to keep quiet about what happened for now.
She is a victim. The perpetrator has not yet been located, so they are trying to protect her identity.
As I waited back at the house, I heard the cops talking about locating the owner of the house, asking about the renter, the renter’s ID, which could be fake, searching the place for fingerprints and DNA.
Here, at the precinct, they asked me if I wanted to let my grandmother know that I would be there for a while. “Hard no,” I told the chief right away. I don’t need Grandma worrying about me.
I agreed to talk. After all, there’s nothing much I can tell them. I have nothing to hide besides the fact that I witnessed the man being hit by a car only a few days ago. But I’m not telling them about that.
I don’t like the silence weighing on me in the room where I sit with the chief and Officer Miles.
Or the constant messages beeping on the chief’s phone.
Or the fact that he’s going through the messages on my phone.
I want to scream that it’s an invasion of privacy, but I agreed to it.
They are the police. They have the right.
It’s evidence. They might look through any other messages on my phone, and, oh, man, we all think we talk about innocent things with friends until someone puts a different spin on the simple words they stumble upon.
The chief finally slides my cell phone across the table to the other policeman.
“Read those, then send them to the tech team.” He turns his eyes to me.
“Okay, Josie. So let’s go through this again.
The man messages you for the first time five days ago, saying he is a friend of your mother’s, right? ”
I nod.
“Except your mother passed more than two decades ago.”
“Right.”
“He tells you that he has some information about what happened twenty-five years ago.”
The chief ducks his head, like he’s trying to coax a secret out of me. I have none. If anything, I want to know who the man is too.
“Right,” I respond.
“So what is it, twenty-five years ago, that you were curious about?”
You know! I want to scream at him. There were many theories, but he probably knows more than the media, the residents, the judge, and the prosecutor during the trial combined.
“Well…” I start, trying to pick the right words. “The bar fire, for one. The…murder. What really happened.” I hold the chief’s gaze. “And then he brought up my father. So…”
Everyone in town knows the story—my mom gave birth to me right after my grandmother was released from prison, left me with her, moved to the city. And then she died of an overdose two years later.
“I was curious,” I say. “Grandma never talks about my father. So I figured, if someone claims they know him, I’m in. Wouldn’t you want to know? If…if you knew my family’s history?”
The chief shifts in his chair. “So it didn’t occur to you that there might be some kind of scam going on? Or that the man might be a predator?”
“Of course it did,” I say, and that’s where my lie comes in. “That’s why I didn’t go to the meeting.”
The chief’s eyes are trained on me. He’s probably trying to read the signs of whether I’m lying, like whether I shift my eyes to the right or the left when I’m thinking before answering.
Whether I bite my lip or pick my nails. I hide my hands on my lap under the table so he doesn’t see how nervous I am.
You can be a pro and read all you want into a person’s behavior, but when people are being interrogated by the police, ninety percent of them are nervous.
“So.” The chief pauses again. I hate this technique—they show it in movies all the time. He’s trying to create tension, teasing me with his silence, waiting for me to crack. “You didn’t go to the first meeting. And he didn’t text you when you didn’t show up?”
I didn’t think this part through thoroughly. But I shake my head.
“And you didn’t erase any messages on your phone?” he asks, though he asked me that already.
“No.”
“Okay. We’ll wait until the IT team gives us the report.
So, let me get this straight. You didn’t go to the first meeting, at the fairgrounds.
He didn’t ask why you didn’t show up. But then…
” That annoying pause again. “Then, two days later, he texts you his home address and the time for the new meeting, and this time”—the chief pauses again for a dramatic effect, and I swear, I’m going to scream—“you do go. To a stranger’s house. Without any hesitation.”
“I didn’t really want to,” I say. “I was meaning to drive by.”
“To drive by?”
“Maybe to find out who stayed at that house?”
“Okay?”
“I was planning on knocking and not going in. I was going to tell him that I’d stay on the porch and listen to what he has to say. I had pepper spray in my pocket.”
“Right. That’s smart. Okay. Go on.”
“I already told you.”
“Right. Right.” The chief nods, studying me.
“I know you are trying to get more details, but that’s it,” I say. “That’s just it. I rang the bell. I knocked. I tried the door, and I went in, just…” I shake my head, knowing how it sounds. “Just to see, you know. And I heard the shouts for help.”
“Right.”
“Was she…” I take a breath, trying to push away an awful image in my head.
“The woman says he didn’t harm her. She got hit with something blunt, but that’s it.”
“So he did hit her?”
“She’s not sure who it was. When she came to, she was in the basement.”
“So he is violent, that man.”
“I can’t really say anything as of right now. We are running his name, prints, DNA, checking the system.”
“But she knew who he was? Is,” I correct myself.
“We are still questioning her.”
“Maybe I can talk to her?” I offer. “Maybe she’s somehow connected to him and knows—”
“I’m afraid not right now.”
“When are you releasing her? Can I talk to her then?”
“Well, we’re not sure about that. Not until we locate the man. She’s a kidnapping victim. And with the man missing, anyone who’s been in contact with him might be in danger.”
The chief locks eyes with me.
I don’t know if he’s saying this to test me or as an actual warning.
I nervously lick my dry lips. “You think he might come back for her?”
“We don’t know.”
“Or for me?” I try to swallow the hard knot in my throat.
“That depends on where he is.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
We both go quiet, the chief’s gaze on me expectant. “Would you take the DNA test?” he asks finally. “We need to eliminate yours from the crime scene.”
I nod. “Of course.”
As if on cue, a woman enters the room like she’s been waiting for it and takes swabs of my saliva. I know this is basic procedure, yet it makes me feel like the prime suspect.
“Am I free to go?” I ask when she’s done. “I need to check on Grandma.” That’s a lame excuse, but still.
The chief motions to the door. “Sure. I know where to find you.”
There’s no reason for the chief to suspect me of anything. After all, I found the woman, found her in time. Who knows what the man could’ve done to her or how long she would’ve been locked up in that house. But all roads lead to me. I was the one meant to find her. The stranger made sure of that.
I really want to talk to that woman. But for right now, she is off-limits. All I can do is wait.
I rise slowly from the chair. “You’ll let me know of any updates?” I ask as the chief and Officer Miles get up from their seats.
“Yes, Josie.”
“I mean, in case he shows up? Or you have any other information?”
“Yes. Will do. Meanwhile, be careful,” he warns.
“Can I get my phone back?”
He tsks with the corner of his mouth. “You can either let us get the history of text messages from it, or if you take it, we’ll get a warrant.”
His words make cold sweat break out along my back.
“You can pick it up tomorrow morning,” he reassures me.
“Okay.” There’s nothing much they’ll find on my phone about the stranger. It’s less suspicious if I let them have their way.
“I’ll call you with an update,” the chief says and holds the door for me as I exit the room. “Say hello to your grandmother.”
As I walk down the corridor, through the glass panel of the next room, I see Mallory Blain, the woman I found in the basement.
She has a blanket over her shoulders, but I can tell she’s a short, skinny person.
Her hair is dirty blond. She sits hunched over the table, with a female police officer across the table from her, and looks so small that my heart clenches for her. Why did the man pick her?
I keep walking, past two more rooms with officers at their desks, then into the general hall.
Another officer leans against the wall, talking on the phone as I pass by.
“We called the state police to take over,” he says.
“We are not big enough for this… Yes… Refused the medical exam, correct. No matter how we pushed for it.” I slow down so I can eavesdrop.
“No, right… No, nothing we can do. That’s her choice.
Yes… Yes, she insists on going home. She seems spooked. ”
I stop several feet from him and pretend like I’m looking for something in my pocket so I can listen in.
“We can place an officer to patrol her house, in case the suspect shows up again… Right… Yes, nothing much except for DNA. Okay, well, we’ll run it through the database for possible matches, so—”
He flicks his eyes at me, his chin raised in a dismissive gesture, and I look down and walk away.
I want to talk to Mallory Blain. But more than anything, at this point, I need to tell Grandma what happened. I can’t tiptoe around her forever. Better she finds this out from me than someone else.