Chapter Twenty
TWENTY
There were two police officers waiting outside the door. One was short and plump, and the other was tall and skinny, as though they had been plucked straight from a sitcom. I would’ve found it funny had I not felt like I was going to faint.
“Elizabeth Zhang?” the short and plump one said, holding up his badge. “We’d like to take you to the station to ask you some questions.”
—
The inside of a police car smelled the same as the inside of a cab, sweat and air freshener with a hint of peppermint.
I tried to remember all of the things I was supposed to do when this moment arrived, but it was like someone had wiped them clean from my brain.
On our way to the precinct the officers chatted with one another as though I were not there.
The tall one complained that his wife wanted to have a third kid, while the short one, who was behind the wheel, listened and grunted every couple of seconds.
At a red light, the short one turned around to ask if I was okay. I mustered a slight nod.
“Don’t look so nervous, kid,” he said. “You’re not in trouble.” But I knew not to believe a word he said.
The drive could’ve been five minutes or fifty, I wasn’t sure.
It was a warm day for mid-April and the AC was turned on.
I was cold but I also couldn’t stop sweating and could feel the moisture gathering in my armpits and on my bottom, dampening the seat.
I imagined the call that I would have to make.
You were allowed one call, right? At least in the movies you were.
What would I say to my mom? “Hey, Mom, I’ve been arrested because I accidentally killed someone.
” And what about the pregnancy? Would I have to give birth in prison?
I shook my head. Obviously, if it came to that, I would just have the abortion.
Harvard would be out of the question anyway.
Ironically, getting charged with murder would make me pretty interesting.
But that was probably the wrong kind of interesting.
Even in this dire situation, I couldn’t help but smile a little bit at the thought.
Eventually, we pulled up to the precinct.
The officers led me through various hallways and I felt as though we were navigating a maze.
I wouldn’t have been able to retrace our steps if someone had held a gun to my head.
Finally, the tall cop opened the door to a small room with a desk and three chairs, one on one side and two on the other.
It was just like in the movies, except the lights weren’t as dim.
They directed me to sit on the side with just one chair.
The short officer sat on one of the chairs on the opposite side.
“Are you thirsty?” the tall officer asked while still standing.
“Yes,” I croaked. He left and came back with a plastic cup of water while the short officer pulled out a notepad and a pen, setting both on the table in front of him. Then the tall officer left, leaving the two of us in the room.
“Is your partner coming back?” I asked. I did not pay attention to his answer. I wasn’t even sure why I asked. I assumed he had said no since he didn’t wait for the other guy to return before starting to ask questions.
“So,” he said. “How long have you been taking Klonopin?”
“What?”
He repeated the question. I was confused as to why he was asking me about the Klonopin.
Through the fogginess in my head the outline of a possible reason appeared—he was trying to demonstrate that he already knew a lot about my life, even the things that I didn’t want him to know about, or thought that he wouldn’t know about.
“Or I guess I should say, how long have you been buying Klonopin off the street?”
I stayed frozen in my seat. I remembered all those times I had told myself that I should not say anything to the police, but I couldn’t remember what I had told myself to do beyond that.
He sighed. “Listen, we have the Venmo record of you sending money to Emily McCoy. Specifically, the account that she uses for illegal drug transactions. The thing is, we don’t even care about you.
We just care about getting Emily, making sure that she’s no longer illegally selling prescription medications to other students.
Especially since we have evidence that she did it at a school, which makes it extra illegal. ”
I swallowed and took another sip of water. I waited for his words to register in my head. He wasn’t asking me about Laura; he hadn’t even brought up Laura’s name.
“Wait, this is about drugs?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, looking exasperated. I could tell he wanted to say something like “No shit,” but his professionalism prevented him from doing so. He looked down at his notepad. “How many times have you purchased Klonopin from Emily McCoy?”
I stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign language.
“All right, let’s try a different one. How did you find out that Emily McCoy was offering to sell Klonopin?”
I continued staring at him, waiting for him to say something about Laura.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
And I really didn’t. Why was he asking me about the Klonopin?
It was true that I had purchased ten 0.5 milligram pills from Emily, but why would they even care?
I only knew one person at Columbia who had never purchased illegal substances, and that was Eunjin.
“You didn’t know that Emily was selling Klonopin?”
“I barely know Emily,” I said. “I use Venmo for all kinds of things.” It could’ve been my imagination, but I thought I noticed a flicker of doubt appear on his face.
“So you didn’t pay Emily for Klonopin?”
Was it possible that this interaction had nothing to do with Laura at all? Was it possible that this really was just about the benzos I had purchased one time from a random student?
“What is Klonopin?” I asked.
The officer didn’t answer right away, just looked down at his notepad and let out a sigh.
I noticed for the first time that he was young, that he might’ve been the same age as me.
He looked like the guys in my classes, except with a uniform on.
They wouldn’t let a twenty-one-year-old interview a murder suspect. I almost started to laugh from relief.
“Can I go now? Please? I have a ton of homework to do, and I don’t even know Emily very well.
” Then I remembered an important detail.
I had put a pizza emoji in my Venmo payment to Emily.
It had been a little joke to myself, in that both Klonopin and pizza made me instantly feel better.
There was no way the cop could know for sure that the Venmo transaction had been for the Klonopin.
I would take the calculated risk and call his bluff.
“I’m pretty sure I just Venmo’d her for a slice of pizza,” I said.
“I barely know her, but the other day we were standing in line next to each other for pizza, and I forgot the place only took cash and didn’t have any.
So she paid for me and I paid her back. The place is called Koronet.
You can even look it up. They’re cash-only. ”
He didn’t say anything to that, just continued asking me questions for the next fifteen minutes.
I didn’t answer any of them. Instead, I stared at the wall behind him, occasionally shifting in my chair so my butt wouldn’t get sweaty again.
I knew you weren’t supposed to talk to the police when questioned, which meant I’d already said too much.
I waited for him to finally reveal what all of this was for, to finally start asking me questions about Laura.
The moment never came. Eventually, he led me back to the entrance of the building, a journey that was far less complicated than I remembered.
I walked out the door and continued walking until I reached the block around the corner.
Then I started walking faster, and eventually I was jogging, then I was running, then I was sprinting as fast as I could down the street.
I turned the corner and continued sprinting.
Passersby stared at me with concern but I didn’t care.
When I finally grew tired I leaned against a tree to catch my breath.
Anxiety started to eat away at me. What if they were using all the questions about Klonopin as a decoy?
What if they were just using that as an excuse to bring me in, to get a sense of my personality, to prevent me from realizing they suspected me for something more serious and lawyering up?
The fear and fogginess I felt from being trapped in that closed room made me realize that I did not have the situation under control, that I had severely overestimated my ability to stay cool under pressure.
Ironically, a Klonopin could’ve helped. Fortunately or unfortunately, I had already taken all of them.
As soon as I returned to my dorm I would need to double-check that I’d thrown away all of the evidence.
—
The next two days I skipped all my classes.
I couldn’t stop imagining myself in a prison cell.
I watched documentaries about women’s correctional facilities and read about rehabilitation programs available to former convicts.
I still did not know what to make of my interaction with the police, but I had come close enough to my worst fear that I couldn’t excise the images from my mind.
I told my friends that I had gotten a bad case of the stomach flu and they should come nowhere near me.
But on Saturday, Eunjin came up with the idea of opening the doors of both our rooms. With the thinness of the wall and the open doors, we could converse with each other at a normal volume while sitting at our own desks.
She made us peppermint tea and left a mug of it outside my door. I cupped the hot beverage in my hands while describing the fictional gastrointestinal symptoms that I was experiencing.