THE DOOR TO the interview room opened, and Steiner and Mom both came back in. Mom had overruled Jojo’s objections—steamrolled, really—and gave her the choice between having either a lawyer or her in the room while giving the statement.
A lawyer.
That had made Jojo want Mom, which had probably been her mother’s plan all along. Still, Mom was better than Dad, if they had to talk about sex stuff.
And they would have to.
Jojo felt the urge to curl up again to make herself into the roly-poly bug and disappear under the door into the hallway.
Nate Steiner sat across from them. “Hey, Jojo,” he said.
“Hi.” At least it was him. Last summer she’d been at the lake with some friends smoking weed, and he’d just told her to get home quick and text him when she was there. He’d never said anything—as far as she knew—to either of her parents.
Or, God, maybe he had, and her parents just decided it wasn’t a big enough deal to punish her. Jojo had no idea what really went on in this building. She felt her cheeks color, and a wave of heat spread up her spine.
Steiner pointed at a small digital recorder. “This is just for the record. You mind if I use it to help me take your statement?”
Jojo shrugged. “It’s fine.”
Steiner sat back in his chair. He wore a blue button-down shirt and a darker blue tie. He’d taken off his suit jacket when he’d sat down, and he radiated ease, like he’d sucked up all of hers. But then his eyes suddenly filled with tears.
Holy shit. He was going to cry? Mom was staring at her lap, no help at all.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, my God, I’m sorry. I just remembered Car 143.”
Oh, how fucking embarrassing.
“On your birthday,” Steiner said.
Car 143, 908D. Her call sign, logging off for the night, using Dad’s radio.
Mom’s voice sounded thick as she spoke to Steiner. “She’d be all tucked in bed, with Omid’s radio in her hands. Remember how everyone on duty would click?”
Clicking was laughter, usually mocking, but on those nights she’d known they were laughing with her.
“Car 143,” said Steiner again.
Jojo thumped backward in her chair, her ears hot. “Come on.”
Steiner shook his head as if to clear it. “Okay. Yeah. This is going to be hard to get through, and I just want to acknowledge that up front. I’m going to be asking you some really personal questions. Are you sure you don’t want a female officer in here to ask these?”
They’d asked her that already, like three times. The only female officer on duty was Maria Bagley, and Jojo had always secretly thought Maria was dumb as a stick. If only Sarah Knight from the jail could do it. Sarah was awesome and fun, one of Mom’s best friends, practically an aunt to Jojo. “I’m fine.” Maybe she could just answer that to every single question she was asked. I’m fine, fine, fine.
“Okay, then.” Steiner clicked his pen. “Let’s go back to yesterday. What did you do in the morning?”
Friday. She’d slept late—that’s what summers were for. In the afternoon Harper had come over, and they’d made root beer floats. Harper tried to get her to throw hers up, but Jojo had laughed. I like my tooth enamel. Harper had turned sideways in front of the mirror and said, But am I getting fat? Jojo said, You look prettier than ever, Cordelia. She’d tried to keep her voice light and used the pet name they called each other, the one they’d been using since they were eleven when Jojo had fallen madly in love with Anne of Green Gables and tried to force Harper to read it. (Harper hadn’t given in, thinking nonrequired reading a waste of time, but they’d watched the miniseries over and over, swearing to be each other’s Cordelia.) Then she and Harper went to Sephora.
“Slept late. Harper came over around three, I think. Went to Sephora for a lip stain.” Which Harper had taken and not paid for. Where was Harper? Did they understand the magnitude of this? “You know she’s missing, right? That’s the most important thing here. Right?” Jojo ignored the way Mom was staring at her and just spoke to Steiner, who kept his eyes on hers encouragingly. He didn’t answer her question.
“Then where did you go?”
“We went to Justin Sands’s house. We hung out.” Justin was boring, but he was a good driver and had a sweet Mustang. He’d do anything Harper wanted him to, which was handy.
“And you were with Harper Cunningham this whole time?”
Jojo nodded.
“Then where did you go?”
Now they were getting to the part she hadn’t told her mother. “To the city.”
Next to her, Mom sucked in a breath.
“What was in San Francisco?”
“A meeting.”
“How did you get there?”
“Justin drove us to West Oakland, and then we took BART.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“CapB.”
That stopped Steiner’s pen moving. He looked up, honest surprise in his eyes. “Citizens Against Police Brutality?”
Jojo resisted the urge to slide onto the floor in a display of passive resistance. “It was put on by them. Street-medic training.”
Mom’s voice was cold. “You should have told us.”
Steiner saved her. “Laurie, it’s fine that you’re in here. But you have to stay quiet. No interjections, no interruptions, okay?”
“She doesn’t have to be here,” said Jojo, hoping all over again.
“You’re sixteen. I’m here. I’m not leaving.” Mom folded her arms like some tough guy, but her eyes looked scared, which in itself freaked Jojo the fuck out. “But I’ll be quiet.”
Steiner nodded. “Okay. So. CapB. Was this the first time you met with them?”
Jojo shook her head. “Uh-uh. I guess I’ve been to a bunch of meetings.”
“How many?”
“Maybe . . . a dozen?” She could practically feel Mom coming unglued. And what about when Dad found out? He’d think she was part of the black bloc, taunting cops on the front lines.
Holy shit.
And where the fuck was Harper?
“Okay. Tell me who was at the meeting.”
Calling it a meeting made it sound as if they sat lined up in folding metal chairs like they were in a business club at school or something. Instead they met at a café on Valencia, an old place with a big back room. Most of the people who came drank beer. Harper and Jojo never pushed their luck, sticking with vanilla lattes, though once Zach had bought them each a glass of wine. When they did street-medic training, they huddled at one big table, keeping their voices low so they didn’t scare anyone with talk of how much Maalox to mix in your water bottle if tear gas started to spray. “Um, I don’t know last names.” Except for Kevin and Zach.
“Give me what you can remember, that’s totally fine.”
“Greg, Dionne, Leandre, Nikki, Barclay, Mack. Maybe some others.” Jesus, did she just turn into a narc? The names had simply tumbled right out. Thank God she didn’t know much else, or she’d probably have given it all up like some baby weasel. “Zach, of course. And Kevin Leeds.”
She felt, rather than saw, Mom straighten. She expected Steiner to jump on it, to start questioning her about Kevin, but he didn’t. Instead he wanted to know what they’d all talked about—congressional appointments, an upcoming march, handcuff injuries—and who talked to her specifically about what. Jojo gave him what she could remember—it couldn’t hurt that much, right? The night started to fragment in her memory right about the time they were leaving. The afterparty memory was clear, when she was on Kevin’s lap on the swing, but the time connections were fractured.
“You’re doing great. Do you remember who Harper talked to in the café?”
Jojo had a clear image of Harper giving her sideways sex smile to the barista, a guy with like twenty holes in each ear and a huge septum barbell. “The barista, I don’t know his name. Mack and Dionne. Zach and Kevin.”
Steiner flipped a page in his notebook. “Harper’s mother said in her statement that she has a boyfriend named Ray. Do you know his last name?”
Jojo shook her head.
“Was he there?”
“No.” Harper had kept him such a secret. Jojo knew he was an older guy (as usual—she had some daddy issues) and that he did something with computers. Single. Big house over the hill in Danville. Big Range Rover. Big cock. “I’ve never met him. I was supposed to meet him that night. After this party.”
“Where was the party?”
There was just a gray mist where the memory of the location should be. “I don’t know. A squat in Oakland.”
“Did you meet this guy Ray?”
“I think so, but I don’t remember his face.” There was a scene in X-Men II where Jean Grey feels something coming—she knows it’s going to be bad, but she doesn’t know what it is. That’s what this felt like. The skin on Jojo’s arms prickled. Goose bumps rippled through her, and she pushed her hands deeper into her sweatshirt pockets. Zach’s death. Harper’s disappearance. “I don’t remember,” she repeated.
Steiner looked up at her, and then, more irritatingly, he looked at her mother. “You’re doing great, Jojo. Okay, what else do you remember about last night? Take me through, step by step.”
Jojo closed her eyes, more to block out the peripheral view of her mother than for any other reason. “We left the café. We were . . . we got high on the street, I think.”
“Weed or something else?”
He said it so matter-of-factly. Like he thought she actually might smoke crack or something. “Weed. Obviously. Like that time you caught me at the lake,” she said slowly and deliberately.
Mom stiffened. He hadn’t ever told them, then. Huh. Well, hell, it was technically legal now. Okay, it would be if she were twenty-one. Which she wasn’t.
Steiner didn’t flinch, though. “Whose weed?”
“Harper’s.”
“How did you smoke it?”
“What?”
“Joint? Vape? Bong?”
Yeah, they just carried bongs around in their purses. “Vape.”
“Okay. Then where did you go?”
“We got some chips at a liquor store.” It sounded stupid when she said it out loud. Got high, bought some snacks. So teenaged. So predictable.
“Then?”
“We went to the party at the squat.” Kevin’s mouth, Harper dancing as everyone watched. “I don’t remember.”
“Okay.”
Jojo’s throat was tight. “But—”
“It’s really okay, Jojo. Let’s try a different angle. Have you checked your cell phone for messages you might have forgotten sending or receiving?”
“Yeah. Nothing.” Just a lot of texts to Harper, unanswered.
“Did you go through your pockets?”
Jojo stared at him. “I didn’t even think about that. They kept my clothes at the hospital.”
Mom leaned forward and said quietly, “I asked ID. There was nothing in your pockets.”
Steiner said, “What about your bag? What were you carrying last night?”
Jojo lifted her black shoulder bag. “Just this.”
“And you’ve gone through it?”
Dumbly, Jojo shook her head. Her bag, like her pockets, hadn’t even occurred to her. She scooted forward in her chair so she could set the bag on top of the desk. She scrabbled inside it, pulling items out at random. Her phone. Empty water bottle. Two packs of Doublemint gum, both opened. Seven pens. Her notebook. Four tampons, which she did not put on the table. Two chargers, one that went to her phone, the other one Harper’s, because Harper never remembered to bring an iPhone charger anywhere she went and her phone was constantly dead. A bruised apple that was damp and soft on one side.
And a white phone.
“Holy shit.”
“Whose is that?” Mom’s voice was reedy.
“Harper’s.”
Steiner reached for it.
“No.” Mom lunged forward and grabbed the phone, dumping it into her purse. “Sorry, Nate. We’re going to look at it first.”
“It has to go to evidence.”
“It will.”
“Come on, Laurie. You know this. You might lose fingerprints.”
“Break time.” Mom stood. “Come on, Jojo.”
“Wait. Laurie, I’m doing your daughter a favor here. Just chatting. No lawyer. Don’t push it, okay?”
Mom whirled on him then, one finger pointed directly at him, her eyes blazing. “Are you threatening us that you’ll start treating her like a suspect?”
Steiner went rigid. “There was a murder not ten feet from her.”
“And she was unconscious.”
He gave a hangdog look but said, “Still have to clear every possible angle.”
What did that mean? Jojo’s heart did a backflip into her stomach.
“So she is a suspect.” Mom slammed her hands against the tabletop. “Are you arresting my daughter, Nate?”