The sight of Laura’s body evaporates any remaining shell shock from the drugs. I’ve been found with Laura’s stabbed corpse, a knife in my grip, my hands covered in blood.
I look over at Laura again, her sightless eyes staring at me.
Dead. Laura is dead.
Except in my mind, she’s been dead for years, and to now have her dead again? My mind can’t quite compute that, as if this is another trick.
It’s not a trick. Her empty eyes tell me that.
She’s dead, and I don’t know how to feel about that because she’d been the monster who shot Martine and framed Oliver.
And kidnapped me. That seems inconsequential now, or maybe that’s just me, shoving my own trauma aside.
Laura is dead, and I was found holding the knife, and holy shit, I was found holding the knife that killed Laura.
The officers don’t want to hear my explanations. They can’t do anything with them, and I know that. What are they going to say?
Huh, okay, that makes sense—you can go.
Deciding whether I did this or not isn’t their job. I’ve been found at a murder scene holding the presumed murder weapon. These cuffs are staying on, and I am going to the station and probably to jail.
So why do I tell them what happened? Because the fact that I explain does matter. Or, more accurately, if I didn’t try to explain, that would be a strike against me.
These officers can attest that I immediately started protesting with the same story that I will continue to tell because it is the truth.
Also, if I’m that cool and calculated, maybe I am still in shock.
No, while I am in shock, I don’t calmly relay my story. I’m freaked out, panicking, struggling to keep from going wild. Laura is dead. I was found by her body. I was holding the bloodied knife.
The officers manage to get me outside, as I struggle not to fight them. A pickup roars down a long dirt road, dust enveloping it until it reaches the house. Then a door flies open, and Castillo comes running, and again, my knees buckle, this time in relief.
“What’s going on here?” he says, bearing down on us. “Why is she in cuffs?”
“Sir, please step back—”
“I didn’t do it,” I blurt. “Laura’s dead, and I didn’t do it. She kidnapped me.”
Castillo’s face sets, hard and grim. “I know.”
“Now she’s dead. Stabbed. I was found holding the knife, but I was unconscious. She drugged my food. I woke up with these officers standing over me.”
“Sir, please—” the officer repeats.
“I’m three meters away,” Castillo says. “I’m a private investigator, and Ms. Gibson is my client.”
“That’s fine, but—”
“Amy? Dinah is in court getting Oliver’s bail. I can’t get through to her, but I’ve left messages. I’ll meet you at the station.”
“Sir . . .” the officer says.
Castillo lifts his hands. “Still staying where I am. I’m not interfering or trying to stop you.”
The officers put me into a car.
“They’ll have summoned backup,” Castillo calls over to me. “They’ll need to stay until it arrives before they can leave. I’ll wait here with you.”
“Sir . . .” the officer warns.
“Show me where I can wait that doesn’t threaten your scene, but I am waiting. Like I said, she’s my client, and she’s just been framed for murder. I’m not going anywhere.”
The only way I can process the rest of the day is to imagine scripting it for my podcast. I’d never admit that to anyone for fear of sounding exactly like what I’ve been accused of being—an attention hog who’ll mine any personal crisis for subscribers.
I will never actually record that episode. The police don’t deserve it. They are doing what they must, under the circumstances, just as they did when Martine accused Oliver of shooting her, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I am terrified and trying not to freak out, knowing if I freak out, they can use that against me, but also knowing if I’m too calm, that also acts against me, and how the hell am I supposed to be?
Innocent. Act like I feel, frightened and confused. I’m in a police station, being questioned by people who think I stabbed my sister-in-law to death.
And that’s not even the worst part. This is what would be hard to explain in a podcast. Being questioned is actually easy, because at least it feels like progress. That only takes a couple of hours, split over several sessions, and Dinah is there with me. The rest is waiting. Endless waiting, alone and terrified and barely able to process what happened, what is happening.
Laura is dead, stabbed to death, and I’ve been framed for her murder. Not just accused of it, but released from the room where she’d been holding me captive and staged to look as if I’d murdered her.
I remember someone in my room, the prick in my arm and the cold coursing through my veins. I’d woken just long enough to register someone there, in the darkness.
Was it Laura, making sure I stayed asleep with a stronger sedative?
Or was it her killer, having known I was there and planned it enough to bring a sedative injection?
The point, for Dinah, is that I was clearly drugged. She insisted on a toxicology screening. The results of that are still pending. She also had photos taken of the site where I claim to have been injected—and there’s a pinprick wound to support that.
I didn’t kill Laura and then randomly fall asleep over her dead body. I was clearly drugged, and even the police recognize that, though in their version, I fought back despite being drugged. They are also allowing for the possibility that I killed Laura in a drug-induced psychotic state.
Is that possible? Laura injected me with something that reacted wrong, and instead of knocking me out, it put me into a psychotic state? I overpowered her and killed her and don’t remember it?
I won’t say that’s impossible. I can’t. I can only tell my story. My food was drugged, and I drifted off, but then someone injected me, and that’s the last thing I remember.
The theory Dinah gives the police is that the food drugging was meant to put me to sleep during my captivity, so I’d be as little trouble as possible. The injection was with something stronger, to ensure I didn’t wake up while being moved and positioned beside Laura’s dead body.
That’d be my interpretation, too, but I let Dinah do all the explaining. If I theorize about what happened, then it sounds as if I’m fabricating a narrative or, worse, that I already had one and fashioned the crime to fit it.
The police seem to accept that I was kidnapped. There’s the room where I was kept, complete with everything I remember about it, down to that spot where I pulled up the carpet. Also, Dinah and Castillo had reported me missing, possibly taken against my will. My messages to Castillo got that ball rolling.
It turns out that Castillo hadn’t gotten my messages because he’d been asleep. After multiple long nights of work, he’d set his alarm for a twenty-minute catnap. Only it hadn’t gone off. He’d slept for two hours, with his phone intentionally silenced for twenty minutes of peace.
When he woke, he got my messages and called. Getting no response, he contacted Dinah. They went to my apartment and found no sign that I’d returned after meeting with Greta’s old roommate.
From there, Castillo went to the coffee shop, and one of the staff recognized my photo and said I’d been with another woman, and we’d gotten into the back seat of a rideshare together. A security camera in the area had picked up the rideshare car idling in front of the coffee shop. The license plate was stolen. The car wasn’t registered with the rideshare company, who’d had no drop-offs or pickups at that coffee shop that day except mine.
At that point, Dinah reported me missing.
How did they get all that done so quickly? They didn’t. I’d been missing for thirty-six hours. I got into that car at 5:40 on Monday afternoon, and the police found me over Laura’s body after receiving an anonymous tip at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning.
The Crown attorney wants me to confess to killing Laura in self-defense. I escaped the room, semi-drugged, got hold of a knife and stabbed her to escape. That’s a valid defense, according to them.
Yeah . . . As someone who’s spent her academic and professional career studying domestic abuse, I know that self-defense is never a simple “get out of jail free” card. It’s also not what happened.
I tell my story. I tell it again and again, and I do not waver because it’s the truth.
Between interviews, I am alone in a cell, and I don’t know how to cope with that. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve treasured those rare moments when I literally cannot be doing anything. Those moments when I can ignore the poke in my head that says, if I’m so much as standing in a cashier line, I should be answering emails or reading a journal article or doing something productive because I do not have time to just stare into space.
Now I have hours of that, without my phone, without a book, without anything, and my brain feels like an animal trapped in a cage. I am alone with my thoughts and fears and panic at a time when all I want is distraction. I find it by mentally writing those damn podcast scripts that I’ll never record.
The police can hold me for up to twenty-four hours without laying charges. They hold me for twelve, and then they announce that I’m free to go, and no charges will be laid at this time, pending further investigation, do not leave the city and so on.
All I hear is the first part.
I am free to go.
I step out of the holding-cell block, blinking and disoriented. Then I see a face. Oliver’s face.
There’s a moment where I think we’re just passing in the halls, a grotesque coincidence, two siblings framed for murder seeing each other at the police station. Then I notice how he’s dressed—in a button-up shirt and loafers, shaved, his hair perfect—and I remember he got bail this morning. The evidence of that ordeal is still etched on his face, drawn and haggard. Then he sees me and lights up, breaking into a jog that has my guard raising her hand in warning.
When Oliver reaches me, the guard murmurs, “You can go now,” and I fall into his arms. He holds me tight, and I breathe in the smell of his shaving lotion, so familiar it makes my eyes tear.
“You’re safe,” he says. “It’s all over.”
Is it? I’m still under suspicion. Compared to Oliver’s situation, though—out on bail with trial pending—my ordeal at least might be over.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” he whispers as he hugs me. “For the charges, yes, but for everything else. You were kidnapped, and then you had to deal with this.”
My knees quake, and the tears squeeze out. I’ve been trying so hard not to feel sorry for myself. A woman is dead. But Oliver is right. I was kidnapped, and instead of being whisked to a hospital, surrounded by friendly faces, I was put in jail, with only a brief visit by a doctor whose stony expression suggested I deserved all my scrapes and bruises.
I cling to Oliver until I become acutely aware that we’re in a public place, with people slipping and dodging around us. Then I wipe my eyes and straighten.
“We need to get your things,” Oliver says. His mouth quirks in a dry smile. “I know the drill.”
“Can I . . . Can I step outside?” I say. “Please. I won’t go down the stairs.”
He hesitates. Then he sees my desperation. “Okay, just . . .”
“Stay on the steps,” I finish.
He leans in to squeeze my shoulder and kiss my cheek. Then he strides toward the desk while I make my way outside.
I step through those doors, and my knees threaten to buckle completely. I won’t say it’s the blast of fresh air, because we’re in downtown Grand Forks and the air stinks of exhaust and cereal from a nearby factory. It’s freedom, though. I am outside. The only thing holding me back is that promise to Oliver, as much as I long to break it and run down the stairs and just keep running until I collapse in giddy exhaustion.
I went from captivity to jail, and that hadn’t fully hit me until I stepped out those doors. As hard as I’d tried to be positive in that farmhouse bedroom, I’d known there was a chance I might never leave it. As hard as I’d tried to be positive in that holding cell, I’d known there was a chance I might only leave it to be transferred to a jail cell.
All the terror of not knowing sweeps over me, and I need to grip the railing to keep from running, if only to reassure myself that I can run, that none of the uniformed officers climbing the steps will grab me and drag me back inside.
I’m inhaling deep breaths when I spot someone moving fast on the sidewalk. Seeing me, he breaks into a jog, until he’s climbing the stairs two at a time.
“Dean,” I say.
As I open my arms, I realize what I’m doing, and I start to pull back, but he accepts the invitation and hugs me, and I fall against his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Amy.”
I pull back and look up at him.
“I didn’t get your calls,” he says. “If I hadn’t decided to take a fucking nap—”
“Don’t,” I say firmly. “You were exhausted, and you fell asleep. I’m the one who broke curfew to go meet a stranger.”
He shakes his head. “I logged into your site and saw your conversation with her. You were right to go. If I hadn’t been able to drive you, I’d have told you to meet her anyway. It seemed safe even to me.”
“Then no one is to blame except Laura, right?”
When he hesitates, I say, “Dean . . .”
“I shouldn’t have shut off my phone. That was careless and—”
“No one is to blame except Laura,” I say firmly. “If you insist on taking part of it yourself, then I have to take part of it, too, and I don’t think I deserve that.”
He catches my smile and gives a gruff quarter laugh. “Yeah, okay. Fair.”
Someone jostles us, just a homeless person wobbling up the stairs, but it makes Castillo steer me into the corner and then turn to shield me. My gaze drops to a bag in his hand.
“Uh, right,” he says. “So, Dinah texted that you were being released soon, and I wasn’t sure anyone was able to meet you, so I came, and I wanted to get you something . . .”
He shoves the bag at me, as if it contains contraband you absolutely shouldn’t be exchanging on the steps of a police station. I open it to find a small potted flowering plant.
“Ooh,” I say as I hold it up. “Pretty.”
He makes a face and then pushes his hands into his pockets. “I suck at gifts. I actually stopped at the bakery first because I know you like brownies, but then I remembered you were in a coffee shop when you were . . . you know.”
“Ah. Thank you. I do need plants in my apartment.”
He makes another face. “I didn’t know what else to get. They don’t make cards for this.”
“Cards for ‘Sorry you were kidnapped and accused of murder’?”
“More like ‘Sorry I didn’t get your messages, which led to you being kidnapped and accused of murder.’ ”
I lift a finger.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll stop.” He looks around. “Can we go somewhere and talk? You must be starving. What’s your favorite spot?”
“Are you offering me wings and beer again, Dean?”
“Nah, we’re going all out this time. Tacos and margaritas.”
“Actually, if you’re serious, I would totally go for that. How about—?”
“Amy?”
I glance to see Oliver barreling our way. He grabs my arm and nearly yanks me off my feet getting between me and Castillo.
“Hey!” I say. Then I realize the problem—I’m on the police station steps, and all he saw was me in the corner, seemingly blocked by a big guy.
Castillo puts out a hand. “You must be Oliver. Dean Castillo. We haven’t officially—”
“I don’t care who you are. Step back. Now.”
“Oliver!” I say. “This is Dinah’s private investigator. My investigator, the one I recommended to her. He’s been working on your case.”
“Oh.” Oliver’s gaze takes in Castillo from ball cap to work boots, and I tense, sensing his disapproval, but then he relaxes. “Right. Of course. I should have recognized the name.” Oliver thrusts out a hand and shakes Castillo’s. “Thank you. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just let me know.”
I’m about to remind Oliver that Castillo is still working on his case—both our cases now—but then I realize that would be reminding Oliver that he’s still facing trial.
“Actually, you can buy our dinner,” I say, a little too brightly. “Dean promised me tacos, and I am totally taking him up on that. Tacos, loaded nachos and a pitcher of margaritas.”
Oliver blinks, as if surprised, and looks between us.
“To catch up on the case,” I say. “Dean and I need to talk about what happened and where we’re at.”
Oliver turns, slowly, to Castillo. “My sister just endured kidnapping and prison. She’s not in any shape to be grilled—”
“Whoa!” I say. “No, no, no. Dean offered to feed me because I’m starving. I’m the one saying we should talk about the case.”
“I think you need a break from that,” Oliver says. “Food, yes. Absolutely. But if Dean will take a rain check, I really think you need takeout and quiet time. A hot shower. Clean clothing.” He touches my arm and lowers his voice. “You’ve had an ordeal, Amy. I know you want to bounce back, but please, take a moment to recuperate.”
“Your brother’s right.” Castillo’s voice is an apologetic mumble, so uncharacteristic it annoys me. It annoys me because I want him to be Dean Castillo, brusque and blunt, telling Oliver to step off and let me make up my own mind. I’m a grown woman. If I want tacos and margaritas and shop talk, that’s my call.
Castillo isn’t doing that because he thinks Oliver’s right, and maybe he is—maybe I am in shock and too eager to prove my resiliency, but damn it . . .
Damn it, I want tacos? No, I want Castillo’s particular brand of companionship. I want to sit on a patio, kick back and drink and talk. I don’t want to be coddled.
Except, looking at Castillo’s face, I’m not sure he could give me that right now, either. He feels guilty, and I hate that, but maybe Oliver has a point. I do need a shower. I do need clean clothing.
Give me the evening to recuperate, and then I can reconvene with Castillo and talk business.
“Fine,” I mutter, a little ungraciously.
Oliver murmurs something to Castillo and passes over his card.
“I’ll call you,” I say to Castillo as we start to leave.
“I need to get you a phone first,” Oliver says.
“What?”
“Your phone wasn’t found at the scene. But I’ve ordered one, and it’ll be ready in a few hours. Gives you just enough time to relax before you hop back into the saddle.”
He gives me a smile, but I can’t return it. I mutter another “Fine,” and we head to the parking lot, Castillo walking in the other direction.