Minneapolis
In the dim light filtering in from her bedroom’s closed curtains, Sofia could tell it was a beautiful sunny Minnesota day. It didn’t seem right that the sun could be shining. Nothing made sense anymore. Not with her baby dead.
Her mouth felt like it was filled with dust, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She reached for the glass of water she usually kept on her nightstand. Fumbling, her hand knocked something over. She pulled herself up on her elbow and squinted. There were two bottles there, both apparently from Dan.
She eyed the first amber prescription bottle It had a small white label with the name of the drug written upon it: Lorazepam.
There was also a sheet of yellow notebook paper with a note from Dan: “Take Lorazepam for anxiety. Take a few drops of the Rohypnol in your water to help you sleep. Only start with a drop at a time, though. Can be dangerous. Picked up some when I was in Cuba. Used there for sleeping drug, but in very, very small doses. Call me if you need anything.”
Sofia recognized the name. Rohypnol was the drug used for Roofies, that date rape drug. She hesitated, but only for a second. It was a little odd that Dan would be stashing illegal drugs, but then again, Dan was a little odd.
But he was trustworthy. Right now, she needed any help she could get. She was sure Dan got the drugs from a reputable source in Cuba. Probably another doctor.
Her hand was shaking as she unscrewed the cap on the Lorazepam.
She fished out a pill and swallowed it dry, then used the dropper to put two drops of the Rohypnol into her water and quickly gulped that down. Two drops wouldn’t kill her, but would hopefully knock her out for a while. She lay back down, closing her eyes, waiting for the inertia to take over. For one half second, she wondered if it would kill her to dump the entire vial of Rohypnol into her water glass, but quickly shook the thought away.
She could never do that to Jason. He’d lost too much already. All that they had now was each other. His side of the bed was undisturbed. She had a vague memory of Jason stripping her clothes off and pulling her nightgown over her head before kissing her forehead. Before everything became fuzzy, she caught a glimpse of his silhouette in front of their window, shaking with sobs.
But it was more than sticking around for Jason. She had a job to do.
She had to find Kate’s killer and make him pay.
Her mother’s face appeared before her, an angry scowl marring her features. Sofia shooed her away. The drugs were kicking in and she felt a curtain of fatigue drop down on her.
The room had grown lighter when she was awoken by the softest squeak of the bedroom door. She quickly squeezed her eyes closed, hoping to shut out the world. The creak of the hardwood floors meant someone was in the room with her. But she didn’t care. She kept her eyes shut. Now, the person was next to the bed.
A soft hand on her shoulder meant it wasn’t Jason. She squinted and saw a shadowy figure before her. Cecile.
“Sofia, darling, the detectives are here. They need to speak to you and Jason.”
Cecile gently pulled back the gray cotton duvet.
“Come on now, ma cherie, time to get up.”
Struggling, Sofia pushed back her tangled covers. Her silk chemise was up around her waist. She tugged it down to her thighs, rolled over and tried to screw off the cap on the small amber prescription bottle.
Gently, Cecile took the bottle out of her hands. “I think you just had one when I got here earlier.” Cecile had been here earlier?
Staring at the wall, Sofia sat still as Cecile rubbed her back in small comforting circles.
“You have time for a quick shower. You cannot go downstairs like this. You must look presentable so they will take you seriously.”
“Where’s Jason?” Sofia’s voice was hoarse, croaky, from screaming.
Looking away, Cecile didn’t answer. From the side, Sofia could see her friend closing her eyes as if she were trying not to cry.
After a second, Cecile said, “Come on, now. I will help you.”
Sofia ignored her, leaning over and scooping up the first piece of fabric her fingers grazed upon. It wasn’t until she pulled it on over her silk chemise that she realized it was a short dress she only wore around the house when all her other clothes were dirty. Looking down, she saw the cream-colored chemise hanging down past the dress about three inches.
In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth without looking in the mirror. On her way out of the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of herself: her hair a dark tangled mess and black smudges under her eyes.
In the living room, the curtains were pulled back and the light made it hard for her to see. Two figures sat on her leather couch. Jason sat in the love seat across from them. All three of them rose when she came in the room.
A lithe man in brown slacks and a striped shirt stood. He had a full head of hair and scar on his cheek that looked like a dimple.
“We’ve spoken on the phone. Detective Marley.” He stuck out his hand. Squinting, Sofia took it.
Behind him, a woman moved forward and stuck out her hand. “Detective Suzette Johnson.” Her handshake was a cruncher, but Sofia met her eyes and squeezed back. There wasn’t the slightest trace of smile on the detective’s face. She was tall and thin, her steel blue eyes striking against her bronzed skin.
“I know this is difficult, but we need your help to investigate the homicide of your daughter,” Detective Marley said as they all sat back down, Sofia sinking into a spot beside Jason. The word echoed in her brain. Homicide. Homicide. Homicide.
“We are going to need to ask you both some questions and take a look in your daughter’s room. Probably will take some stuff back with us to see if we can get some idea what led to this.”
All Sofia could focus on was “Homicide. Of. Your. Daughter.”
Detective Johnson leaned over and handed Sofia a slip of paper. “Could you please sign this? It gives us permission to search Kate’s room.”
While Sofia wasn’t sure she was crazy about the detective’s gruff manner, she appreciated that she said “Kate” and not “your daughter” like the other detective did.
Without reading it, keeping her eyes on the detectives, Sofia scribbled her name and handed the paper back.
“When do we get her?” Sofia asked, closing her eyes for a second.
“In a day or two,” the male detective said, clearing his throat. Then the other detective, the woman named Johnson, turned toward Sofia.
“We just have a few quick questions. When was the last time you saw Kate?” The detective’s blue eyes were a little disconcerting as if she could see straight through you. A notebook with a pen stuck through the coils sat on her knee, but she didn’t pick it up.
Sofia shot a glance at Jason. He’d been the last one to see Kate. But he was staring off in a daze.
Sofia started. “I saw her about three yesterday. Or not yesterday. The day before” She stopped in horror. It hadn’t only been yesterday. Kate had been dead for two days.
Jason reached over and patted Sofia’s hand and she continued. “She’d just come back from the lake and took a quick shower and said she was going to her best friend Lily’s house and then they were going out with some high school friends that night, saying goodbye before everyone went off to college.”
The notebook sat untouched on the detective’s lap.
Sofia looked at Jason. He was still open-mouthed staring at something near the window.
“Jason?”
He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “About five. She called because she’d gotten a flat tire on her way to dinner at Chino Latino. My office is close by there, so I stopped and helped her.
“How did she seem to both of you at the time?” The detective still wasn’t taking notes.
Sofia raised an eyebrow. The detective clarified. “Was she agitated? Upset? Worried? Happy? What was her emotional and mental state? As far as you could tell?”
“When I saw her, she was really excited about going out that night,” Sofia said and felt tears spurting from her eyes. “Excuse me.” She held her fist to her mouth for a second before continuing. “She seemed to be in a good mood.” For the first time in months.
“Same here,” Jason said. “Katie was in a great mood. She thought it was hilarious that she’d gotten a flat. I didn’t think it was quite as funny as she did. When I said this, she put her head on my shoulder and said, ‘Sorry, daddy. I’m so lucky to have you come to my rescue.’” Jason’s sob echoed throughout the room. “Why couldn’t I have saved her? Your dad is supposed to always rescue you, protect you. I wasn’t there for her. I wasn’t there and I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I’m so sorry, Katie.”
He jumped up and rushed from the room. Sofia stood as if to go after him, but the detective moved in front of her. “I know this is difficult, ma’am, but it is necessary if we’re going to find the perpetrators.”
Ma’am. So incredibly fucking impersonal. Apparently, this cop did this every fucking day. Let’s find the perpetrators who MURDERED your daughter.
Sofia thought about pushing past her, but then saw Cecile had her arm around Jason in the sunroom, his head bowed in her lap, her hand stroking his back. Cecile caught Sofia’s eyes and nodded toward the cops.
Sofia sank back down onto the leather cushion.
“What else do you need to know?” She shot a glance at the older detective. Fuck that other one.
“Is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted to hurt your daughter?” he said.
“No.” Sofia spoke before he’d even finished the question.
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
Sofia slowly shook her head, but thought about the boy that Kate was kissing that night.
“No. I told you about that boy who lived right by where …” they found her.
Detective Marley looked at his notes. “Ali Yassin. Yes, we have spoken to him.”
“Spoken to him? Did you search his house?” Her voice was sharp.
The detectives exchanged a look.
“What if it’s too late and he hid everything? All the evidence or something…” Sofia was wringing her hands in her lap.
For the first time, Detective Johnson showed a glimmer of warmth. She leaned over and grabbed Sofia’s hands, pinning them down. “Honey, nobody will be able to hide anything from me. I promise you.”
For some reason, Sofia believed her. And instantly forgave her for talking about perpetrators so coldly.
Just like when she was younger and had called 911, everyone was calling her “honey.” Sofia felt a lump of something fleshy in her throat making it hard to breath or talk so she just nodded.
Detective Johnson asked a few more questions, about Kate’s friends, her job, her goals, her hangouts, what she was wearing, her hobbies, where Jason worked, what work Sofia did, names of her clients, names of Jason’s clients.
“We have the FBI trying to track her phone,” Marley said. “I’m going to need to get information from you on her bank accounts and credit cards so we can trace those, see if any money was taken out of any accounts or if she spent any money after she left the bar.”
“Okay,” Sofia said in a meek voice.
Marley turned to the other detective. “Ready to search her room?”
At the doorway to Kate’s room, Sofia paused. Her gaze focused on the little desk that Kate had used since she was a toddler. It was white and had small primrose flowers painted on the corners. Her laptop sat in the center of the desk. A small bookshelf above held Kate’s most treasured objects. Sofia hadn’t looked at it for months. She stared at the objects on the shelf, tears welling in her eyes.
There was Kate’s worn stuffed rabbit; her favorite childhood book, a small slim yellow volume of Madeline in Paris, and a few other beloved objects. Kate had said she was leaving everything on the shelf when she went to college so she would know it was safe.
“Mrs. Kennedy?” It was the woman detective. “Do you mind waiting here? We’ll keep you informed of anything we find or want to take down to the station.”
Sinking back onto the couch downstairs, Sofia tried to imagine the detectives going through Kate’s belongings. They would take all her journals. They might take the bound books on a shelf on her main bookcase—all containing poetry Kate had written over the years. She wrote her first poem when she was eight; something about the bald eagle she had seen flying over the skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis. Her class had been on a field trip and was on the observation deck of the thirty-two-story Foshay Tower when an eagle had swooped by, making a lasting impression on Kate. Sofia squeezed her eyes shut tight trying to remember what the poem had said … something about how the eagle had looked right at Kate as if giving her a message, an important message she didn’t understand before it flew away.
A noise in the kitchen startled her out of her memory. Jason and Cecile scraping back bar stools. Cecile gestured for her to join them.
Jason’s face was ravaged. Her happy-go-lucky husband was destroyed.
He started to say something, opening his mouth, but then clamped it shut and shook his head. Sofia stared in a daze past him to their backyard, the deck, where they had been laughing and drinking and celebrating while Kate was murdered.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds. She would never laugh again. Not laughter of joy. All the joy and light in her life was gone. Now and forever.