My father’s desk chair creaks under the detective’s weight as she wedges her body between the arm rests. She scoots it forward, and the chair squeals as if in pain. Patting her round face dry with the sleeve of her shirt, she sighs. “Thank God for air-conditioning.”
The room is a mess, with stacks of books and papers littering the floor. It feels like days, not hours, ago that I swept them off my father’s desk. I can’t even begin to let myself think about my mother and Stuart.
A radio crackles. Rodriquez presses a button and speaks into her shoulder. “Good,” she says a couple of times, and then her brow wrinkles as a voice on the other end squawks out something unintelligible. “Make sure you get the names of all the searchers and run background checks on all of them. Anyone leaves without showing you an ID, I’ll have your ass.” When she finishes, she pushes back in the chair. “So,” she says, looking at me, “You’re what? Sixteen? I have a son—thirteen going on twenty-one.” She chuckles, but when neither Dad or I comment, she keeps going. “He’s always texting. I started him out on five hundred texts a month and then had to upgrade to an unlimited plan. The penalties were killing me.”
After a long, silent moment, my dad says, “I’m glad you worked it out.”
“What kind of plan are you on? I’m always looking for a better deal.”
My father hesitates. “We have a family plan.”
“A family plan,” Detective Rodriquez repeats. “That would be how many phones?”
“Three. Paige, my ex-wife, and myself.”
The policewoman nods. “An ex-wife.”
“She lives in New Jersey,” my father says.
Detective Rodriquez appears to mull this over and then dismiss it. “So you have unlimited texting?”
“Yes.”
What about Emily? Why isn’t the detective interested in her? I clench my fists to keep from screaming.
“Internet? My son wants that.”
“Of course,” my father says. He gives me a half-smile.
“Unlimited data?”
I try not to squirm. Aren’t the first forty-eight hours supposed to be the most important? Or is that just for television and movies? My father starts drumming his fingers along the edge of the desk as the detective rambles on about the merits of various cell phone plans.
“Mr. Patterson,” the detective says, leaning forward, “would you mind telling me how you got those scratches on your hand?”
My father’s drumming stops abruptly. For the first time, I notice the three claw marks standing out in vivid red against his freckled skin. My stomach clenches.
“A cat,” my father says, pulling his hand out of sight. “It was sitting on top of the Jeep this morning. It scratched me when I tried to shoo it away.”
The detective nods sympathetically, but her black eyes fix unblinking on my dad’s face. “Neighbors’ cats can be a nuisance, can’t they?”
My father swallows, and his Adam’s apple bobbles. A hint of sweat shines on his face. “I don’t think it was a neighbor’s—it was probably feral. I didn’t see a tag.”
The detective steeples her fingers and holds her gaze steady on his. “So there’s no way of verifying your story,” she states, pleasantly, almost sympathetically. “Would you mind telling me when the last time you saw Miss Linton was?”
My father shakes his head. “Look, I had nothing to do with Emily’s disappearance.”
“Then you won’t mind answering my question, Mr. Patterson. This is just standard procedure.”
My father shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I suppose I saw her at yesterday morning’s briefing…” He thinks hard. “Things got busy…”
They’re doing it again—wasting time—and I can’t take it any longer. “You need to talk to Jeremy Brown,” I blurt out, and both of them look at me.
I feel my cheeks get hot as the name hangs in the air, like a bad smell waiting for me to claim it. My heart thumps in the quiet room. I realize I’m twisting my hands in my lap and force myself to stop.
“Who’s Jeremy Brown?” Rodriquez asks.
“Jeremy?” my father repeats, disbelief all over his face. “Why would you say that?”
“Just who is Jeremy Brown?” Detective Rodriquez’s voice carries a note of authority that makes it clear her questions overrule my father’s.
“One of my PhD students.” My father stares at me. “Why would you think that, Paige?”
I’m sweating now, despite the air-conditioning. Just thinking about him brings everything back—the darkly pungent taste of him, the suffocating intensity of his kiss, the strength of his hands. “Because he’s a jerk.”
“Talk to us, Paige. Tell us why he’s a jerk.” Detective Rodriquez leans slightly forward, her plump lips forming an encouraging smile.
I almost laugh, although it isn’t funny. She’s treating me like a child, or as if I’m injured, in shock, and she has to be careful or I’ll completely shatter. It’s Emily, though, who’s missing. Emily who needs me to tell them what happened.
The minute hand on the wall clock clicks loudly. It’s ten-thirty. As the seconds tick by, I think of Jeremy Brown touching me as I lay there waiting for something magical to happen, and then the anger that flowed into those hands when I asked him to stop. I imagine Emily provoking him, Jeremy losing it and shoving her hard enough to make her stumble, hit her head…
It’s difficult to talk about, but I make myself start at the point where I went down into the basement chamber. I admit that I gave Jeremy mixed signals, but that, when I asked him to stop, I was very clear about it.
Next to me, my father shakes his head as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. I can’t bring myself to look into his face, but I hear the changes in his breathing—the sharp intake and the longer, sad-sounding exhales. When I get to the part where Jeremy got angry, my father stops breathing all together. I glimpse his white knuckles clenched on the armrest of his chair.
When I finish, there’s silence. I look down at my hands, twisted in my lap, different somehow, as if they belong to someone else. I jump as my father tentatively touches my arm. He says my name like a question, but I don’t have an answer.
“So this boy…” Detective Rodriquez says very slowly, “Did he rape you?”
My father flinches at the word.
I shake my head, trying not to imagine what my father is thinking. “No. Jalen came, and Jeremy stopped.”
I imagine Jalen’s dark face peering down into the tunnel—his eyes flickering with what looked like rage and concern, the strength of his hand pulling me up the last rungs.
“Who’s Jalen?”
“God, Paige,” my father says gently. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Mr. Patterson. Please. Who is Jalen?”
“John Yazzi’s son. He works in maintenance,” my father replies impatiently. He turns to me. Beneath his brows, his eyes are intensely blue and the black pupils barely larger than dots. “Are you okay?”
I twist my hands together again, wishing he’d just be mad. I don’t want him suddenly pretending that being my father means something. Like he really cares what happens to me. We both know that’s a lie. I shrug with an indifference I don’t feel and force my face as blank as I can make it. I ignore the part of me that wants to curl up in his arms and let him handle everything.
“You could have told me. I would have listened.”
I look away from him. And then what? Kicked Jeremy out of his precious program? I don’t think so.
“Paige,” Detective Rodriquez prompts, “what happened after Brown let you go? Why do you think he did something to Emily?”
“After, I…I wanted to forget what happened, but the next day Emily guessed. She was angry. She wanted to confront Jeremy.” I take a breath to steady myself because I have to stay calm. They have to believe me. “And tell him to resign from the program or she’d go to my father. We fought about it. She wouldn’t listen…” I squeeze my eyes shut picturing her hard, set face. “You can’t ever make her listen when she doesn’t want to.”
“When did this conversation happen?” Detective Rodriquez asks.
“Yesterday afternoon. Around one o’clock.”
“The day after the alleged assault?”
My father sits up straighter. “If my daughter says there was an assault, there was an assault.”
“I need evidence.” Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. “Physical evidence. Bruising…torn clothing…witnesses.”
“There are bruises.” I think of the red and purple marks circling my left breast like a ring of fire. The scratches just below the line of my shorts.
“Can I see them?”
I look sideways at my father, silently begging him to turn away but he doesn’t. I lift the hem of my shirt, show her the scratches on my stomach. I don’t show her the bruises on my breast. Hopefully the marks are enough to make her understand that Jeremy is dangerous and she needs to send the police to his house.
Frowning, Detective Rodriquez narrows her gaze at me. “Shit,” she says. Then she sits back in her chair and folds her hands together, obviously thinking, deciding if she’s going to believe me or not. Finally her gaze lifts to my father’s. “I want you to take Paige to the emergency room right now and have her examined by a doctor. Any bruising should be documented. And I’m going to need a statement.”
“I don’t want to go to the hospital! I don’t want anyone taking pictures of me! You need to go to Jeremy’s house!” My voice gets louder, but I can’t seem to help it. “You need to go there now.”
My father puts his hand on my arm, and I jump at the touch. His face is ashen; his lips are tight, shrunken-looking. It makes him look a hundred years old. “Paige,” he says wearily, “we need to do exactly what she says.”
Someone knocks on the door. “Just a moment,” Detective Rodriquez calls. “It’s very important that you do this, Paige. I know it’s hard, but I wouldn’t ask you to if it wasn’t absolutely essential. It needs to go on record.”
“But Emily…” I begin and then stop. All of this needs to be documented because of Emily. Because the policewoman believes me, believes in the possibility that Emily is missing because of Jeremy.
This isn’t a story I made up in my mind, something to scare myself so I would feel fear, like Emily and I did all those years ago. Detective Rodriquez is building a case against Jeremy Brown because she believes he might have done something even worse to Emily than he did to me.
I taste something thin, bitter at the back of my throat, and my stomach clenches. Standing, I look around desperately as everything gets worse—the vile taste rising in my throat, the rolling of my stomach. I barely make it to the wastebasket before I throw up.