by R. J. Jacobs
No, I think. No, no, no. Denial is a wave, washing over everything. I just saw her. “Why … what made it seem like she’d gone to meet him?”
Her voice drops. She turns away, looking out the window. For a second, I see her blank eyes reflected there. “My parents were fighting …” She hesitates like she means to say more, then says, “I think he murdered her.”
“Who?”
Finch shakes her head. “I don’t know. A man. It was so dark.”
The man who’d chased me. In my mind, I see the flash of his phone lighting up the side of his face—the blue-white light on the profile of his jaw—the power in his stride as he charged down the hill, the shadowy velocity.
We just barely got away, I realize.
“Oh my God,” she says again, her mind seeming to retreat into disbelief.
“Finch, we have to go to the police.”
She stares straight ahead.
“Finch.”
She nods very slowly, her chin an up-and-down metronome.
The police, whom I practically ran from fifteen minutes earlier. Robert called them—were they on the way? Will they know what to make of any of this? Or even be able to see in this rain?
“The closest station is Belle Meade,” I say. “Right?”
“I … guess?”
She sounds unsure. Why wouldn’t she be? Suddenly she seems so young, and I remember she’s a person I’ve somehow looked up to—and been jealous of—despite her being younger than me.
A man, standing over her. I think she had gone to meet him.
My heart pounds as I drive, pushing away as determinedly as I can the persistent fact that keeps overtaking my mind: Shelly James is dead. It feels like the world is ending—like an earthquake that goes on and on and on.
I feel her eyes on me, and I turn my head.
“You … you’re Jessie Duval,” she says.
“Finch, you have to tell the police,” I say. “Just what you told me. Try to remember as much as you can.”
She doesn’t speak.
“Finch.”
“Okay, I will.”
Already, I know I’ll be talking to the police too. I’ll be explaining how I was invited to the party, that I was chased myself, and that I only meant to help Finch.
But they won’t believe me.
I can’t think about that now though. I have to get her safely to the police station.
We come to an intersection lit pale with streetlights. The rain slows as I pass through a four-way stop. Up ahead, I can see a yellow-orange glow that I know is the station. Three cruisers are parked out front. From the parking lot I see a dark uniform through the glass door. I can’t go inside, but Finch will be safe here. She seems too dazed to even ask why I don’t get out.
She leans on the open door for a second and our eyes meet. She says a word that sounds like “thanks,” because what is there to say? I watch as she starts across the parking lot, headed toward the front door.
I turn the wheel and pull onto the street, the rain pouring steadily as I drive straight home.
I imagine Ms. Carr asking why I didn’t go inside with Finch.
Here’s the answer I would give her: I was scared. I wanted Finch to be safe, but I wasn’t ready to walk into a police station.
Everything—starting with my meeting with Robert in his truck—is a jumble in my mind. I need to try to understand everything that’s happened.
In my apartment, I lean over the toilet and throw up over and over. Each jolt makes my hair fall forward and I have to retuck it behind my ears. The sickness comes from deep inside me. It pushes outward until only air is left, like my body is trying to remove what I’ve seen—like it is trying to expel Shelly is dead, and the man on top of the hill, and driving Finch to the police. But I can’t forget. I try to recall the shape of the man I’d seen in the woods—to burn his form into my memory.
Could Finch have been wrong? No, my heart knows she was telling me what she saw. Her hands were shaking. Her voice wavered through her tears. Her world was over. The world I’ve lived in, too, for years, has ended. The songs I hummed when I was in the dark, the woman I’ve dreamed of as my mother—the world where Shelly James is alive and singing and waving and lighting up a crowd with her smile, that world is gone now too. My stomach tightens again and again, until I’m sore. I wrap my arms around myself and tip over, resting my forehead against the warm linoleum floor.
While I lie there I have a strange desire. A part of me wants to go back into the dark, into the closet. Counselors told me I had made up a world, but the world itself is made up. It should be better than it is. I wonder if my staying in the closet would have kept everyone imaginary, and safe.
The closet was more than a dark place. It was everything. I knew there was a world outside, but after a while it seemed unimportant. Twelve months and nine days was how long I spent there. But what were months? How long was a day? Measures of time didn’t matter. I had a birthday, a Christmas, an Easter Sunday, a Fourth of July—dates that may have been important to some people. Instead, I told myself stories. I put the people I thought about into situations in my mind like characters in a movie. They had all sorts of feelings and did all kinds of things, some good and some bad. Sometimes, I interacted with them. Counselors called them narratives. I know they thought I’d gone crazy, but it was really the opposite. Stories kept me from drifting into space, and falling, falling, falling. I knew that if I ever really let go, I’d never find my way back.
Now, I press my palms against the warm floor and close my eyes. For a second, I try to go back to the world I’d once made—where everyone was safe. In that world, no man stared down from a hillside. No one chased me. No one murdered Shelly James.
But I know that world isn’t real—it’s just a place I made up years ago to keep myself sane. And I know what I have to do, no matter how much I don’t want to.
I pick myself up off the floor and find my phone. My finger is trembling so terribly I can hardly dial the number. When a voice answers, I explain who I am.
Reality rushes toward me. Sometimes I feel like it may drown me. I may be sending myself to jail, but what choice do I have? The fact is this: a woman has been murdered and I need to help find her killer. I saw him. He chased me.
“I need to file a police report,” I say.
9
The banging on my front door is so heavy and loud it rattles the plastic picture frames in the hallway. The music being played upstairs gets softer, then I hear a question asked in a muffled voice. I picture my flimsy front door and the back of a fist.
The police. I’ve been waiting for them.
Through my bedroom window the clouds look low and dirty in the day’s first light, still full from last night’s rain. I made myself lie down but never fell asleep. How could I? My stomach feels hollow. My head spins like a state-fair ride gone haywire.
I’ve been rehearsing what I’ll say, going over the pieces of what had happened since I made the call. I just have to tell the truth, I tell myself, but part of me knows the police won’t judge me fairly, even if I’m the one who called them—a fear confirmed by how loudly they’re knocking.
The banging comes again just as I get up from my bed—even more intensely this time. I wonder for a second if this is how police are trained to knock on doors, even during the early morning hours. I hate to think that my neighbors might complain, or my landlord might wonder why officers are visiting my apartment and decide to take a closer look at who they’ve rented to.
But those are just trivial worries now.
Through the peephole, I see two men in the yellow hallway light. One is Detective Marion. He’s wearing a black polo shirt and jeans and has the edgy, unshaven look of someone who hasn’t slept. Aside from that, he looks the same as he did during my sentencing hearing at the courthouse. The other officer wears a police uniform. I don’t recognize him. He must have seen me darken the peephole because he barks, “Metro PD.”
Wh
en the handcuffs on his belt catch the overhead light I grit my teeth.
I try to tell myself they’ll just want to talk about the night before, that I’m going to help, and that what they’re here for is information. Helping them is the right thing to do. I’m on their team. But now that they’re here, my muscles coil like springs, my body ready to fight.
The second cop raises his fist as if to knock again, inches from my face, when Detective Marion reaches and gently takes hold of his arm. “Ms. Duval?” he asks.
Come on, Jessie, I think. Face this.
The lock screeches as I slide it. I crack open the door, my toes digging into the worn carpet like I mean to stop myself from being blown over.
Detective Marion speaks first. “Good morning, Ms. Duval. We’re here because of your phone call. Are you okay to talk with us this morning?”
Under pressure, it’s even harder for me to find words. I wonder if Detective Marion remembers this about me, or if he expects me to answer normally. I try to answer, but it comes out like a stutter.
He nods, patiently, like he’s prepared to take it slow. The other officer’s eyes glow like iron on fire. “This is Detective Williams,” Marion says, gesturing toward the man beside him. “When you called earlier, you said you wanted to file a report? We understand you were at the James residence last night. May we come in?”
I look at their black, thick-soled shoes. I look over my shoulder. I hesitate. I can’t help it. I keep my apartment just so. Since I moved in, no one but me has been inside.
“Everything okay, Ms. Duval?”
I let out a slow breath. “It’s okay.”
I back up and they push past me, both looking around, scanning my things, their shoes thumping across my kitchen floor. I breathe through my nose in tiny, quick puffs. I never drink alcohol, but at that moment I wish I had something to help calm me down—something stronger than Ms. Parsons’s grounding techniques. I wince at the chaos of their shoes and steps and movements in my space.
Detective Williams is tall with black hair. His movements are quick, like an animal’s. He makes me nervous as he glances at the vacuum lines in the carpet and whistles. “This place sure is tidy. You always keep everything this neat?”
“Yes,” I say.
Maybe he’s trying to add a little humor and ease the tension, but the smirk he wears makes my heart clench. He looks at me like people do when they don’t know what to make of me. When he reaches for a shelf where I keep my rows of souvenirs, I shuffle my feet, and his hand stops. He squints like I’ve just spoken a word he never learned.
He and Marion exchange a look, and I know what it says—they’re talking with someone who is a suspect in what happened last night, despite the fact that I placed the call and said I wanted to file a report. My history makes me someone with a motive.
I anticipated this. After all, I broke an order of protection by trespassing just before Shelly was killed. What else is there to know?
I guess I’m about to find out.
Detective Marion pats the back of a kitchen chair. “Will you have a seat, Jessie?” he asks.
I smell coffee on his breath and notice his hand is shaking a little. I realize part of me is expecting Marion and Williams to throw me on the ground, press their knees against my back, and shove my face into the carpet—I know what happens when you get arrested—but I sit down and they sit too, facing me. On the table, they set the white coffee cups they have both been holding.
My apartment feels much smaller with them inside. I feel like I might float above us, like my spirit might leave my body and look down on the three of us—at me. I want to run, or for them to leave, but this is what’s happening, I tell myself. This is life now.
It’s strange. I’ve been afraid of Detective Marion, but between the two officers, he’s the one I feel I can trust.
During my hearing, he told the judge his version of my arrest. His story was different from mine, but it wasn’t a lie. When the judge asked if Marion thought I would be a danger to anyone going forward, he said, “I’m not to say. I think that’s up to her psychologist or social worker to determine.” He looked at me once from across the courtroom with a tired, regretful glance that made me want to never get arrested again.
I remember I felt … The word for feeling really bad or ashamed about something.… I felt guilty, because I could see he truly felt people were in danger when he arrested me.
Now my eyes are wide and wild from no sleep, so I fix my gaze on the vacuum lines in my carpet—all straight until they curve at the end of each stroke. I try not to look at my dresser, and especially not the bottom drawer. I keep some things there that I know will give the wrong idea.
Things I want to keep private.
Detective Williams leans back in my kitchen chair until it creaks, snapping me away from my little daydream. Puffs of steam rise from their coffee lids like smoke from gun barrels. The day’s first sunshine is a faint, diagonal streak, a triangle spreading toward us.
Detective Williams says, “There’s a permanent order of protection held against you as a condition of your parole. You’re aware of that?”
Then, I understand: Williams thinks my mental deficits are more than they are. He assumes that the trouble I have speaking means trouble thinking.
He goes on, “Being in violation of the order by pretending to work for the caterer, you have a very good reason to cooperate with us this morning. You understand that, too, right?”
I look at Detective Marion, who rubs the bridge of his nose. He speaks softly to him. “She’s got it, man. Jessie, just … yes, of course you know about the order of protection. He’s trying to say that if you violated that protection order to work, we get it. You called us. We want as much information as you can give about the details of last night. Where you were and what you saw. Just be as honest as possible, okay?”
I nod.
I begin to explain when my vision grows blurry and I realize I must be crying. I wipe my eyes quickly with my sleeve. “I wasn’t pretending to work. I was … doing my job, but I was invited,” I say. “I was supposed to be there.”
I start to explain about Robert when Williams shakes his head and interrupts. “Invited? If you didn’t understand you were in violation, just say so. Right now, we have a report that someone matching your description was leaving the crime scene. That’s enough to arrest you already.”
“Let’s give her a second,” Marion says as he goes to the counter, finds a paper towel, and hands it to me. “You’re doing fine, Jessie. I know this must be hard.”
Williams levels his eyes, watching me, judging how upset I get while we talk. Watching and noting, watching and noting. Gathering evidence against me.
This was a mistake, I think, part of me wishing I’d never called.
“I didn’t want to work the party at first,” I say. “I wanted to get out of it when I realized whose party it was. But then Robert Holloway found me at work after everyone else had left. He told me Owen and Shelly wanted to meet me, and that we could make things right …”
I keep talking, telling them how I came to be where I was the night before. I’m describing the boys running cars for valet and explaining why I left my car at Warner Park when I notice a confused expression on Williams’s face. “Okay, yeah,” he says quickly, like he doesn’t believe me.
I go through everything to the point when I saw the man on top of the hill and drove away.
Marion says, “So let me say this back to you. The sequence of events went like this: You went to work the party but you were running late, so you left your car at the park and walked to the house. That was when you saw Ms. James go into the park. That park has five separate entrances. There are three main trails, plus a horse trail, plus the paved loop—they all intersect at various points. You saw her go up that trail, where you both were parked.”
“Yes.”
“The Jameses’ manager, Robert Holloway, spotted you at their party around seven. Then you left a
nd walked back to your car. That was when you saw the man on the hill, looking down at you.”
Williams says, “Forensics will want to pull dirt samples off your tires and compare them to dirt samples from each of the lots in the park.”
A rush of raindrops brushes the sliding glass door, forcing my attention toward it.
Both cops see me look, but Detective Williams is the one who asks, “How about that rain? Cleans things up nice, right?”
I think of Ms. Carr’s warning and I do the math. Nineteen plus fifteen. I would be thirty-four when I was released from jail.
Marion asks, “When you left the park, you went where?”
“I drove up Chickering Road. That’s where I saw Finch James.”
Williams looks at Detective Marion but Marion does not look back. He folds his hands then asks me, “You saw Finch James?”
“Walking on the side of the road.” I almost hit her with my car, I think, realizing I’d better not say so, exactly. It might sound like I’d meant to.
“You … spoke to her?”
“Yes. I pulled over, got out. I kept looking back toward the parking lot to see if the man on top of the hill had followed, but there was only empty road.” I remember the road behind us disappearing into darkness, the low, tired growl of my car’s engine. In the air, I could already feel the rain that was about to fall over everything. “She was scared. She said she’d been chased.”
“Chased?”
“She said she’d gone to look for her mother. Didn’t Finch tell you that? She said her parents had had a fight. And that when she found her mom, a man was standing over her, and that man chased her and she ran through the woods. I think it was the man that I saw on top of the hill.”
Neither detective says anything.
“She looked like she’d come through the woods. There were streaks of dirt and mud up the sides of her jeans, bits of leaves in her hair.” My voice cracks. Tears are hot in my eyes from wanting them to believe me.
Finally, Williams says, “And then what?”