by Linda Kage
Stempy winced, because yeah, vomiting totally ruined the dirty sexy parts of my story.
“I was still swaying in the bathroom doorway after I’d finished puking when her boyfriend showed, which I’d had no idea she had a fucking boyfriend. As soon as she saw him, everything about her transformed. The waterworks started, she began shaking and crying, and that’s when she cried rape, so he wouldn’t think she’d willingly cheated on him.”
“Well…” Stempy said, clearing his throat and straightening his suit jacket. “After seeing what he did to you, I can see why she would’ve been afraid to admit to cheating.”
“You think?” I muttered, still not too happy I’d received her cheating-beating instead.
“Yes, so, I guess this is all I need to know for now.” He set his pen back inside the briefcase. “If I come up with any more questions or learn any new information, I’ll be in contact.”
As he settled his notes and papers back into pockets and folders, my heart jerked with nerves. I couldn’t tell if he was optimistic about my future or not.
“Do you think we have a chance of winning?” I finally asked, dying to know his thoughts.
“That depends.” He snapped his briefcase closed and eyed me over the top of the closed lid. “When I came in here, it was a straight-up he-said, she-said case with you ranting about hallucinations of girls with rainbow-colored hair.”
“But—”
He lifted a finger to hush me, so I did. And a slow smile spread across his face. “But now…” He added slowly, making me feel hope bloom in the pit of my stomach, because this was one time I actually liked hearing the word but. “Now I might have something. Are you absolutely positive your fingerprints would not be found on the condom wrapper, or the light switch, or doorknob of that room?”
I blinked, thinking it through. Then something powerful and bright flared through me, as I said, “No. There’s no way. I didn’t touch any of those things. And I’d never been in that room before.”
He nodded again, looking triumphant. “Well, she’s claiming you are the one to turn the light on, shut the door, and produce the condom, so if someone dusted for fingerprints, this could prove which one of you is actually telling the truth.”
“Oh, thank God,” I breathed. “So you…did anyone dust those things for fingerprints?”
Stempy’s face fell. “Well, no. No one went that deep into investigating things on the night of the event, and I’m sure the doorknob and light switch in that room have been touched by too many people since then to catch either yours or her prints. And I have no idea if anyone even kept the condom wrapper that was found.”
“What?” I croaked. “But you said…you said—”
“I said if.” Stempy raised a finger, watching me closely. “If I questioned Miss Fairfield again and got to her believe fingerprints had been gathered, would she slip up and admit she’d been lying?”
My shoulders slumped and the flame of hope inside me fluttered back down to a small ember. “That’s a pretty iffy if.”
Stempy winced. “Yes. Yes, it is, especially since the first time I questioned her, I cautioned her that lying about this would be perjury and could land her in jail if a false testimony was ever discovered, so yeah, now she has some pretty strong motivation to stick with her story, no matter what.”
Dammit. I closed my eyes. “So, then, what now?”
“Now…” Stempy let out a long, drained sigh. “Now, we hope your hallucination wasn’t really a hallucination, and that there really is a rainbow-haired girl floating around Granton University somewhere.”
Chapter 8
BAILEY
I wound a strand of my new blonde hair around my finger and eyed the Granton Police Station from the outside. It was a square, two-story building made of light brick with a glassed entrance. The place had been built about fifteen years ago and looked modern-ish, so it didn’t have an intimidating vibe to it at all.
So why the hell was I too scared to march up that front walk and go inside?
Because I was a big ol’ pansy, that’s why.
Tess had offered to go with me. Hell, Paige had offered to go with me. Jonah had mostly just snickered and leered while Logan had blushed and refused to make direct eye contact. But I had declined the offers, flipped off Jonah and sent him a dirty scowl, and then arrived at the police station by myself, my palms sweaty and knees knocking.
I stood there another minute before bolstering myself, drawing in a deep breath and holding it, then placing one foot in front of the other. Twenty-eight steps later, I exhaled and reached out to open the door.
When I pushed through the entrance, I stopped just inside, braced for the finger-pointing and name-calling. But no one screamed voyeur or pervert, and I was able to take another shaky breath before looking around the fairly empty vestibule before spotting a cubicle with a single person sitting inside, typing at a computer.
I walked to her slowly and discreetly cleared my throat before she looked up at me.
“Hey, um, hi.” I cleared my throat again. “I need to talk to someone about some information I have on the Beckett Hilliard rape case.”
“Oh!” The woman seemed surprised by my offer, but she quickly said, “Okay, sure. Let me see if I can get a detective for you. Go ahead and take a seat. Someone will be with you in a minute.”
It felt as if I was at a freaking doctor’s appointment. I glanced behind me, and what do you know, there was even a few chairs with a table and magazines on them to thumb through. How surreal. Trying to convince myself I was really here for a root canal and not to confess I was a dirty awful voyeur, I sat in the stiff blue chair and picked up a Highlights magazine, then flipped through it until I found the Hidden Pictures page.
They needed some elevator music up in this place to really complete the waiting-room mood.
I’d just found a birthday cake hidden in a wall next to a swimming pool when I heard footsteps approaching. When I looked up from the page, a man in slacks and a polo shirt but a gun and badge strapped to his waist nodded to me.
“Ma’am,” he said politely. “I’m Detective Rice. Someone said you were here about the Hilliard case?”
“Yes, I—” Flushing, I tossed the Highlights down, hoping he didn’t think I was an idiot for browsing through a kid’s magazine.
Oh, who was I kidding? I was an idiot. A complete and utter nitwit. This was a big, huge, important deal, and I was just a stupid little college girl who’d watched two people have sex. Detective Rice looked so professional and authoritative with his salt-and-pepper hair and shrewd pale eyes that looked as if they saw everything as he ushered me down a hall to his office, while I wore polka dot leggings with an oversized long-sleeved shirt bearing a picture of a Grumpy Cat that said I had fun once; it was awful.
“I don’t think I got your name,” Detective Rice said as he motioned me into the windowless room toward a chair by a messy desk and shut us inside alone.
“Oh! Sorry. I’m Bailey. Bailey Prescott. I’m nervous. I don’t know how to do this. I—”
With a placating smile, he lifted a hand, and I instantly fell quiet, swallowing down my blubbering, moronic words.
“It’s okay, Miss Prescott. I understand how difficult this must be for you. And I appreciate the courage you have to come forward. We’ll take this as slow as you need to.”
“Okay.” I nodded gratefully and eased out a settled breath as I sank into the chair and then clutched the seat under me with both hands, so very glad he was being nice and accommodating about this. Maybe I could confess my sins after all.
Until he sat in his chair and picked up a notebook, saying, “Now you’re claiming Beckett Hilliard raped you too, right?”
My mouth fell open. “What? No! Not at all.”
Detective Rice’s face lifted, filling with surprise, “But the secretary said—”
“I have information about the case,” I butted in, staring at him as if he’d lost his mind, “Information that
he didn’t rape Melody What’s-her-face. Not that I’d been raped too. Good Lord, no! He didn’t rape me. He didn’t rape anyone. I was there that night. I saw them. He didn’t lay a single malicious hand on her, and she was willing, the whole time. She instigated it.”
The older man stared at me a good five seconds longer before he murmured, “You witnessed the entire event?”
Hey, the way he said it actually didn’t sound so bad. Witnessing an event seemed so much better than ogling a couple doing the horizontal tango. So, yeah, I’d witnessed. I loved that word.
“Yes,” I breathed in relief. “I witnessed everything from the moment she entered the room until they were done. And he did not rape her. Not even close.”
“Holy—Wait one second.” He held up a finger before grabbing his phone and dialing a single number.
“Yes, sir?” a voice asked through the speaker on the base of the phone.
“Sandy,” Detective Rice asked the base. “Did I read it correctly on the schedule today that Stempy was going to stop by to see his client?”
“He’s here right now, signing out, actually.”
“Good.” Detective Rice glanced my way. “Could you send him back? I believe there’s someone in my office he’d be very interested in questioning with me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Detective Rice disconnected the speaker, and I gulped, wondering—though mostly worrying over—who Stempy was.
“You have impeccable timing, Miss Prescott,” Detective Rice announced. “Beckett Hilliard’s lawyer is here visiting him. He probably would’ve contacted you later with more questions, but now that he’s here, we can both just talk to you together.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. So I was going to get grilled by a cop and a lawyer together. That was just great. Awesome. They should toss in a priest too and really make the inquisition complete. Then again, this had to be better than answering questions more than once, right? So sure, bring on more people. The more people to hear about my debaucheries, the merrier.
Oh God, I think I was going to throw up all over the floor. When a knock came on the door, my stomach actually lurched. No! Don’t throw up, stomach. Please don’t throw up.
Detective Rice stood and answered the door. I swear, the guy that entered seemed so young he had peach fuzz growing from his face. He looked as young as I was.
“Ron Stempy,” Detective Rice introduced before swinging his hand my way, “Bailey Prescott. She claims she saw everything that happened on the night of the Hilliard rape.”
I frowned, tempted to correct him and say there had been no rape, but Stempy’s startled reaction stole my attention.
“She…?” He swung my way so fast I pulled back in my chair away from him. Then he froze and blinked at me a moment before blurting, “But she’s blonde.” Then he shook his head as if in denial and directly accused me, “You’re blonde.”
My hand went to my curls. “I…yeah. I just got it dyed.” What the hell did he have against my blonde curls? I thought they looked cute.
“You…” He stared stupidly another ten seconds before repeating. “You dyed it? What….” He shook his head again and flushed. “I’m sorry, I know this is an off-the-wall question, but when did you dye it, exactly?”
“Yesterday,” I said slowly, pressing my locks protectively to my head, and wondering if it was a crime to be blonde. A wild thought raced through my head that they were going to hold me down and shave me bald for dying my hair.
But the lawyer nodded as if pleased by my answer, then bit his lip before asking. “And what color was it before, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I squinted at him, wondering why this was so important. “It was a lot of colors, dyed like a rainbow, actually.”
He hissed out a sudden, relieved sounding breath. And from the look in his eye, I got the feeling this guy suddenly wanted to hug me. “Oh God,” he panted out, most unprofessionally. “Miss Prescott, you are exactly the girl I want to talk to.”
* * *
An hour later, I left the police department, feeling, I don’t know. Relieved mostly. A good kind of relieved. I didn’t feel all that scummy either. Okay, kind of scummy, even though the detective and lawyer both had been quite professional about questioning me. There’d been a few times when we’d all blushed and cleared our throats before continuing, but they hadn’t made me out to be a dirty voyeur peeping tom sicko at any point, so that was sweet.
Mr. Stempy seemed a lot more excited about what I had to say than Detective Rice. He smiled as if relieved when I said things like Melody instigated everything and she’d been on top. And one time, when he asked if I knew who’d provided the condom, he’d actually victory-fisted himself before hissing yes under his breath after I answered that Melody had pulled a condom from her cleavage.
The most embarrassing part came at the end when Detective Rice politely thanked me and told me someone would be in contact if they had any more questions.
I glanced between the two, startled it was over. They hadn’t tied me to a chair in a mirror-windowed room as they played good-cop, bad-cop or given me a lie-detector test or anything.
“That’s it?” I blurted, confused.
Mr. Stempy smiled as if amused. “Someone will probably be in contact with more questions.”
I nodded and rose to my feet. “So, um, he’ll be released then, right?”
The two men exchanged an uncertain glance before the lawyer sighed. “It’s hard to say. This started out as a simple she-said, he-said case. Now it’s a she-said, he-said, she-said situation, so…”
“So no one believes me?” I said, dumbfounded, gaping at him.
It’d taken me all the courage I had to come in here and confess this to them, and now…now it was my word against stupid Melody What’s-her-face’s?
Fuck that shit!
An incredulous anger rose in my chest. I turned my opened-mouth stare from the detective to the lawyer before Mr. Stempy lifted his hands peaceably.
“Now, that’s not entirely the case, Miss Prescott. It’s not that we don’t believe you. It’s just…there are conflicting accounts of what happened, so it’ll be harder to determine who’s telling the truth.”
“I am!” I boomed, pressing my finger into my chest before pointing at both of them and demanding, “I didn’t have to come here. I didn’t have to tell you people anything. Do you know how hard it was for me to walk into this police station today and tell you what I saw? It would’ve been so much easier just to keep my mouth shut.”
“Now, just calm down, Miss Prescott.” The cop waved me quiet as if I were turning hysterical or something.
I frowned at them both and sniffed out my resentment before folding my arms tightly over my chest. “I don’t know why I bothered if no one was going to believe me. I don’t even know that stupid drunk boy. But I didn’t think he deserved to go to jail just because some conniving whore lied about him, so I put myself out there to help him out, except now you’re telling me I didn’t help shit? What the fuck?”
“You are helping him,” Beckett’s lawyer insisted, keeping his voice all monotone and placating, trying to calm me down. It only made me scowl at him harder. He winced. “It’s just… We have to work with facts, things that can’t be disputed, and words can always be disputed. So while your words do help some, it’d just be more helpful if there was some evidence, like a video or…or…”
My mind clicked, suddenly remembering. “A picture?” I asked, already reaching for my cell phone in my back pocket. “Would a picture help?”
I couldn’t believe I’d totally forgotten about taking that picture.
Both men surged forward as I logged into my phone and tapped my photo app.
“You took a picture?” Detective Rice asked incredulously.
“Yeah, well…” My face flushed hot. Okay, this was awkward, until Mr. Stempy actually gave a little hop of excitement.
“If you have a picture, a good, clear picture with her on t
op of him, this could do it, this might really get him free.”
Awkward moment gone, because the lawyer’s enthusiasm wiped it away, I bit my lip, hoping to God I’d gotten a good, clear shot.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I never looked at the results.”
My photos appeared; I chose the newest one because I hadn’t taken a picture of anything since then.
And…
“Oh, shit,” I blurted when noise and blurry movement immediately blared from the screen of the phone. “I must’ve changed the setting to video by accident.”
Oh, my God. This was so freaking embarrassing. I’d taken a video of two people having sex.
When I instinctively tried to turn it away and hide the evidence, both men reached out to stop me. “No, wait! This is even better. Start it over again.”
I blinked as Mr. Stempy reached over and pushed play one more time. Was he freaking serious? They actually expected me to stand between them while we all merrily watched a sex tape together?
Um, okay.
Melody’s horrific grunts filled the office, and I swear, even my teeth blushed.
This. Was. Awkward.
“There.” Detective Rice moved in even closer to me, hovering over my shoulder on one side as he pointed at the screen while Mr. Stempy shifted in from the other, sandwiching me between them.
Really, really awkward.
“It focuses for a second. You can barely see Hillard’s face through the crack in the door, but you can’t tell who’s on top of him.”
Oh my God. How could they sound so clinical and un-bothered by those sounds?
“But she has long, straight, dark hair like Melody Fairfield,” Mr. Stempy argued.
“There’s no way to know it’s really her,” the detective stated firmly.
Mr. Stempy jabbed a finger back toward the screen. “She’s on top, though, just like Hilliard and Miss Prescott claimed, which Miss Fairfield completely denies happened.”
The two men frowned at each other just as Melody really started wailing, and Beckett gave a shout of pleasure.