A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  “What day was that?”

  “Tuesday. Last week. And when I returned his truck and he gave me a ride to my car at the Ford place in Whitefish, he asked if I’d do him a favor. If I’d take the gun for him, just to store it. He said the lock on the metal case of his truck that he normally kept it in was broken. He said he didn’t want to sell it, and he didn’t want to give it to Ali to store, since her gun cabinet wasn’t big enough for a rifle.”

  Herman sits listening, his arms relaxed and folded across himself.

  It’s true, I think. She did borrow his truck on Tuesday. I remember Emily saying that Rose picked her and Reeve up in Daddy’s truck and then they gave her a ride to her car after school. But it makes no sense. If he wanted to protect Emily, why would he give a gun to her babysitter?

  “So,” Herman says, “you’ve had the gun since last Tuesday?”

  “No, no. That was just when he asked me. He couldn’t give it to me then because it was back at his cabin.”

  Now I know she’s lying. Reeve has never kept a gun in the house, ever. Not even before Emily was born. I remember when his neighbor Ron’s pipes busted, and Reeve told Ron he could come over and stay until the next day when he could get them repaired. Ron had wanted to bring his hunting rifle inside with him, and Reeve wouldn’t let him. Sorry, no guns in my house ever, he had said. I don’t even keep mine in here. Wallace had argued with him, but Reeve was insistent. He let me bring mine in only because he knew I had to keep my service gun with me at all times, but he hated it. It was one more source of unspoken conflict between us in the long run.

  She’s lying about that, I text. Trust me. Reeve has never allowed a firearm in his cabin. He always keeps it locked in the back of his truck. Herman’s back is to me, so I can’t tell if he looks at my text, but I think I see a slight tilt of his head forward as he glances down at his phone.

  “So when did he give it to you?”

  “When he came over on Wednesday, the night after he was interviewed by the county. He came to see Ali and pick up McKay.”

  I think back to that night. I don’t remember his leaving for any length of time. He never left my or Emily’s sight long enough to even give it to her.

  “How did that work?”

  “Easy.” Her eyes shift to the glass, and I wonder if she knows I’m there, watching her, ready to catch her in a lie. A part of me wants to believe every word she says, but the way she ran, the look on her face in that boy’s tree house—it’s all too strange and surreal, and her story now doesn’t make sense. There’s a side of Rose that I don’t know about, but as much as it hurts me, it’s unraveling before me, and I can’t deny it.

  “When he left to go home,” she continues. “He texted me and asked me to come down. He got it out of that metal bin behind the cab and gave it to me. I didn’t think anything of it.” She puts her hand to her mouth. “If I’d known, if I’d had any clue that it was used to kill someone, I would have taken it straight to the police. I told him I’d keep it stored away until he got a gun cabinet.”

  I think back to that night more specifically, remembering how I walked Reeve out to his truck, his face tired and sagging, the skin around his eyes russet from rubbing them, the stubble on his face blooming after a long day at the station. I had handed him the note with an attorney’s number. I think harder. The only other times Reeve was alone were when I went out to grab McKay’s food and left him in the house and when he went out to fetch his backpack, which had his training scat in it for McKay. But both times, it was done in a flash. And as far as when he left, as Rose is claiming, I escorted him out. Unless, I think, he circled back later. But I would have heard his truck then or seen the lights from either Emily’s room or my office, and I don’t remember that. I text Herman: I walked Reeve out to his truck to say good night. I watched him drive away. She’s lying.

  “Then why did you run?” Herman asks.

  “Because . . .” She shrugs and blinks several times nervously and holds her arms like she’s hugging herself. She looks smaller than usual. In all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her sit like this, folded in on herself like she’s a victim. “Because I felt bad. I had forgotten about having it when I told the girls that I was just going to take a quick shower. I was so scared when I heard that shot and then it hit me that I had Reeve’s gun in the coat closet, that I was keeping it for him. I had no idea it was loaded, that Emily would find it and fire a shot. I felt awful, and Ali, you know Ali, Herman. How she can be, you know, how crazy she can get.”

  This catches me by surprise. I feel it slash to my core. I have been known for being terse but not unreasonable, not a live wire. But Rose, she’s trying to play it like she’s truly afraid of me. She’s no more afraid of me than my sister, Toni, ever was. I want to protest out loud, to tell the others in the room that she’s lying, but I don’t even dare steal a glance at them. My jaw is so tight, it feels like it might crack.

  “She could barely keep her temper over the littlest things, you know, like when I’ve let Emily drink part of a soda, and she’s freaked out, screaming at me and yelling at me. She’s . . . she’s, well, she’s just so intimidating.” She raises her fingers to her face and delicately sets them on her left cheekbone near her eye, intimating she’s been hit before, suggesting I’ve hit her there before. I’m fuming now, a tide of sheer hate roiling up in me like a megawave. I want to pound my fist on the table, but I know if I do or say anything, I’m playing into what she is claiming. None of it is true. I’ve never raised my voice to Rose, even when she has disappointed me in how she’s handled a situation with Emily. Like when she was late to pick Emily up from school. She was with some friends and lost track of time. I cut her slack because it had never happened before and she had recently turned twenty-one and was celebrating. I shake my head and swallow my anger. I chance a glance at Shackley, as if I have one colleague in the room, one confidant, and mouth the words She’s lying.

  He simply shifts his gaze from me back to the interrogation room without acknowledging my gesture. I feel completely alone.

  In the room, Herman is nodding, agreeing with her. I know he’s just being a good interviewer, finding common ground and egging her on, but because he’s angry at me, I guess a side of him must be enjoying it. “She’s a pistol all right,” Herman adds.

  “You don’t know the half of it.” She looks down at her hands, which are now laced together demurely in her lap. “One time, because I didn’t get Emily in her pajamas and to bed early enough before she came home from work, she, well, she . . .” She touches her face again, and I realize she’s good. Really good. Someone who can tell falsehoods like that and even know when to suggest rather than actually say it out loud. Because if she did say it out loud, if she said the words One time she actually hit me, it would sound ridiculous coming out of her mouth because of the very fact that it’s such a bald-faced lie.

  “That’s such bullshit,” I whisper, no longer able to contain myself. Vance, Brander, Reynolds, and Shackley all look at me, but I can’t tell if they heard what I said even though it came out with venom. They all turn back to the glass without commenting. I feel like I’m trapped in a bizarre nightmare or a strange hallucination.

  “She what?” Herman prods.

  “She, well, she slapped me.” She looks down at the table.

  “Slapped you?” Herman asks.

  “Yes, I know. Crazy. It’s sounds crazy, but that’s what she is.”

  “And you reported her?”

  “No, are you kidding? She’s an FBI agent. I’m not going to go against that.”

  “So why haven’t you quit the job?”

  “Because I need the money and she pays me well. Four hundred a week for hanging out with a little girl that I adore. I love Emily, so I put up with that kind of craziness. I want to protect Emily from her.”

  Now I can barely stay seated. Bile rises up in my throat at the mention of my daughter’s name within such a heap of lies. I can’t keep m
y leg still. It’s bobbing up and down, making my heel thrum on the floor. I want to get up and go pound on the glass, but I realize how bad that will look, like I really can’t control my temper. She’s crossing lines I’ve never imagined, suggesting I’m abusive. In my mind I see my father smacking my mom across the face and her falling back into the kitchen table with a frantic look. I may be known for telling it like it is or for even losing my temper and swearing like a sailor on the job, but if there’s one thing in this world I would never, ever do, it is hit someone unless it was in self-defense for my job. I would never be like my father. Ever.

  I remember wanting badly to beat my sister up—can remember it raging up in me from the depths like fire in a dragon’s belly—when she lied about her drug use to my mom right in front of me and claimed that the bottle of pills my mom had found in our bathroom belonged to me. But even then, with the fury bellowing up inside me, I knew I couldn’t hit her. How dare Rose—this woman I’ve entrusted with my little girl—sit there primly, telling flagrant lies to Herman, to people I work with. I’ve taken chances, lost Herman’s and perhaps Shackley’s trust, but I’ve misplaced it in my efforts to protect my family, Emily and Reeve, and even Rose, not because I’d ever hurt them.

  “If what you’re saying is true,” Herman says, “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  If what you’re saying is true.

  Herman’s throwing us both a bone. For me, he’s getting it on tape that there’s no proof of such things, and I’m thankful that he’s not falling hook, line, and sinker for her nonsense, but he’s also trying to empathize with her. In my anger, I’ve forgotten he has his phone. I text again. The things she’s claiming are blatant lies. None of it is true. I’m aware that Reynolds and Brander, maybe even Shackley, think it very well could be, but I can’t care about them right now. I have to push on. Herman has to believe me. Meanwhile Rose nods, satisfied, then looks down at her hands.

  Ask her why Anne Marie Johnson visited her, I text. I still don’t know for certain if he’s reading them or not, but I have to do something.

  “How about a polygraph?” I say to the others in the room. “Ask her if she’ll take a polygraph.”

  “Let’s see if she ends up asking for an attorney or not. If she’s not lying, her attorney will tell her it’s in her best interest to take one.”

  “Then why wait? Why not have Herman explain that to her?”

  “We’ll see,” Reynolds says, giving me a cold stare from where he’s standing next to the wall, a cue to butt out. I get the feeling he’s about to say, She shouldn’t even be in here, but given the fact that I apprehended her, he’s staying quiet for now. I turn back to the glass.

  Herman sets his arms on the table and leans toward her. “Rose, why did Anne Marie Johnson visit you?” He is reading my texts. He’s not ignoring me. Relief washes over me and settles my anger slightly.

  “Who?”

  “You know who. Anne Marie Johnson. We have evidence that she visited you. Turns out, Anne Marie is an excellent note-taker.”

  Rose’s face goes hard, her jaw clenching, and I can see she wasn’t expecting the question from Herman, or at least not in the way it was phrased, with the absolute knowledge that Anne Marie visited her.

  “Rose,” Herman says, “can you answer me?”

  “She called. She wanted to interview me because my family lost someone, a foster sister of mine, when I was sixteen. Said she was writing some book, interviewing victims of gun tragedies, that’s all. I already told that Brander guy that.”

  “Yes.” Herman checks his notes. “But you told him you only spoke to her on the phone. In her notes, she says she visited you.”

  She shrugs. “Same difference. I told her I didn’t want to delve into old history. It was stupid, her wanting to talk to all these different people about gun violence. What good would that do?”

  “Not much,” Herman agrees, trying to walk the tightrope between being on her side and nudging her to tell the truth. “She interviewed a lot of folks. Some in prison too. And she interviewed the man who was convicted for your sister’s murder, a Vince Reiko. Is that correct?”

  “How should I know if she interviewed him?”

  “Let me rephrase that: Is it correct that Vince Reiko is the man convicted in the killing of your sister, Kimberly Farrows?”

  “Yes, that’s him. And she wasn’t my real sister. I mean, she was a foster sister.”

  I make a note of her tone when she says the word foster. There’s disdain there that I’ve never heard from her before. I turn to Brander, who is sitting next to Commander Vance in two chairs near the glass. They look like they’re simply lined up to watch a movie. Reynolds is still standing, leaning against the wall. “Have you spoken to him yet?”

  “Yes, we have.” He offers me no more, his face going blank.

  “Good,” I say. I’m dying to know more. I hope they told Herman whatever they know so he can use it in there with Rose, but I don’t push my luck. “Thank you.”

  “Did you know Vince Reiko before he shot Kim?” Herman asks.

  “No.” She looks into Herman’s eyes, unflinching. The stare is too set in stone, too practiced-looking, her chin held high and jutting forward. I’m positive she is lying. “Of course I’d never met him before.”

  “That’s not what he says.” Herman folds his arms casually on his chest. “That’s not what he told Anne Marie Johnson.”

  “He’s a criminal,” she says. “Why would you believe him?”

  “Because he’s already been convicted. He doesn’t gain anything by making that up. He’s already confessed to the shooting of your sister, Kim—”

  “Foster sister,” she cuts him off, glaring at him. Again she won’t even utter her name. I think back to when she wouldn’t talk about the incident when I brought it up years ago. I had assumed it was too painful; now I think otherwise. I get the impression that she’s not even using the girl’s name because she can’t stand the sound of it. Plus, if I remember correctly, when I looked up the incident, Rose’s parents had adopted Kim.

  “It seems”—Herman clears his throat—“there are things Vince didn’t explain the first time around, and time in prison has sobered him a bit, made him realize that maybe the love he had for you, the fact that he’d do anything for you, is starting to wane because you never visit him anymore. You never go when you say you will.”

  Rose lifts her chin again in defiance, and I can see the muscles in her arms tense as she clamps them around herself. She’s angry. “That’s bullshit,” she says. “You can’t just go off of what some criminal says.”

  “I can see why you’d be upset by that,” Herman says. “And nobody—except Vince, that is—is accusing you of anything, but you should know that he says he has proof that you and he had a relationship before he shot your sister for you.”

  Rose’s eyes shift, and she squirms in her chair. I can see that she’s getting nervous now.

  I text, Tell her that he’s in the room next door, even though he’s not.

  I see Herman glance at his phone, and Rose fidgets. She knows he’s getting texts and it’s making her nervous. “In fact, while you were giving Detective Reynolds the silent treatment and not speaking all of this time, we brought Mr. Reiko in from Deer Lodge so that we can take his statement.”

  “You can’t take his word over mine,” she snarls at Herman, her face uglier than I’ve ever seen it, and I wonder how I, a trained agent of the law, could have missed this malicious side of her. Suddenly small things Emily has said to me over the years come back: Mommy, meanie Rose was here today. Mommy, meanie Rose made me watch TV and leave her alone. I chalked it up to little-kid talk, to the frustrations of an adult trying to deal with a toddler. I rethink Emily’s nightmares and her bedwetting—how it took twice as long as the average little girl to potty-train her—and wonder what kind of an effect the ugliness I’m suddenly witnessing has had on my daughter. I had always chalked it up to Reeve’s and my separation.
Have I indirectly exposed her to the abuse of some kind of a sociopath or someone with a character disorder even though I thought I was providing the exact opposite of the abuse I experienced as a child?

  It occurs to me that, despite my best efforts, I have perpetuated a cycle of abuse. I once read that abused children, especially victims of sexual abuse, can unconsciously find ways to expose their own children to predators because they are inexplicably drawn to them like moths to a flame. I close my eyes and whisper to myself in my head, Is this what you’ve done, Ali, to your own child? The lump in my throat grows thicker, and I try to swallow it down. My own breathing seems loud and scratchy in the stuffy room. I try to quiet it, keeping my eyes trained on Herman and Rose.

  “We’re not taking his word over yours,” Herman assures her. “Just covering all bases. We want to hear your perspective too. So tell me, Rose, how did you meet Vince?”

  “I already told you. I never met him before.”

  Herman leans forward, closer to her face, and says kindly, “I really like you, Rose.” He says it with heart, leaning toward her like he might reach out and place a hand on her shoulder. Of course he doesn’t, but it’s working, because she’s leaning slightly toward him too. “You’re so great with Emily, and I love Emily. I don’t want to see anything happen to you because I know Emily would be devastated if anything happened to you, so please, please help me out here by telling the truth.”

  I see Rose’s eyes begin to water, and I realize Herman is trying a theme, and that theme happens to be my daughter, and it’s striking a chord.

  Rose’s forehead crinkles in lines of confusion, her eyes pooling with tears. “Of course. Of course. I love Emily,” she says, and her face flushes with emotion and looks beautiful again, the evil evaporated just like that at the mention of my daughter’s name. Rose does care deeply for my little girl, I think. That’s a relief, but I’m still reeling. Rose may love my daughter, but she’s guilty. She’s not right. This I now know.