If You Dare

by Alessandra Torre

  It takes twelve minutes and two calls to get to someone who knows who Jeremy Pacer is. When I ask about his condition, I am asked to leave a message; I glance at Brenda and she shakes her head. I ask to speak to any visitors in Jeremy’s room and am patched through, the ringing of the phone terrifyingly bleak.

  On the ninth ring, a woman picks up. “Hello?”

  I swallow. “Is this Lily?”

  “Yes.” Short. Concise. I close my eyes and choose my words carefully.

  “My name is Deanna, I am Jeremy’s girlfriend.” I am, not was. Am. Forever and always. I pause and she says nothing. I glance at Brenda and wish I had asked more questions in the car. “Can you tell me how he is?”

  “It’s nice of you to call, Deanna. It would have been even nicer for you to visit. He’s been here for three days.”

  Three days. When I come to, the apartment is dark and I am on the floor. I swallow. “I didn’t know—no one told me.”

  Silence. She whispers something to someone else, and the words are muffled. Then, she is back. “I don’t have much to tell you, Deanna. He has a subdural hematoma, a buildup of blood in the brain. At the moment, he’s comatose. The doctors are going to reduce his meds over the next few days, see if they can pull him out of it. He’s not”—she sighed—“not in great shape.”

  “But he’ll live?” I wrap my finger around the cord of the phone, then release it.

  “I—the doctors say it’s too early to know for sure. They’ve told me that the brain is fickle. He could wake up tomorrow and be fine for the rest of his life, or he could have a sudden rebleed and go comatose again. Or he may never wake up.”

  Or he may never wake up. I try to think of something else to say but come up blank. When I hang up, it is to her breathing.

  I push back the receiver and look up to Brenda. She raises her eyebrows. “Who next?”

  I shrug. Try to speak but can’t form a word. The doctors say it’s too early to know for sure. Try again. “I’m done.” The words rasp out of me, like a gate that hasn’t been opened in some time.

  She frowns. “You sure? No lawyer? No house sitter? No boss or bail bondsman?”

  I shake my head. “I’m sure.”

  A short, lonely sentence. She yanks at the cord, gathers the phone in the crook of her left arm, and heads for the door. “I’ll be back.”

  I listen to the door slam behind her and close my eyes. Questioning, she had mentioned, would come next. Then, general pop. It will be a very long night.

  CHAPTER 59

  Present

  MY DEFINITION OF time doesn’t match Brenda’s. “I’ll be back,” in my world, refers to fifteen minutes, a half hour. Maybe forty-five minutes if I take an extra-long bathroom break, or get distracted on Pinterest. But I have now been in this tiny room for, according to the clock on the wall, three hours. I shift in the seat, lifting my right butt cheek, then my left, off of the hard plastic, my muscles cramping from the unforgiving chair. I lean forward and lay my head on the table. Close my eyes. Roll my wrists and wiggle my fingers.

  He’s in a coma. The doctors are hoping to pull him out of it in the next few days. He’s not in great shape.

  I’ve tried not to think about Jeremy for the last three hours. I’ve thought of nothing but him during that time.

  The doctors say it’s too early to know for sure.

  The last time Jeremy was in the hospital, it was from my actions. And I thought he was dead. And I cried when he lived. And now, he’s back. It hasn’t even been a year.

  A six-story fall from your window, along with six stab wounds.

  They will question me next. But I have questions too. Questions I am terrified of, but also need answers to. Stab wounds. I wouldn’t have. Not with Jeremy.

  I fumble with them briefly, then flip the blade out and straddle his body, bringing both hands together above my head. Bringing my hands down together, in one quick motion, the sharp point descends toward his neck.

  I squeeze my palms together behind my back. That was before. Way before. I am not her anymore. I am more in control. I have been around him a hundred times. I have bought a car. Grocery shopped. Walked around humans and came back with clean hands. I wouldn’t have hurt him. Not six times. He is stronger than me, he can control me; he’s done so many times before.

  A blur of his face, concerned, his grip on my skin, a tightening of his features, the hard jerk of his elbow across my face, and a blinding sea of red pain.

  I push my face into the table and wince at the pain that courses from my nose. Why can I not remember?

  The knob jiggles and then the door swings open and both detectives fill the doorway. I take a deep breath.

  She sits, he stands. I slouch back in my seat and stare at the floor. Think better of it and lift my head. “May I ask a few questions?”

  The woman stops some complicated process of shuffling papers and looks up. “Not right now. After our questioning, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions. That’s assuming your questions relate to the nature of the crime, and not to your rights or your judicial process. Those questions should be answered by an attorney.”

  I nod, she nods, and we’re one big nodding family. I look at the man but he doesn’t participate. “Are you waiving your right to an attorney?” the woman asks.

  “For now.”

  She sets down the final piece of paper and looks at me. She has a fresh pimple, on the right side of her chin, and I perversely wonder if the stress of this entire investigation is what put it there. Probably not. My attempted murder charge is most likely small potatoes in her world of crime. I feel, for one ridiculous moment, criminally inadequate. She probably wants to wrap this baby shit up and go tackle a real danger to society. She lets out a breath and it sounds like a sigh. “Everything you say in this room is being recorded and can be used in a trial. Should you decide you’d like an attorney, we will stop questioning you until the moment upon which an attorney is secured. Do you understand?”

  “I’d like to go ahead and get this over with.”

  “As would we. This will go a lot quicker if you are honest with us.” She looks at me and I wonder what she doesn’t understand about getting this over with. After a long, wasteful moment, she continues.

  “Where were you Sunday night?”

  “At home.”

  “Were you alone?”

  I hesitate. “Yes.”

  A blur of his face, concerned, his grip on my skin, a tightening of his features, the hard jerk of his elbow across my face, and a blinding sea of red pain.

  I bite my lip. “I think so.”

  “Explain.”

  “Jeremy had come over… earlier. I mean, I spent that day with Jeremy and he dropped me off at my house that night.”

  Brenda had pulled a pen out and held it to the paper, scribbling down words as I spoke. She stops, the pen tip pausing. A red pen. Those notes would be hell to read later, like lines of blood. “Did he come into your apartment?”

  “I love you too.” I grabbed his hand and pulled, his back lifting from the wall as he followed me.

  “Yes.” The crack in the wall of my memories crumbles, and a fresh wave pushes through. Nothing new, information I’ve known. Information I’ve hid from. Information that runs without brakes down a path that falls off a cliff.

  “What time was that?”

  I blink and twist my lips, considering the question. “I’m not really sure. Before nine. Probably seven or eight. I remember thinking we’d have time… before Simon locked me in…”

  “Time for what?” The man steps forward, leaning over the table and placing his hands on the surface, his left pinky on top of one of Brenda’s pages. I see her glance at it and look away. I don’t look away. I look up, into his dark black face, and wonder if he has a daughter, one my age. He’s certainly old enough. That’s gray in the sides of his hair.

  “To fuck.” I enunciate the answer and watch him flinch. I like his flinch.

  “And
did you?” the woman drawls out the question, without missing a beat.

  I look away from the man. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s not the sort of thing most women forget,” he says quietly.

  “No.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “We didn’t.”

  “Why not?” God, this woman was pushy. And nosy.

  Yes, Deanna, why not? I remember stepping in the apartment, my hand in Jeremy’s. Then… all I can remember is red. And Jeremy swinging. And… somewhere at some point…

  Closing my hand around the butt of the knife, feeling the indents in the grip when I palmed it, a surge of pleasure at the illicit contact.

  I swallow the memory and taste bile in my throat. “Sometimes,” I say slowly, “you know… you just don’t.”

  My bones crunched, like potato chips under the heel of a boot, and my fury, in that moment, exploded.

  “Deanna? Deanna?” a hand waves before me and I focus on it. Dark palm, strong fingers, a wedding band. He probably does have a daughter. He should get home to her, and leave me alone. Brenda and I will be just fine.

  “What?” I snap.

  “You came home and did what?”

  “He just dropped me off.” If I say the words slowly, they will be more true. “Then he left.”

  “And Simon locked you in.”

  “Yes.”

  The man sighs. “Deanna, we’ve spoken to Simon.”

  This is news. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Alibis need to be verified, words can’t be trusted. But it’s as if the sentence opens up a new door of invasion. I suddenly remember Dr. Derek’s call. They had spoken to him. And now Simon. Who else? How much of my inner circle had been touched? And what had they discovered in the process? I push back the handcuff on my right side. It’s irritating, like a heavy bracelet that I keep forgetting I can’t slide off. “So? What did he say?”

  “He said he didn’t lock your door last night. He said that you told him not to.” The woman’s eyes watch me closely, each dart of them quick and precise.

  I frown. That’s… odd. I’ve based so much of my innocence assumption on the fact that I was locked in. I wonder, a piece of my brain breaking off and skittering off on its own path of worry, if Simon mentioned, during this voice vomit, any other nights where he didn’t lock me in. That could be problematic, a loose thread that, if pulled, could lead to… Wait, what? Could lead to me, sitting in a police station, being questioned? Could lead to my sins being exposed, my punishment delivered? I am already here, the house of cards has already fallen, my dam has broken and all of my safeguards are gone. I left the apartment. I got into a stranger’s car and am in a strange room with a new fate. The what-ifs of my past… I can’t worry about them now. I have bigger problems here. Like why I told Simon not to lock me in. “I thought you said that Jeremy fell from my window.” Fell. Not pushed. Never pushed.

  The woman nods.

  “So…” I shift in my seat. “No offense, but why do you care if Simon locked me in? The lock on my door doesn’t affect whether or not I pushed Jeremy from the window.” Fell. Not pushed. I pinch the thin skin on the inside of my wrist as punishment.

  “He was moved. After he fell.”

  I see the tension in the man’s frame when the woman speaks, the quick turn of his head in her direction. He didn’t want her to say that, to share that, to give me that piece of the puzzle. I want to join him, to go another step further and hold my hand over her mouth, shove back the words deeper down until they stay. He was moved. I close my eyes and try to remember if my bare feet had pricks of asphalt. Try to remember if my tennis shoes had moved, if my clothes had had anything on them other than the blood from my nose. I work through the layers, try to find my thought process though… when I’m red, there is often none. “So… you are saying that I asked Simon to not lock my door, then I pushed Jeremy out, ran downstairs, and moved his body.”

  “After stabbing him.” The man interjects.

  “I moved him after stabbing him?”

  They look at each other, then at me. “Pretty much,” Brenda says.

  Pretty much. No, I wanted to say, not pretty at all.

  Throughout the questions I was strong. Cool. Collected. And there was a moment when I thought I might survive the interrogation. Then they pull out the photos and I break.

  I recognize the Dumpster. That is my first thought. The green slope of its front. The black lids of its top. I once stood, hands on hips, chest heaving, before this Dumpster and analyzed its feasibility as a body dump site. The funny thing is that I had discarded it. Deemed it too high in its top for me to heft a body over the side. Thought that its location, stuck behind the twenty-four-hour Quik Mart, at the end of an alley, was too public, the chance of a discovery before pickup too high. So I’d stretched before it, savored one last what-if fantasy, then jogged away. And now, here it is. In a glossy four-by-six, the photo pushed forward by one of Brenda’s chewed-to-the-quick nails. I lean forward, look at the photo, and nod. “I know it.”

  “Here is where Jeremy was found.” She pushes forward a second photo and I keep my position, expecting to see the lid open, a bird’s-eye view looking down, an imprint in the pile of trash. I am surprised when I see the back of the Dumpster, in the space between it and the concrete wall. I am surprised when I see Jeremy’s hat, lying on its side, the Sooners S half-hidden, the curve of its brim squashed.

  When I pulled off the wall, he smiled at me from under the brim of his baseball cap.

  He’d been wearing that cap, that day. I remember pulling it off his head and onto my own, when the whip of wind in the convertible had been too strong, my hair everywhere, my hair tie lost to the wind. At some point he’d gotten it back. I stare at the photo. “I was driving,” I mumble. “So…”

  What had been our plan? For him to stay the night? For him to take my car home? Had we discussed that? I didn’t remember doing so. But he could have taken my car; it wasn’t like I was driving it. And I feel, in that afternoon, that perfect Sunday we shared… that we hadn’t wanted to part, not even for the short half hour it would have taken to follow each other to my house. We had ridden together, and then… I look up and they are both staring at me. Waiting.

  “Where’s his truck?” I ask.

  “At his house,” Brenda supplies.

  At his house. And my car was at my apartment, the three of us, just hours ago, standing next to it. So he didn’t get home. He couldn’t have. He was too busy falling, breaking, bleeding, and lying behind the Dumpster, waiting to be found.

  Brenda pushes forward a final photo, and my world goes a little blacker.

  When blood dries, it darkens. Not to black, that would have been more fitting, for Jeremy’s face to be the color of my soul. But its loss of oxygen produces a darker hue, not the bright red cheer of fresh carnage. When this photo was taken of J, his eyes were closed, his cheeks bruised, his nose unnatural, blood caked and dried in rivers along and over his lips. He looks, in this photo, dead. And I feel, as it slides toward me, as if I am looking into his future.

  One day, if something doesn’t change, I will kill him. Maybe not intentionally, maybe it will be a side effect of my other actions, but he will, as a result of our union, die. It is a fact I am almost certain of, a truth I have run from since the first moment that I allowed him to kiss my lips and bring joy. I stare down at the photo and let reality fully sink in.

  He deserves better. He deserves life.

  She pushes another photo forward, this one showing more of his surroundings, I can see the white of a hospital bed, bandages and stitches, the blur of a hand as it attends to him. I see the places the knife went in, six clear points of attack. The photo must have been snapped in haste, for no other purpose than to document. I glance back at the initial photo and wonder how long the blood sat before it was wiped clean. I wonder how long his eyes were closed, and if he gasped for breath or lay still as if he was dead. I wonder if, before the coma, he spoke.

  I look a
way from the photos and up into her eyes.

  He deserves better. He deserves life. I deserve containment. I deserve punishment. It doesn’t matter if I don’t remember it. Either way, innocent or guilty, I am dangerous—for this man and for everyone else.

  I swallow and squeeze my hands together behind my back. “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know if you did it.”

  I stare at her chapped lips because her eyes are too sharp. “Yes.”

  “You did?” She sounds surprised and the man coughs, and I force my stare back to her pupils.

  “Yes.”

  “You stabbed him?”

  “And pushed him out the window.” I filled in the blank.

  “Hmm.” I don’t know why she doesn’t like that. Doesn’t every cop love a confession?

  The man steps forward, his thigh resting against the table. “How’d you get him to the Dumpster?”

  I look up. “Would you believe I carried him?” I smile; he doesn’t. A shame. He smiled once during the invasive search of my property. It was a nice smile. I sigh and buy myself a few seconds. How did I get him to the Dumpster? I have no idea. I sigh again. Look down, like I am hesitant to say. “Someone helped me.”

  She leans forward and her breasts brush against the top of my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Definitely. Relationships don’t survive this. “Who?”

  Yes, Deanna. Indeed. Who? “A black guy. I don’t know his name. He was there, I offered money, he took it.”

  “A stranger?” David doesn’t sound all that surprised, and he shouldn’t. Not in my neighborhood. In my neighborhood it’d be odd for someone to walk from any cash, for any reason. In my neighborhood it’d be just as likely for them to help me carry the body to the Dumpster, then rape me behind it.

  “Yes. I paid him five hundred bucks to help me carry him to the Dumpster.”