by Lisa Unger
He has always claimed his innocence, that his only crime was acting in panic and hiding her murdered body. I’ve seen him interviewed; he’s very convincing. And there is a whole camp of people who believe him, have been lobbying for his release for years. Maybe he believes it, too. Maybe, over the years, he has convinced himself that it’s true. The psyche is a powerful thing, it can bend and obscure reality, turn it into exactly what we desire or expect. How much of the world is just a figment of our imagination, and the imaginations of those around us?
That’s the kind of question that would have kept Beck and me up all night. How I wished she were there to talk to. She’d know what to say, how to comfort me, how to make the whole thing seem ludicrous. We’d fire up a joint and smoke it all away. She did like her mind-altering substances, our Beck, and I was certain she’d been the one taking my pills. Who else? Not the prim and proper Ainsley, who had run home to Mommy and Daddy.
“How about I write to him?” said Dr. Cooper. The room was feeling overwarm and I was so tired. “I’ll tell him that you’re struggling with some things right now and you’re not up to a conversation with him or his investigator. That when you are—if you are, at some point—we’ll get in touch.”
That sounded good. It was an optimistic blow-off, a hopeful fuck-you. I’ll get in touch is probably not the sentence someone on death row wants to hear. But then again, we’re all on death row, aren’t we? Most of us just don’t know it. On the day she died, did my mother know it was her last day on earth, did Elizabeth—no pardon, no appeal, no stay of execution?
“Okay,” I said. “That sounds like the right thing to do for now.”
She handed me two prescriptions. “Dr. Black sent these by messenger. He said be careful with these once you get them filled, lock them up. He won’t be able to bend the rules more than once. The street value of these drugs is apparently quite high, so the protocols are strict.”
We talked a while longer. She advised me to stay off Facebook, and, yes, of course call my family attorney and let him know what was happening, get his advice before talking to the police again. She suggested again that I take a little hiatus to Florida, or that I ask my aunt and uncle to come up for support. But how could I? They did so much for me already and I did nothing but cause them trouble, ruin all their holidays and vacations just by being alive.
I was feeling better when there was a hard knock at the door that startled us both.
“Dr. Cooper,” came a voice through the door. She was already up and moving forward. I wanted to call her back. “It’s Detective Ferrigno with The Hollows PD. Do you have Lana Granger in your office?”
“You are interrupting a session with a patient,” she said. She opened the door and blocked the entrance with her body.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” said the detective. I could see his dark, bulky form outside. Then I was aware of the flashing lights through the window. “We need to bring Lana Granger in for questioning.”
“This young person is in a fragile emotional state,” said Dr. Cooper, still barring the door.
“I understand,” he said. “But we still need to speak to Miss Granger.” Did he lean on my name oddly? Did they know?
“Lana,” said Dr. Cooper. Her face was pale with concern. “Write down the name and number of your attorney. I will call him and meet you at the police station. Do not say anything until someone is there to represent you.”
“Okay,” I said. She handed me a pad and pen and I did as she’d asked.
I saw the detective cast an annoyed look in her direction as she allowed him entry into her office. Then I gathered up my things and let him lead me outside to his squad car. I assumed that he was trying to rattle me by making such a big show of bringing me in. But he didn’t know me very well.
They left me in a cool gray room for a while, where I sat patiently waiting. I kept my body still and my eyes focused on the table in front of me. If I had been smart, I’d have shed a few tears, looked frightened. I knew they were watching me; I could see the red light on the camera mounted in the far right corner of the room. They wanted you to fit a particular mold, and when you didn’t, they were suspicious. That was one of the things that had sunk my father, that first aroused suspicion. He didn’t seem worried enough when she was missing, grief-stricken enough when she was found. He didn’t howl and collapse, didn’t put on the show everyone expected to see. But we are a family of stoics; we aren’t hardwired to display our feelings. Inside, my father was shattered. For two nights I listened to him sobbing in his empty bed while I lay alone in mine.
He and I never had much of a relationship. He traveled much of the time, and what I knew about him even as a child was that when he was around, my mother cried a lot. There was fighting, yelling carrying through the Sheetrock walls. He was dark-haired like me. He sat at the head of the table when he was home, and we ate dinner while he awkwardly tried to facilitate conversations So, tell me about school. What are your teachers like? How’s the violin coming along? We endured him.
When he was away, we often ate dinner in front of the television, picking out our favorite movies and sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of little standing trays. We painted in the afternoons, or went for long walks on the beach. Then I’d do my homework while my mother cooked our dinner. My early life with her—when we were alone—was quiet. I wasn’t a normal kid. I had a few friends. Okay, I didn’t have any friends, until I was much older. I had doctor’s appointments and took medication. I was often overwhelmed by events at school. There were always problems, and I frequently needed to come home. I try not to think about it. I wasn’t a nice little kid, and I always just wanted to be with my mother. How hard it must have been for her.
But I have trouble painting a picture of her now. Sometimes I can’t remember her face, or the sound of her voice. Because I was a child, I knew her only as she related to me. That’s why she has slipped away, I think. Because I am no longer a child, and she has been gone for so long.
What would she say to me now? Take a deep breath, she used to say when I spun out of control. Just be yourself, she’d advise when I was nervous about people or a new school (there were many schools). Just do your best. It was all she had. But unfortunately that was not the best advice for a kid like me.
The door opened and Detective Ferrigno walked in. He was a man who always looked tired, who always seemed to be carrying a burden. He sat heavily in the chair across from me and started to rub his eyes. He leaned his elbows on the table and then held me in his gaze. He smelled like hamburgers and onions.
“You and I need to talk about a few things,” he said.
“I would prefer to wait until my attorney is present,” I said.
“You’re not under arrest,” he said. He gave me a comforting shake of his head. “I just need your help.”
I offered him an uncertain smile. “And I want to help. But I need to speak to my attorney first.”
“Why?” he asked. His concern, his mystification, was not quite sincere. “Are you hiding something from me?”
I focused on details to calm myself. There was an analog clock on the wall that seemed to have stopped at ten past twelve. The gray paint was peeling in places, and there was a crack in the ceiling.
“Of course not.” I put my hand on the faux-wood table. It was bolted to the ground, as was my chair.
“Then we don’t need to go there, do we? You know, attorneys and all that.”
I was done talking to him, communicated this by looking away from him and not answering. There was a rhythmic sound, blood pumping in my ears. I knew I didn’t seem scared to him, but I was. What was this all about? What did they want from me?
“Okay,” he said. “How about I talk and you just listen? Maybe you’ll feel like chiming in?”
The fluorescent lights above us buzzed unpleasantly in the thick silence of the room. He was waiting, watching me. I gave him an indifferent glance, then looked at the mottled laminate floor—easy for c
leaning blood, vomit, what have you.
I think about you all the time, she said. Beck’s voice was soft and her skin was so white it glowed in the moonlight. She was shivering. I wanted to reach out to touch her, but instead I wrapped my arms around myself.
Do you think about me? she whispered. Do you ever think about that night?
No, I lied. I don’t.
She rolled over on her side, pressed up against my shoulder. Then she put her head in her hands and started to cry.
How can you be so cold? she asked, and the note of despair in her voice cut me to the bone. She was a girl who needed to love and be loved. She was all heat and noise; her energy burned and roared. Her anger was a hurricane, and her love was more terrifying than that. I felt like a glass vial beside her, empty and brittle, quivering in her thrall. Oh, I wanted to hold her, I did. I wanted to tell her that I loved her and that I thought about her all the time when we were apart. But I was too fragile and she gave off too much heat. I was about to shatter.
After a while she looked up at me. Her eyes were wet and red, her cheeks flushed. She was so beautiful she glowed.
You don’t have to hide, she said. She reached for my face and I didn’t draw it away. I know who you are.
You don’t, I said. My voice was hoarse and low.
But I do. She moved in closer, and I couldn’t pull away from her. I tried to push her away, but it was a weak effort and she saw it for what it was, kept pressing in. Finally, I let her curl her arm around my neck and draw herself nearer, nearer until she was straddling me. She ran her fingers through my hair and now it was my turn to shake.
Shhh, she said. It’s okay. Let me love you. And she said my name. My real name. I was shaken to the core by the sound of it on her tongue. She did know me. She knew all of me. OhGodohGod, she knew everything. I had never been more terrified.
And then she put her mouth to mine, and I wrapped my arms around her. Her kiss was so hot and wet, so sweet, and I let myself drown in it.
“This is what we know,” Detective Ferrigno said. He started ticking his thumb and fingertips together. “We know that you and Rebecca had a fight big enough to draw attention to yourselves in the library and that you stormed out.”
He waited, maybe looking for a reaction. Then he went on.
“We know that a few minutes later she followed you. Another student saw you walk the trail that led into the woods.”
Again he paused, but I kept my gaze leveled at the wall.
“It was late and dark, and you claimed not to have been feeling well, and still you headed off onto one of the running trails.”
Still, I wasn’t going to say anything. He was too experienced to be agitated with my silence. So he just kept going.
“Rebecca went after you. She called to you, and you didn’t acknowledge her. She, too, was witnessed heading onto that same trail.”
He waited a moment, presumably to allow me to make a comment. But I had nothing to say.
“Two hours later, you emerged from the woods alone. No one ever saw Rebecca come out.”
I picked a piece of lint off my sleeve, an action that seemed to annoy him. It was a cavalier act of body language. It said, I don’t care about you or what’s happening here. Now I saw a flash of temper on his face.
“You have lied to me a couple of times now,” he said. “And that doesn’t look very good.”
I cleared my throat, but still I said nothing. He had all the information, right? What did I have to contribute? Nothing.
“My question is, what transpired between the two of you in those woods. What was going on in there for two hours?”
I folded my arms across the table and laid my head down. He cocked his to the side, then he leaned back in his chair. I watched it tilt precariously and thought how embarrassed he’d be if he fell. Outside, I heard the sound of voices, one of them raised.
“You know what I don’t like? What’s bothering me?” He was talking to me but looking toward the door. He knew time was running out; soon my lawyer would be here and he’d have to leave. I blinked my eyes to show him I was listening.
“Two girls go missing from the same small university in two years. And both of them are connected to you.”
I thought about Luke’s snide remark. It’s a statistical anomaly, he’d said. True. When you add my mother into the equation, things start to look really strange, don’t they? I’m a misery magnet. Anyone connected to me had better watch out.
“The investigator on that case thought that you were hiding something. Elizabeth’s boyfriend claimed, still claims, that they never fought that night. Someone saw you arguing with her that night, though.”
That sent a little jolt through me.
“No,” I said, before I could stop myself. “She was upset. I was trying to comfort her, to calm her down.”
“Ah,” he said. “She speaks. What was she upset about?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She was really drunk. And so was I. I went to get her a glass of water, to try to help her sober up a little. But when I got back to where we were, she was gone.”
“Hmm,” he said.
“Her death was ruled an accident,” I said.
“There was no evidence of any foul play,” he conceded. “But the investigator on the case? He was never quite satisfied with the ruling.”
Jones Cooper had done his investigating back then, that was for sure. I had been over and over the fuzzy details of my last encounter with Elizabeth. I did remember now saying that I’d gone to get her a glass of water. It’s okay, I told her. Just stay here. I’ll get you a glass of water. You need to sober up. The drunk leading the drunk.
But I didn’t remember if I ever actually gave her the water. I shouldn’t have left her. I should have dragged her with me. She had been shaking, tears of blue mascara on her face. Why did I leave her? I told Jones Cooper all of this a hundred times. I sensed he never believed me. He sensed that I was hiding something, and he was right. But it had nothing to do with Elizabeth. I told Detective Ferrigno all of it again.
“What does any of this have to do with Beck?” I said. My voice broke, betraying the depth of my emotion. And he looked surprised by it, drew himself back a little with a frown. In general, I knew myself to have a disconcertingly flat affect. It couldn’t be helped. It had to do with my meds, without which, I assure you, I could be quite the opposite.
There was a loud knock on the door then, and Sky Lawrence walked in, bringing with him the scent of expensive cologne and an aura of authority. He was stooped and ancient, with a shiny bald head and a suit that looked too big, as though he’d taken something that had suddenly shrunk him in his clothes. He was not aging well. He’d always seemed old, but I didn’t remember him ever looking like a golem. Still, he drew all the energy in the room to him when he entered.
There was some banter between him and the detective, something about leveling charges or releasing me. And after a few minutes, I was exiting the room with Sky. We walked down a long hallway together until we entered a waiting room where I saw two people I didn’t expect to see: Langdon and my aunt Bridgette.
My aunt rose to greet me, took me gingerly in her arms. I knew she expected me to pull away, but I found myself clinging to her and her to me. Maybe Beck had melted something in me that night, something that had frozen solid. But the thaw was more pain than pleasure.
They took me back to my dorm, which immediately revealed itself as a bad idea. There were so many people milling about that it looked like a county fair. A gaggle of reporters hovered around the front entrance, being kept at bay by some of the university security guards. I wanted to hide my head and run as we exited the vehicle, take cover from the storm of questions and judgments. But I forced myself to walk at a normal pace from the car to the dorm, flanked by Langdon, my aunt, and Sky. Apparently, the news was out that I had been brought in for questioning.
Are you a person of interest in the case? What were you two fighting about? Where is B
eck? Were you lovers? It was a hailstorm of idiotic and sensational questions, but I kept my face blank and didn’t speak—or breathe—until we were inside. The lobby lounge area went silent as I entered, which was almost worse than the shouting outside. I felt everyone’s eyes on me as we moved toward the elevator. We all rode it in silence, my aunt holding tight to my arm, up to my floor. I could smell her perfume; it was warm and flowery, a bed of poppies where I wanted to lay my head down and sleep forever.
But when we entered the dorm room, we found Frank and Lynne waiting for us. They sat at our small bistro table, drinking tea, looking shrunken and fatigued.
“Mr. and Mrs. Miller, this might not be the best time,” said Langdon on seeing them.
“And when would be a better time?” asked Lynne. Her voice was shrill and quaking. “Our daughter is missing and Lana was the last person to see her. They went into the woods together and only Lana walked out. She knows something about Rebecca. What is it, Lana? Where is she?”
“I don’t know where she is,” I answered.
“They found her scarf during the search today,” said Frank. He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “That pink chiffon scarf she always wore. There was blood on it.”
My aunt moved in to comfort her, led her over to the couch with an arm around her shoulder.
“We know she cares about you,” said Frank. He was leaning over the table toward me, one arm extended out in a kind of reaching gesture. “If you know something, now really is the time to tell us. We’re coming unglued here.”
“Lana isn’t going to be answering any questions tonight,” said Sky. He looked so odd in this context. He didn’t belong in this part of my life, and he seemed like one of those Colorforms figures from when I was a kid. He was flat and plastic, affixed to a scene that wasn’t real in the first place.
“Where’s your room?” he asked, and I nodded toward the closed door. I was surprised that the police hadn’t searched it. That couldn’t be far off, I thought as Sky led me along.