“Rebel?”
I looked up from the black coffee mug that said Denver in white on the side with some white stripes under it, through which there was a gold badge, to see Lieutenant Hank Nightingale striding toward me.
I grabbed my bag, shoved the strap on my shoulder and popped up out of my seat. “Hi. Uh, hi. Hi.”
Goddamn it.
I waved.
Goddamn it.
He gave me another smile, this one partially amused, partially pained, partially forced. It appeared he wasn’t a big fan of women made nervous due to the fact they were sitting in a police station at four in the morning due to another fact, that one being their friend had been killed.
He still thought I was funny.
Shit.
“Would you come with me?”
I nodded.
I forced myself to stop doing that and said, “Yes. Sure. Yeah.”
He swung his arm out and I moved toward him, but he didn’t lead. He fell in step beside me.
He also didn’t take me to an interrogation room, which was what my mind, for the last fifteen minutes I’d been sitting in the waiting area being brought coffee by a nice Hispanic cop in a uniform and assured “Hank” wouldn’t make me wait too long, had conjured was the next step.
But of course I didn’t have anything to be interrogated about.
He took me to a large room with a lot of desks, some offices that had walls of glass on one end and rounding this out there were a bunch of file cabinets and whiteboards and one couch.
It wasn’t teeming with people, but it was bustling more than I would think it should be at four on a Thursday morning.
Then again, Denver was a city, not a Podunk town. Crime happened in cities.
It just never involved me.
And then there was Diane.
He took me to a desk another Hispanic man was sitting on. This Hispanic man was in civvies, and if I was in another frame of mind, I’d happily turn that mind over to trying to decide which of them looked better in their jeans: linebacker sweetheart who carried handkerchiefs or edgy Latin hottie who some might say needed a shave, but I would not.
“Have a seat.” Nightingale gestured to the chair sitting next to the desk.
I sat, tucking my purse in my lap and setting my mug of coffee on his desk.
“This is my partner, Lieutenant Eddie Chavez,” he introduced.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” Lieutenant Chavez replied.
Nightingale sat in the desk’s swivel chair, not close to me, but turned to me.
“We’re not gonna take a lot of your time. We’re gonna ask some questions. I’m gonna take notes,” Nightingale stated, reaching a long arm out for a worn leather-bound pad and the pen sitting beside it on the desk. “And we’ll get you home as soon as we can.”
“Who’s gonna tell Diane’s folks?” I asked.
Both Chavez and Nightingale focused on me.
Whoa.
I had a hot flash I didn’t quite understand, outside the fact these two men could focus in such a way half the energy in a room was sucked into their effort.
“Do you know Diane’s folks?” Chavez asked.
I nodded to him. “And I should . . . we’re . . . I know them. We’re close. We worked to try to get Diane . . .”
I trailed off.
“To try to get Diane . . . what?” Chavez queried.
“To uh, stop what she was doing.”
“What was she doing?” Nightingale asked.
I drew in breath.
Then I looked him in the eyes. “Drugs. Porn. And I mean starring in porn movies. Not watching them. Chantilly. Chantilly and porn. Google those words. You’ll see a different picture of Diane than whatever you saw tonight.”
Nightingale’s jaw got tight, and when I looked to Chavez, I saw his stubbled one ticking.
“So I should . . . I feel like I should be there when they’re told. Diane’s folks, I mean,” I finished my earlier statement.
“We’re locating next of kin. That was next on our list. To do the notification,” Nightingale shared. “If you’d come, and you think it would be of comfort to them, we’d appreciate you being there.”
“I’ll do that.”
Nightingale nodded.
Chavez cleared his throat and spoke.
“You were at her house tonight. Can you explain why?”
“I got a call,” I told him.
“From who?” he asked. “And what did they say?”
“I don’t know. It was a female. Her voice sounded familiar, but I don’t remember how. She also sounded really scared. She called on my landline.”
“Your landline?” Nightingale asked, having an uncanny gift of being able to write in his notepad even as he was looking at me.
Cop skills.
I nodded to him. “Yeah. No one uses that. I only have it because I got it in a bundle with cable and Internet, and then I told my brother about the bundle and he said I lived alone, do I keep my cell by my bed when I’m sleeping? And I said no. And he said he wanted me to keep my cell by my bed. And I said I didn’t want ugly cords around my bed and I charge my cell at night. So he said to get a regular phone and have it by my bed. And I said why? And he said because I live alone and he’d feel a lot freaking better if I had a phone close in case anything happened in the night, I could—”
I cut myself off.
Both men watched me patiently, and I made the decision to stop babbling about Diesel, my protective brother, and definitely stop talking about things happening to women alone in the middle of the night.
I went on, not babbling this time. “So I think, I mean, thinking on it, maybe I’m listed. And obviously my cell isn’t. So whoever it was, was trying to find me and that’s how she found me.”
“What did she say?” Nightingale queried.
“She said, ‘If you still care about Chantilly, you better come and see to Chantilly.’ Then she hung up. And that creeped me out not only because it was two in the morning and I had a call on my landline, or because she said that, and it was clearly a warning. But she called her Chantilly. No one calls her Chantilly.”
“Even at work?” Chavez asked.
I shrugged, shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to her . . .” I swallowed, “work.”
“Of course,” Nightingale muttered. “So you went to Diane’s after the call?”
“I called her,” I told him. “She didn’t answer. I called her again. She didn’t answer. I was creeped out enough to get up and go. So I went. I called her again on the way.”
“She didn’t answer,” Chavez finished for me.
And again I was nodding to Chavez.
“We’ve listened to the 911 call,” Nightingale stated. “You didn’t go inside?”
I shook my head. “I got to her house. The lights were on. But when I got up to the door, it was open.” I shook my head again. “Not open, ajar. Not much, a few inches, but it freaked me. She doesn’t live in a good ’hood. No one leaves their door ajar in the middle of the night. I looked into the window, you could see light through the blinds, one blind was not all the way down. I saw a lamp that was lit, but it was on the floor, the shade off, but still, it was lit. It tripped me out. I got worried, Diane didn’t keep good company, and not just the porn variety of not-good company. So, I ran back to my car, got in and called 911.”
“That was the smart thing to do, Rebel,” Chavez informed me.
“Was she . . . was she, I mean,” more swallowing, goddamn it, “should I have gone in?”
“No,” Nightingale said. “Like Eddie just told you, what you did was right.”
I looked in his eyes again. “What I mean to ask is, could I have helped her?”
Nightingale leaned back in his chair, sorrow filling his eyes for a second before he blanked it and answered gently, “No, Rebel. She was gone before you arrived.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
It was his turn to nod. “I’m sure.”
“You’re sure,” I pushed.
“I’m sure, Rebel,” he said quietly.
I looked to my purse in my lap and tried deep breathing again.
It came shallow.
And more shallow.
Then came my eyes feeling funny.
“Rebel—” Nightingale called softly.
I aimed my gaze at him and snapped, “Why is it so hard to breathe?”
“We’ll give you a minute,” he offered. “You want more coffee?”
“I want my friend not to be dead,” I told him.
He glanced at Chavez.
“She was going to be a goddamned therapist,” I shared.
Nightingale looked back at me.
“She didn’t know, physical, occupational, even speech. She was leaning toward physical. She already had her psychology degree. But she wasn’t into it. Her folks and I thought she just wasn’t coping. You know, not having the challenge of school. Getting good grades. Working hard at something. Then she took that bad fall. Playing volleyball. Fucking volleyball. She was into sports. So fit. God. Always running or hiking or playing tennis or volleyball. Goes up for a spike, runs into the other chick, bam!”
Nightingale and Chavez were silent.
“Docs give her Oxycontin.”
“Damn,” Nightingale murmured.
“Yeah,” I spat. “Next thing you know she’s on oxy, on meth, smoking pot, and starring in porn movies as Chantilly.”
I shuffled my ass back in my seat, tucking my purse deep into my abdomen. So deep, I could feel the clasp digging into my flesh.
Neither man spoke.