They moved me that night to a different jail cell, where I could hear drunks screaming and yelling in other cells. I was cold and scared. I couldn’t sleep and sat huddled on the bed, the thin blanket wrapped around me. My mind was spinning, thinking about everything the police had said. It didn’t seem possible that I’d been arrested, that we might go to prison for murder. I got up a couple of times to use the toilet, first trying to clean the seat off with the rough toilet paper. Then I got back on my bed, staring at the walls and the ceiling, worrying about Ryan, wondering how far away his cell was in the station. I told myself the real murderer would be found and we’d be cleared. Everything was going to be okay. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about all those stories you’d hear about people being falsely convicted and imprisoned for years. I prayed that it wouldn’t happen to us.
The next day an officer brought me to an interview room. Doug Hicks, the constable I’d met the first night, was waiting for me. I’d seen him around town before. Unlike Frank McKinney, who would let you off with a warning, he seemed to enjoy arresting kids. He was younger than McKinney, maybe late twenties, blond with pale eyelashes and light blue eyes, ruddy cheeks that always looked windburned, and walked like he thought he was tough shit, his shoulders back and chest out. When I’d seen him around before, I just thought he was a jerk, but now I was terrified of him, scared he might twist things and mess me up. I held on to what my lawyer had told me—I didn’t have to tell them anything. I looked around the room, remembering what else he’d told me, that everything was wired.
In a calm voice, Hicks started off by asking me again to go through the events of that night, but this time I said, “On the advice of my lawyer, I wish to remain silent.”
He looked annoyed, his cheeks flushing redder, but said, “You don’t have to tell us anything, but it would help us clear things up a lot faster if we heard your side of it again. We might even be able to let you go.”
Now I knew he was bullshitting. They wouldn’t have arrested me in the first place if a simple explanation from me would get me out of this mess.
He waited for a moment, but when it was obvious I wasn’t going to say anything, he said, “We’ve been talking to Ryan.”
Ryan. He was there. I felt my heart stop, my breath catch in my throat. What had he been saying? What had he told them?
“He says it was you, Toni. You wanted your sister gone and it was your plan to kill her at the lake.”
What the hell? I knew I shouldn’t talk, but I couldn’t help it. “Ryan would never say that—because it’s not true. And he loves me.”
“Does he? Strange things happen after people have been arrested for murder, they get a lot more honest. And according to Ryan, this was all your idea. But if you want to tell me your side of it, I’m more than happy to listen.”
I looked him straight in the eye. “On the advice of my lawyer, I wish to remain silent.”
He didn’t show any reaction, just glanced down at a file in front of him.
“We heard you’ve been carrying a knife around with you.”
I jerked back in my seat. How did he know about that? Nicole must have told someone, but who? Shauna? My face felt hot, and I fought the urge to explain how the girls had been harassing me. He was trying to trip me up, messing with my head. A knife didn’t mean anything—Nicole wasn’t even killed with a knife.
“And we know your sister had been making your life hell, coming into your work, flirting with your boyfriend at parties…” My heart was beating harder and harder with each word out of his mouth. Who had been telling them this stuff? What was he talking about, flirting with my boyfriend? I wanted to ask questions, wanted to explain and defend, but I kept my mouth shut.
Hicks continued, “We also know that you lied to your parents recently and snuck into your neighbors’ house and stole some alcohol. But that’s not the only thing you’ve stolen recently. You also took your father’s pills.”
This time I couldn’t stay quiet. “I didn’t do that. It was Nicole.” Had my parents told them I stole pills? I felt sick with fear now, with betrayal.
He leaned forward, excited that he’d provoked me. “You were angry with her for telling on you, weren’t you? You wanted to teach her a lesson.”
I was shaking my head. “No, no, no.”
He leaned back, stared at me, assessing, waiting. The pressure built. He was going to hit me with something else, something big. I could feel it.
“There are witnesses,” he said, “who saw you arguing with your sister the night she was murdered.”
The room closed in on me and I gasped for breath. “No, that’s not true!”
“We’ve got four girls who saw you at the lake with Ryan, fighting with Nicole before she was murdered. We know you did it, Toni.”
Four girls. It had to be Shauna and her friends. Why would they lie about something like that? My head was spinning, trying to understand what this meant.
This time I broke.
“They’re making it up. They hate me—they’ve made my life hell for the last year. Nicole was hanging out with them all the time, and she was sneaking out to see some guy, but I don’t know his name. They might know who really—”
“We also have DNA, yours and Ryan’s. You both had scratches on your arms and hands. There was no one else’s DNA or blood at the scene, not on Nicole’s body, not on the truck. You were the only people there.”
I tried to stay calm, but I had to fight to hold back tears. I knew we hadn’t killed her. Someone else had to have been there. I wanted to talk to my dad and to my lawyer. I wanted someone to explain all this. What was going to happen to us?