Michael sat stone-faced and still as the dead. Every word Kennett spoke upped his anxiety another degree.
“I wasn’t a detective back then, but I was on the case, helping out, doing my part, whatever was asked of me. See, I knew the girl, Mike—went to the same church. Knew her and her sister from a distance. Nice family, everyone knew them.”
“Where was that?” Michael asked. An anxious flutter entered his belly when he thought, Rye. He’s going to say, Rye, New York.
Instead, Kennett waved off the question.
“A city in Westchester County, you probably haven’t heard of it, doesn’t matter anyway.” His expression told a different story. Michael let it slide. He got his answer. Rye was in Westchester County.
“The boyfriend was persistent. Gotta give him that. Kept calling her at work, harassing her, that sort of thing.”
“Young love can be tough,” Michael said, forcing the words out of a throat so dry it hurt him to swallow.
“Or, it can be a deadly obsession.”
Kennett’s face remained grim as Michael let his gaze drift to the floor.
“She had a big heart, though, told her friends she was going to go see him after her shift ended. She scooped ice cream for a job.”
Michael thought: Sweet Licks on Bartlett Avenue.
From out of nowhere, Michael caught the scent of vanilla. It wasn’t the same air freshener the Marriott Marquis used to spruce up their hotel rooms. No, this vanilla smell was a blend of cream and sugar. It was a scent from his past, a spectral fragrance that wafted in the air before it dispersed into nothingness. Kennett didn’t seem to notice Michael’s attention drifting to another place and time; didn’t call out the pain that crossed his face. If Kennett did observe these changes he ignored them intentionally, as if to bask in Michael’s growing discomfort, not wanting it to end.
A light above Michael’s head seemed to grow brighter. As it did, he heard a strange hum, like a buzz from a surge of electricity. He knew it wasn’t the room lights going wonky, at least not any lights in this room. No, these were lights from a different place and time, a police interview room from long ago. The buzz that rang in his ears was a sound that haunted him; all these years later, Michael could still hear that buzz.
* * *
Detective Troy Emmett expressed skepticism by way of the cold stare he sent Joseph’s way. Four feet of table was all that separated him from his interrogator. Joseph didn’t know how many hours he’d been in that cramped room—more than four—and he felt like they were going in circles. Judging by Emmett’s exasperated sigh, the hand he ran through his short, dark hair, the detective was feeling the same.
“I just want to know the why, Joseph. Why did you kill her?”
“I told you, I didn’t,” Joseph said.
He was eighteen. An adult. Mom and Dad couldn’t come to his rescue. He was on his own.
Emmett’s dark, expressive eyes narrowed. An overhead light buzzed like a bug trap zapping a kill on a summer’s eve.
“Come on now, Joseph. I’m not stupid, and neither are you. We both know she went to see you. You two broke up. From all accounts, it was a pretty charged split, too. Lots of emotion. Did she say something to you? Did she embarrass you? We try to answer the whys. That’s why we’re still in this room. Maybe you just went to meet up with Brianna and you snapped, you freaked out, not saying you planned it. It was a moment when you lost control. I’m not going to bullshit you, Joseph, there are consequences regardless, but it could be vastly different if it’s manslaughter.”
“I told you. I went to meet her at the park, but when I got there she was gone. I saw a car, a red one, but I don’t remember the make or model, parked next to her car. Maybe she’s got a new boyfriend. I dunno. I just know she wasn’t there when I showed up.”
“A lot of people use that park, Joseph, so the car doesn’t mean that much to us. But her going there to meet you does, and now she’s dead. Someone cut her throat open.”
Emmett again showed Joseph a forensic photo of Brianna Sykes’s mutilated body. As before, Joseph held a placid expression despite the shocking grotesqueness of the visual. He knew Emmett was trying to get a rise out of him, and Joseph was too aware to take the bait.
Emmett continued, “The door is closing on your chance to tell us the truth. This is the time to tell your story, before the entire town forms a story of its own. I can only throw you the rope, man. You’ve got to grab it.”
“I told you the truth, I went to meet her, and when I showed up she wasn’t there. There was this red car parked next to her car. I went looking for her, and when I came back to the parking lot the red car was gone, and I never found Brianna.”
“What about those scratches on your hand, Joseph? Where did those come from?”
The police had already photographed his hands and wrists. He didn’t need to be a criminologist to know the police believed they were defensive wounds.
“I went through a bunch of thickets, branches, whatever, looking for her.”
“Because that’s what you do when your friend doesn’t show up for a meeting? You search the bushes?”
“Her car was there. I thought something had happened to her.”
“Something happened to her all right.”
Emmett had already read Joseph his Miranda rights, several times in fact. He didn’t have to talk, but he wanted to, because he knew what everyone in town was thinking—what his parents were thinking, too, though they didn’t come right out and say it. They thought that he did it, that he, Joseph Jacob Saunders, had murdered his ex-girlfriend Brianna Sykes in cold blood.
“It’s pretty uncommon to have a sixteen-year-old murdered in a small town like ours,” Detective Emmett said. “So you can imagine how upset people are about this case. They want answers, Joseph. And you’re going to give them, one way or another.”
Joseph shook his head.
He wanted to cry. He desperately wanted those tears to come. They would look good for the detective.
“Not a moment goes by when I’m not thinking of Brianna, when I don’t ask myself what would have happened if I wasn’t late getting to the park, if I got there even five minutes sooner. Would she still be alive?”
Emmett didn’t have to roll his eyes for Joseph to know the detective wasn’t buying it.
“Tell me again why you were late?”
“I stopped to get us sandwiches. And there was a line. It took longer than I thought.”
“You have the receipt for those sandwiches?”
“No, I left. Like I said, it was taking too long.”
He heard Emmett mutter, “How convenient.”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” Joseph said.
“Are you exercising your right to remain silent?”
“I am.”
“Okay, then. The interview is over.”