?????
Nate hadn’t yet been inside the Mt. Oanoke police station. He was surprised to see it was much like any other office; it could have been an insurance office, really. The phones ringing, the clickity-clack of typing, the smell of coffee and something sickly sweet. A birthday cake maybe. In the corner, a blue balloon bobbed.
He was led to an interview room, white and smelling of fresh paint, so fresh you could get high off the fumes. The plastic chairs were high-backed and comfortable. Nothing like he would have expected. Except in Mt. Oanoke, is the interview room really used? He imagined the druggies, tweaking and twitching in the holding cell at county. He might have been the first customer of the brand-new room.
Mackey gave him a bottle of water without asking, something Nate took as a good sign. They were being nice and easy.
“Winters, listen. Chances are, this girl ran away, got it? But there are some things we need to figure out.” Harper started, almost right away, without any preamble. Nate wondered if he went home at night and told his wife, I think I might be close to breaking this case wide open. Wide open, I tell you.
“Plus, not for nothing, Winters, but by your own admission you were the last to see her.” Mackey. This guy. A second-string detective in a town that barely needs one.
“Right. By my own admission. I called 911 for God’s sake. I’m not hiding anything, guys. I didn’t sleep with her. I tried to help her. I saw her run into the woods and I called the police.” Nate pulled his face down, tried to make it look sympathetic, but then admonished himself, answer the question you’re asked, you idiot.
Alecia used to tell him that he seemed to spend so much energy pretending to be something, that he’d forgotten how to just be. That’s what he felt like now, like the walls were closing in, and he was both annoyed that he was here, for he knew he truly didn’t do anything, and only a tiny bit fearful of getting into real trouble. Unless he was already in real trouble, but even then it was hard to tell.
“Yep, we got that part, Winters. But here’s a thing.” Mackey pushed the sides of his hair behind his ears, one then the other, with the flat part of his thumb. “Did you go after her?”
“I answered this already,” Nate said, the sweat springing from under his arms. The thing was, he’d already stupidly started this lie. He had to see it through. He’d tell the truth with everything else if he could just get out of this one little thing. It was stupid, the lie was for nothing.
“Humor us, Winters,” Harper said.
“No. I got out of the car, looked over the guardrail, called for Lucia to come back. She didn’t. I waited maybe five minutes and left.”
“You just left her there? Alone in the woods? A girl you claim, in previous interviews, was abused and alone. You just left her there.”
“Guys, listen. I was pretty mad at her. I am pretty mad at her. My life is a mess and it’s largely Lucia’s fault. She’s telling people we had an affair, which isn’t true. I could lose my job, my family, my whole life. So . . . yeah.” Nate nodded, going with the lie. He’d just have to win them over another way, the way he did with everyone else.
Harper nodded, rubbing his palm along his jaw. “This. This actually makes sense to me. I’m not sure I would have chased the bitch, either. What do you think, Mack?”
“So that was, what, elevenish? And you say you drove home before midnight?” Mackey asked, ignoring Harper. Harper rolled his eyes in Nate’s direction.
“Okay, then tell us about the relationship,” Harper said, steamrolling over Mackey.
“There was no relationship.” Nate clenched his hand into a fist and then spread his fingers out, stretching his palms. He was starting to itch, his skin buzzing and tight. “I’m a teacher. I also am closer to my students than most teachers. I’ve been invited over for family dinners more than a handful of times to various kids’ houses. I follow a lot of them on social media and keep track of who’s fighting with whom, who’s sleeping with whom. It makes me a more involved teacher. That’s all. I have, in the past, helped Lucia Hamm. I’ve given her close to $250 to stay at various motels and away from that brother. I’ve let her hang out in my classroom after school. A lot of kids had my cell phone number, for various reasons. She was one of them. But there was no relationship. No sexual relationship at all. None.”
He let the air out of his lungs. That was the first time he’d really said all that to anyone but Alecia. It was the first time anyone had let him get through the whole speech, anyway. Tripp usually cut him off, waving his hand around about propriety, changing the subject to baseball or basketball.
“What about this, though?” Harper asked, casually pushing a printout across the table. Nate glanced at it, his stomach starting to turn.
An email. Meet me at our hotel. I need you.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Yeah, this was real trouble.
“That’s not sexual. I see why you think it is but it’s not. This was the second time I helped her. ‘Our hotel’ meant the place we met before. To me, ‘I need you’ meant ‘I need help.’ ”
“But she didn’t say, ‘I need help.’ She said ‘I need you.’ These are drastically different things, Nate. You do see that, right?”
“Yeah, but all I can tell you is how it seemed to me. At the time.”
“From here, you look pretty stupid to me.” Mackey pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his teeth, gnawing it. “Why, though, that’s the thing we can’t figure out. Why would she set you up as you’re claiming here?”
“Because I rejected her.” He paused then, too long. Thinking about the rape, about her accusation, Andrew, his doubt, even though in the darkest parts of his night, it was the most obvious part of this entire debacle. Except he still didn’t know, for sure, what had happened. Was it his place, really, to go making that accusation? He thought of Marnie Evans then. Two days ago she’d called him. Almost whispering, like she was sneaking it. We still want you to help Andrew, Nate. We believe you didn’t do anything to that girl. Her voice hitched, a clucking sound. She came here before, she wasn’t right. Strange girl, you know?
Harper’s grin spread across his face, slowly and disbelieving. “You mean to tell me you think she’s accusing you of having an affair and she’s now missing because you rejected her advances? You turned her down?”
Mackey laughed along with him. “Seriously, son.”
Nate hated both of them, the heat flushing his neck, his cheeks.
Mackey leaned forward. “So what time did you say you got home that night, then? The night she ran into the woods? Monday, May fourth?”