A few seconds later, Aaron presses a bottle of water into my hand. Molly tips it up, and despite the low-level panic I can still feel surging through my body after seeing the picture of Graham Cregg, I also detect a contradictory wave of pleasure. She drains the bottle without pausing, and breathes deeply.
Molly savors the faint spicy aroma that remains in the air.
Chicken smells good too. Wish you’d saved me some.
You can’t be hungry.
No, but I haven’t eaten in nearly three years. It’s not the same when you’re riding in the backseat, is it?
Now that she mentions it, no.
I felt the water slide down my throat, but it was kind of like feeling water on my skin in the shower. And I caught that stray thought running through my head so I knew why she was sniffing the air, but I can’t actually smell the food.
Sam leans forward and looks into my eyes. “Listen, everyone in this room has seen the results of your . . . of your autopsy.” He shoots a quick glance at Taylor. Her expression is guilty for a split second and then shifts to defiant, so I’m guessing the autopsy report is one of those things Taylor meant when she said earlier that they knew she’d find out anyway.
Strictly speaking, what Sam said isn’t true. I haven’t seen the autopsy report. Neither has Deo.
“So,” Sam continues, “you don’t have to rehash anything that makes you uncomfortable. We just need any information you have that might help us catch and convict the bastards. Where it happened, maybe? Exactly when? They found your body in the woods about an hour south of Philly. Do you think that’s where you were killed? And we need to know anything you can tell us about your mom.”
“Mama was killed at Lucas’s apartment near Nationals Park. I was showing her the pictures he had of the girls in the extra bedroom he used as an office. The ads he was running. He’d told her he’d be in a meeting, wouldn’t be back until around ten, but he came home early. Mama shoved me into the closet when she heard him turnin’ the key in the lock, so I only heard the fight. Heard the gun. Didn’t see it. I stayed as quiet as I could, but then he opened the closet to get a sheet, I guess to wrap her body in. He hit me with the butt of the gun, and the next thing I know, I’m in the back of the van.”
“Do you know when?” Sam asks.
“About a week before Thanksgiving. I remember that because I was trying to convince Mama to go with me to see Pa and Mimmy for the holiday, and she said to give her a couple of days to think about it. And it was nighttime. I was tied up in the back of the van. The only window was in the back, so I didn’t see much. I could see some of the interstate signs, though. Enough to tell we were on I-95, headed north.”
“How long were you in the van?”
Molly thinks for a moment. “It was more than an hour. Closer to an hour and a half, I’d say. He had the radio on, and the second quarter of the Boston Celtics game had just started, right after we hit the road. The game ended just before we left the highway. We drove maybe ten minutes more before we stopped.”
When she says the word stopped, she flinches and I get a flash of a man’s shadow, framed by the open rear doors of a van. Lucas. This is the first time I’ve actually seen his face in her memory. He’s a large man, bald, looks like he spends too much time at the gym or punching people. He wears one of those dinky little beards that I’ve never seen anyone pull off except for Johnny Depp. I’m pretty sure he was the guy driving the van that nearly hit me and Deo.
And then I know what she’s holding back, what she’s hiding. Lucas is on top of her, and she’s trying to scream, but there’s tape over her mouth.
Oh, God, Molly. No! You need to tell them.
She’s angry that she let that bit slip and I feel her push—no, it’s more like she shoves me back.
I’m sorry. But you weren’t supposed to see that. I don’t want them to know, and that’s MY decision to make. Mine.
Even though I’m not happy about being pushed around in my own head, I feel too bad for her to argue about it.
Okay. I disagree, but . . . you’re right, it’s your call, not mine.
She starts talking again, faster now. “It was dark when Lucas pulled me out of the van. I saw a house off to the left, but we didn’t go inside. He took me out back, to this smaller house, like a shed or a cabin. Cregg kept us in there.”
“You mentioned a rear window. Do you remember seeing street signs, anything, before Lucas left the highway?”
My entire body goes rigid again. Thinking about leaving the highway means thinking about what happened shortly after, and she doesn’t want to go there again. But she forces her mind back to the van. A few seconds later and something clicks into place. She’s remembering one of those highway information signs that run across the top of the interstate.
“Yes! I-695. Twenty-two miles, twenty-two minutes. That’s what the sign said—the one on the side of the highway headed south. I remember because it was the same number.”