Moving to the other panel, she spotted the two men on the porch, both in suits. One had a phone clipped to his belt.
Had they heard her in the garage, seen her feet?
The buzzer became a knock.
She could hear the crackle of a two-way radio through the door.
“Ma’am” a voice came. “Ma’am, I’m Detective Renton. This is Detective Furey. Can we speak to you?”
Three minutes later, after throwing on a pair of Devon’s workout capris swiped from the laundry basket, streaking a dish towel up and down her arms, across her face even, she opened the door.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My son is very sick.”
“We’re sorry to bother you at home, Mrs. Knox,” said the younger one, Detective Fury, or Furey—had that really been his name?
The detectives settled into the slow-sinking sofa across from Katie in the wing chair, which still seemed to bear the scent of Gwen from days before, tuberose and musk.
The chair she and Eric had once copulated on. That’s the word that came into her soiled brain. Copulated. Animals.
But she needed to focus. She needed to—
“Is Mr. Knox here?” Detective Renton asked.
And there it was.
“He’s at work.”
The way they were watching her, she wondered how tight the capris were, how her face looked. Her hands went to her forehead, the slick of sweat there. Had she even brushed her teeth?
“What I can help you with?” she said. “What is it you want?”
“Mrs. Knox, are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said. Breathing from the center, like Coach T. always told Devon to do. Breathe, focus, let go. Breathe, believe, and battle. “But my son has scarlet fever. You probably shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m sorry about your son, Mrs. Knox,” Renton said. “But don’t worry about us. We’re strong like bulls.” He tried to smile, or do something with his face.
“This won’t take long,” said the young one, Furey, with the freshly shaved neck, pink and angry. But his voice was gentle. “We just have a few follow-up questions.”
“Questions?”
“How’s your daughter doing?”
The hover of relief in her throat made it hard to talk. The locker-room fight, of course. “She’s fine,” Katie said, folding her hands, resting them on her thighs, the slippery spandex of Devon’s capris a half a foot too short for her. “As fine as can be expected.”
“That’s good news,” said Furey, very earnest. He was just a boy, really. The Adam’s apple, the razor marks on his neck. Officer Furey, Boy Detective
“I’m sure you heard,” Detective Renton said. “Miss Belfour has been under twenty-four-hour psychiatric care since the incident.”
“Yes. We were very glad.”
“Well, it looks like she’s going home today,” he said, and then paused.
“Really?” she said. They both seemed to be watching her so closely, even leaning forward. Scrutinizing. Were there paint chips under her fingernails, maybe a ribbon of half-shredded evidence stuck to her foot bottom, pink slivers of the repair receipt clinging to her ankles? You could never hide it all.
“So we’ll be talking to Miss Belfour again about what happened,” Renton continued, watery eyes on her. “After the incident, she wasn’t too coherent, and after her attorney arrived, well, she wasn’t talking anymore.”
“Wait,” Katie said, her voice squeaking like the uneven bars, like Devon’s hands gripping the fiberglass, body swinging, chalk spraying. “Wait. I don’t understand. She’s a criminal. She attacked my little girl. You’re charging her, right?”
They both looked at her.
“There haven’t been any charges yet,” Renton said, voice even. “Before we submit our report to the DA, we need to follow up on a few things we’ve learned.”
“What things?” Katie said. Why had they come here, anyway, instead of calling her to the station? And wasn’t it odd that they’d just stopped by, unannounced? Renton with his gravelly voice and his worn skin like an old potato, right alongside Furey with his delicate boy face, and was one the good cop and one the bad?
The thought came to her. “What happened to Officer Crandall? He’s the one we spoke to after my daughter was attacked. Wasn’t this his case?”
The two men looked at her, Furey’s forehead crinkling gently.
Then: the squawk of her phone upstairs, those stroking first beats of “Assassin’s Tango.”
“Excuse me.” She leaped to her feet, moving quickly to the stairs.
“If that’s your husband, Mrs. Knox,” Renton called out, “we’d like to speak to him too. He works out of that studio over on Merricat Road, right?”
“Gwen,” she whispered, shutting the upstairs bathroom door behind her, making sure no one could hear. “I can’t talk now.”