My heart is in my throat. It beats so hard my blood pressure drops. My ears feel clogged, which makes it hard to hear anything but the beating of my own heart.
I throw my hands up in the air, flinching in anticipation of the gun going off. I put them in front of my face and brace myself for the searing pain of being shot.
I imagine that.
I imagine what it would feel like to be shot, to have bullets enter me.
“Please,” I beg, my voice desperate. “Please don’t shoot. Please don’t hurt me.”
I press my eyes shut tight. On the other side of the room, I picture Daniel Clarke’s face behind the gun, which I remember as sharp and angular from that day I saw him at the pool with Reese, with knitted, bushy eyebrows and long, unkempt hair. I imagine the intensity of his eyes, a vein on his forehead engorged.
When he speaks, the voice is unexpected and familiar.
“Mrs. Gray,” he says, and at first I’m so taken aback by thesound of my name that my reaction is delayed. My brain stops working, processing.
How does he know my name?
Slowly, I open my eyes. I realize that the man in the room with me is not Daniel Clarke.
It’s Detective Evans, who stands just inside the open door, pointing his gun at me.
“Detective Evans? Wh-what are you doing here?”
“A neighbor called,” he says, his voice controlled, sedate, unlike mine. He doesn’t lower his weapon. “They said they saw someone trespassing on Mr. Clarke’s property, entering his home.” He pauses, throwing the question back at me. “What areyoudoing here, Mrs. Gray?”
His expression is stony and cold in a way I’ve never seen. It takes a minute for him to lower his gun, and even when he does, it’s still slow, deliberate.
My knees buckle. I stumble backward in relief. I sag against a wall, letting it support me. My muscles feel heavy and weak. Tears well in my eyes and I fight them, not wanting to cry in front of Detective Evans or the other officers who come into the house behind him with their guns also drawn, lowering them at Detective Evans’s request.
“I asked: What are you doing here, Mrs. Gray?”
“I’m looking for Reese.”
“This is private property. You’re trespassing.”
It takes effort, but I push myself up off the wall. “I’m looking for my niece,” I say again, more sure this time, as if looking for Reese gives me the authority to break into someone’s home.
“And so are we,” he says. “You have to trust us, Mrs. Gray. You have to let us do our jobs. You can’t just be breaking into people’s homes on a hunch.” He pauses, finally returning his gun into its holster, holding my eyes the entire time. “I could arrest you for trespassing, you know.”
“Then do it,” I say, daring him, watching for a reaction. But Detective Evans does nothing, holding my gaze. “Her sweatshirt is here,” I tell him. “He has her.”
“A sweatshirt alone is not incriminating. It doesn’t mean anything. We don’t know how it got here. Maybe she gave it to him. Maybe she left it in his car and he brought it inside for safekeeping. You said they were hanging out. So maybe she was here. It doesn’t mean he did something to hurt her. It doesn’t mean he knows where she is.”
My voice tightens as I say, “There’s blood on it,” and for the first time, I get a reaction from him, something subtle but noticeable. A shifting of his body weight.
“Where is the sweatshirt?”
“Here,” I say, motioning to it, leaving the sweatshirt where it is. “I found it in the bedroom. The blood,” I tell him, “is on the sleeve. It’s right there,” I say, because the blood is visible without even having to touch the sweatshirt. “Reese is hurt. He did something to her,” I say, watching as one of the other officers slips his hands into gloves and moves past me for the shirt, lifting it and showing the blood to Detective Evans, who nods, telling him to bag it.
He says to me, “We don’t know for sure that the blood is hers, Mrs. Gray. We can’t just assume.”
“Of course it’s hers. Who else’s could it be?” I ask, but even as I do, I know the answer. Bile rises up inside of me and I press a hand to my mouth. I see that baseball bat in my mind’s eye. I see it covered with blood. I see it in Reese’s hands, the bat bloodied before she administered another blow to Emily, lying unconscious on the floor, drops of blood jettisoning through the air and onto the sleeve of her shirt.
“Here’s the problem with breaking in to find evidence,” he says, and I flush with shame, feeling embarrassed by the incongruity of it, because of his youth, because he could be twentyyears younger than me, and yet in a position of such authority that I feel inferior, like a child. “If Mr. Clarke did something to hurt your family and this sweatshirt is proof, a judge could say that it’s inadmissible because of the way it was obtained. The defense could claim you planted that sweatshirt here to set Mr. Clarke up. That you put the blood on it.”
“I didn’t,” I assert.
“I didn’t say that you did. I’m just trying to tell you why breaking in to obtain evidence might be problematic, in addition to the fact that it’s illegal. You have to trust me, Mrs. Gray. I am trying to find your niece. I am trying to figure out who killed your family. You have to let me do my job and not do anything that’s going to impede in this investigation.”
