“Then enlighten me.”
She just shakes her head, and exasperation tenses my spine, but I don’t let it show.
“Come on, Liz. I feel guilty, okay?”
That gives her pause, and she looks up at me, confused.
“I introduced you to the guy,” I remind her sheepishly. “The night before it happened, remember? Friday night, at Toolies.”
She frowns. “It happened Friday night.”
What? That makes no sense.
Liz’s eyes flash with something I don’t quite make out, but it resembles fear, and she turns and resumes her pace.
But I keep up with her easily. “Friday?” I ask, but she says nothing. “After the bar?”
“No, later. On my way home,” Liz says dismissively, quickening her pace.
I’ve already spoken to Kari Marx, Liz’s SDT sister who saw Liz come home that night—well around four that morning, according to her. Beth and I left Toolies around one a.m., when Liz was still there, so Brody must have attacked her sometime between then and what? Three-thirty?
But a memory hits me like a ton of bricks—Brody smoking outside Standman, hours after the bar, when I walked Beth home just after three. Around the same time he would have been attacking Liz.
“Where did it happen?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer.
“Liz.”
“On Greek row,” is all she gives me. It’s vague, but it holds a world of meaning, because Greek row is on the opposite side of campus—almost an hour walk from Standman Hall, and with the Friday night traffic after the bars close down at two a.m., even by car it would likely take that long…
But Brody couldn’t have been in two places at once.
“He wasn’t on Greek row at that time, Liz,” I say meaningfully, and she stops in her tracks.
Holy fucking shit.
“He was at Standman,” I tell her. “I saw him.”
But she just stands there, frozen and fearful, and I don’t understand it.
Unless…“You wouldn’t make that shit up, Liz…” Would she? Fuck.
“Fuck you!” she snarls at me, and then resumes her hostile, purposeful gait.
I grab her shoulder just firmly enough to get her attention, and she whirls around and jumps away, her back tight with terror, and it takes me aback. She’s behaving like a cornered animal, and I show my palms again to remind her that I’m harmless. I’m a member of her fucking brother frat, for fuck sake.
For the first time, I wonder if her “attempted assault” was more than just an attempt, and guilt surges hard for grabbing her like that.
But I can’t comprehend why she’d lie to the police about what happened any more than I could fathom why she wouldn’t cooperate with them.
“What. The fuck. Is going on?” I demand.
Liz’s eyes dart between mine as if searching for something. “You wouldn’t understand,” she breathes tremulously.
I take a slow, non-threatening step toward her. “Try me.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t.” Her eyes fill with tears, and they unsettle me to no end. The last thing I wanted was to make her fucking cry.
