“I don’t understand.” My voice was high now, even more panicked than Sam’s. It felt like the room was running out of air. “If you didn’t know her, how could you have possibly ended up at her house? How could you have gotten her earring?”
He didn’t answer. He just stood there, frozen, eyes locked on the pile of clothes on the floor. Then, suddenly, he started to pace, back and forth, like some kind of frightened animal.Stop, Sam,I pleaded in my head.Please stop.But I was too afraid to say a word.
“I don’t think I knew her,” he said finally, continuing to stalk back and forth. “But I do think maybe I’d seen her before, at Blue Bottle.”
“Blue Bottle? What’s that?”
“It’s a café.”
“Not around here, it’s not.” The bile was creeping back up my throat.
“It’s in Center Slope,” he said. “Also not that far from where she lives. I saw a picture of her—I think maybe I did see her a couple times at Blue Bottle, reading there, while I was working.”
“Since when do you work at some café in Center Slope?” I snapped. “You hate Center Slope!”
“I needed a change of scenery,” he said, defensive. “I didn’t tell you because I felt guilty spending extra money on fancy coffee. Anyway, I don’t know for sure that it was her, but she was, um, striking. Similar to the woman who was killed.”
“Striking? Are you fucking kidding me!” I shouted. “So what?You’re saying you guys hooked up that night or something?”
“I can’t see how,” Sam said. “I’m just trying to tell you absolutely everything I know. I’m trying to come clean.”
“Great,” I whispered. “That’s so fucking great.”
Suddenly Sam stopped pacing and headed over to the clothes pile and started digging through like he was searching for something in particular.No,was all I could think.I don’t want to know anything more.
When he stood, he was holding out one of his white basketball sneakers. He pointed to a long brown streak across the side, about an inch wide and three inches long.
“Also, I found this earlier today.”
“What is that?”
Sam set the shoe down on our bureau, where we both stared at it. “It could be blood, right?”
“Sam, what the hell are you—” My voice cracked so hard I winced.
“I don’t know, Lizzie.”
“You hit your head that same night. That’s got to be your blood,” I said, even though all that blood was already nagging at me.
Sam shook his head. “I’d left my basketball sneakers out in the hall. Probably so I could sneak in quietly. I saw them out there when we got home from Methodist. I wore my Vans to the hospital.”
I stood. And the room began to spin.
“Well, then somebody must have seen you that night. At the time she was killed, I mean.” I moved away, backed up against the windows to steady myself. “What about the bartender after basketball—”
“I already asked,” Sam said. His face was all angles in the shadows, beautiful, but menacing now. “He doesn’t remember me.”
“Or bar receipts,” I pressed, frantic for anything to hold on to, for something to save us. “They put Amanda’s time of death between ten p.m. and eleven p.m. Basketball isn’t over until ten p.m., right? Even staying past eleven, that would hardly give you enough time for one or two drinks. Obviously, to be that drunk, you had way more than that.”
Sam shook his head again. “We didn’t end up playingbasketball that night. There weren’t enough guys, beginning of summer and all that. We were at Freddy’s by seven. Somebody suggested doing shots. Wasn’t me, I swear. But I had a bunch in a row. I do remember that.”
“For Christ’s sake, Sam!” I screamed so loud this time it hurt my throat. “How many more fucking things are you leaving out!”
Sam wouldn’t even look at me now. We both knew what this meant. At that pace, he’d have been plenty drunk by the critical window.
“There’s nothing else, Lizzie. That’s—it’s everything.”
“Think, Sam!” I shouted, terrified and fucking furious.
