Should I be crying right now?
I’m aware that I’m probably in shock, but I don’t cry a lot in general. Seeing the body seems to have hit me in other ways. I don’t know how my feet are moving, for example. I can’t feelanything. With the scene in the locker room playing on repeat in my brain, somehow I manage to make it to the café without screaming.
“Sit.” Alessandra pulls out two chairs and I sink into mine gratefully.
Izzy lands heavily in the chair next to mine. I glance her way, and even though she’s staring straight ahead, her hand finds mine again and she squeezes hard.
“Do not go anywhere,” Alessandra warns. “I will make tea.”
A few minutes pass in loud silence before she emerges witha tray of cups and a silver teapot. “The police are outside. I am going to unlock the front door, but I want you to stay right here. Do you both understand me?”
We nod.
“Okay.” Alessandra takes a deep breath and leaves through the kitchen, though how she can walk back past the locker room is beyond me.
Izzy tries her best to distract me with tea and an ungodly amount of sugar as we sit and listen to the distant, tinny sound of voices on radios and the crackle of static before Alessandra returns with a short, stocky man in a navy blue uniform.
“This is everyone?” the policeman asks, surveying the room.
“Everyone that was still here when we…found her.” Alessandra gestures to the man. “Girls, this is Officer Shaw.”
“So there were other people here tonight?” He pulls a small notepad and pencil from a pocket at his waist.
“Yes.” Alessandra rubs a hand across her face and points to the partition wall that separates the café from the gallery, toward where the portrait hangs. “We had a private showing here this evening. There were around forty people. Perhaps a few more.”
“Do you have a guest list?” asks the officer.
“Yes, everyone who came through the front door signed in for our records. Would you like me to share it?” Alessandra offers.
“That would be a good start.”
“I also have the details of the catering agency.” Alessandra’s breath hitches. “Helen, the…girl in the locker room. She was waitressing here tonight.”
The officer scribbles in his notebook as two women enter the café, one in jeans and a shirt under a gray blazer, the other wearing a smart bottle green shift dress. They both hold themselves with the air of people in charge. Detectives, I’ll bet. Shaw glancesup at them. “My colleagues are going to talk to each of you about what happened this evening, but they will want to start with whoever found the victim.”
“Thank you,Officer.” The woman in the blazer speaks up, and her tone is clipped. I get the impression she doesn’t like being called a colleague when she’s clearly his superior. Shaw ducks his head as embarrassment flushes his cheeks. “You can return to the campus station now. We’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gives us one last, pitying look as Alessandra introduces us to the detectives, and then he leaves the café.
“So, who was first on the scene?” the blazer-clad detective asks without bothering to introduce herself. I glance up at her as the other detective takes a seat at the table between me and Izzy. Are we suspects?
“That was me,” I reply, raising my hand like we’re at school. “I’m Fliss.” The detective’s face softens a little as she points to the table farthest from where we’re sitting.
“I’ll talk to you first, then.”
I stand on wobbly legs and follow her, not sure I’ll make it all the way across the café, but I do. She pulls out a chair and gestures for me to sit.
“I’m Detective Romig, and my colleague over there is Detective Youssef,” she says. She’s changed tack now, her voice kind as I sit down. “How are you feeling?”
“Cold,” I mumble through frozen lips. I stick my freezing hands under my thighs, hoping they’ll warm up, but the cold just seeps into my skin instead. “My parents are out of town. Do you need me to have an appropriate adult?”
She raises her eyebrows, and I can tell she’s surprised. “Do you need one?” she asks. This makes me come to my senses a little. After all the books I’ve read about criminal investigations, never mind the true-crime documentaries I’ve inhaled, this is something I know about.
“I know you should have someone sit with you if you’re under eighteen.”
“And you are…?”
“Seventeen. Last month.”
