I SCREAMED FOR ABOUT A MINUTE.
That’s my estimate. Based on about how long it felt, and also how much my throat feels scratchy right now. I screamed for a full minute, then I managed to get it together enough to dial 911 with shaking hands.
Needless to say, I got the hell out of that house.
Now the police are here. They are swarming around the house, dusting for fingerprints or whatever else policemen do at a crime scene. I don’t want to know. I’ve been sitting in my car since they got here. I’m not supposed to leave, but I don’t want to go anywhere near that house again.
I called Seth to let him know what was going on and that I wouldn’t be back at work. He sounded rattled, but that’s nothing compared to how I feel. I usually tell Kim everything, but I didn’t want to tell her about this. She’d just treat it like interesting gossip, which would be disrespectful. So instead, I text Caleb. He’ll say the right thing—I know it.
Sure enough, I get a text back right away:
Holy crap! Are you okay?
Not really.
I’ll be reliving what I saw in that living room until the day I die. All that blood…
Do you want me to come over there?
I’ve been trying so hard not to be a clingy girlfriend. Nothing is a bigger turnoff. But Caleb doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who obsesses over something like that. And he offered. Plus, I want to see him. I want to bury my face in his chest. So I reply:
Yes please.
Just as I’m texting him the address, I am interrupted by the sound of tapping at the window of my car—there’s a man at the driver’s side window. He’s wearing a dark gray suit and tie, and I remember him briefly introducing himself as a detective before I went to hide in the car. I roll down the window.
“Miss Farrell?” he says. “Yes…”
“I gotta talk to you. Can you get out of the car please?”
One of the uniformed police officers asked me a few questions before I ran out here. I suppose the detective has a bunch more questions. And maybe some answers, I’m hoping. Anyway, I don’t have much of a choice, so I climb out of my car.
The detective is in his forties, tall and attractive in a craggy sort of way, with dark hair receding just enough to be noticeable. “Detective Santoro,” he says.
I nod wordlessly.
“Sorry I gotta do this, Miss Farrell,” he says.
The detective has a heavy Boston accent. As somebody who grew up in Massachusetts, it’s a comfort to hear it. When he told me to get out of the car, he said “caah.” And if we were eating lobster for some reason, it would be “lobstah.” I don’t have much of an accent myself, although Caleb claims he hears it. He says it’s cute.
“It’s okay,” I manage. “Is Dawn… did you… find her?”
He shakes his head slowly and I let out a sigh of relief. When I saw the massive amount of blood on her carpet, I was certain she was lying somewhere in the house dead. “No sign of her. Just the blood.”
“So maybe.” I bite down on my lower lip. Too hard—I taste a hint of blood myself. “Maybe she hurt herself. Got a ride to the hospital.”
Santoro nods. “Yeah, we’re checking out that possibility. Calling all the ambulance companies and hospitals. So far though, we’re not finding her.”
I’m not surprised, but it’s still a blow. “I see…” “So why did you come to Miss Schiff’s house?”
“Well, she was late to work…” As I’m saying it, I see the skeptical look on his face, so I quickly add: “Also, she sent me this weird email yesterday, telling me she needed to talk to me about something important.” He still doesn’t seem convinced, so I add the clincher: “Plus her phone started ringing on her desk, and when I picked it up, it sounded like she was asking for help. Like she was in trouble.”
“I see… did you hear anyone else on the line?” I shake my head. “No. Just her voice.”
“Did anyone else hear the phone call?”
That’s a strange thing to ask. What does it matter if somebody else heard the phone call? “No, just me.”
“So you and Miss Schiff were friends then?”
A gust of November wind goes through my blouse and I shiver. “Yes.
We were coworkers and… friends.” “Close friends?”
“Sort of.” It’s not true, but Dawn didn’t really have any friends. I’d believe it if somebody told me I was her closest friend.
“Do you know if there was anybody who was threatening her? Anyone she was afraid of?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
I almost laugh at how ridiculous the question is, but of course, he doesn’t know Dawn. I can’t envision her having a boyfriend. I can’t envision her even kissing a man. I’m almost 100% certain she’s a virgin, and she gives off the vibe that she isn’t interested in ever not being a virgin anymore. Like the way she always wears these shapeless work outfits that look tailored for a man, with giant tortoiseshell glasses that are too big for her narrow face. Never even a scrap of makeup.
But I would never say any of that to a detective. “No. She didn’t have a boyfriend.”
Detective Santoro gives me a funny look. It takes me a second to realize why. “I mean, she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
Oh God, I just referred to her in the past tense. Dawn is going to be okay. They’re going to find her and she’ll be fine. No past tense. Present tense, all the way.
But there was so much blood. How could she be okay if there was so much blood? And that phone call…
Help me.
“When was the last time you saw Miss Schiff?” he asks. “Around five o’clock yesterday,” I say. “When I left work.”
“And she didn’t show up for work this morning?” I nod, although he seems to be asking the question rhetorically. He already knows this is true. “So something happened to her between five o’clock yesterday and this morning at…”
“A quarter to nine,” I supply. “That’s when she always shows up at work. Like clockwork.”
“She’s wicked reliable, eh?” “Oh yes.”
One corner of the detective’s lips quirks up. “I like that. I’m the same way. It’s good to be punctual.”
I very much doubt this detective is anything like Dawn, but I’m not going to say that. He won’t understand what she’s like.
“So I have to ask you,” he says, “where were you between five o’clock yesterday and this morning?”
My eyebrows shoot up so fast, my forehead gets whiplash. “Me?” His smile is apologetic. “I have to ask.”
I try not to be too offended by the question. Except I don’t know what they think I did. Do they think I killed Dawn, made up a phony call where she asked for help, then went back to her house and “pretended” to find all that blood on the floor?
“I was with my boyfriend,” I finally say. “His name is Caleb McCullough.”
“All night?”
I wasn’t with Caleb all night. We were together for part of the night, then he left my house. I open my mouth to tell him that, but a nagging voice in the back of my head stops me. My fingerprints are all over Dawn’s house
now. The detective keeps giving me a funny look, like he doesn’t quite believe me.
And there’s one other thing nagging at me.
“That’s right,” I say. “I was with Caleb the whole night.” There. That should wipe the suspicious look off Santoro’s face. “And this Caleb,” he says, “does he know Dawn too?”
I lift a shoulder. “A little. He’s been doing some part-time work for a company we work for. So he knows her, but barely.”
“And that phone call this morning… you said it came from the phone on her desk?”
“That’s right.” I get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking of how terrified Dawn sounded on that call. I’m so glad I didn’t ignore it like Seth told me to.
He rubs his chin thoughtfully. “We’ll see what calls were placed to that number. Find out where the call was coming from.”
Wherever Dawn is, I hope they can track her down based on that phone call. If she’s being held captive, she must’ve managed for a few seconds.
Detective Santoro grills me with a few other questions about how I knew where Dawn lived, how I got into the house, and also about the broken glass on the floor of the kitchen. Even though I’m still feeling awful, I at least feel like the investigation is in capable hands. This detective knows what he’s doing—I can tell how serious he is based on the fact that his eyes didn’t stray south of my face while we were talking. He’s going to find Dawn, wherever she is.
I hope she’s okay.
Just as he’s finishing up and about to go into the house, a uniformed police officer comes out of the front door. He makes a beeline straight for the detective.
“Detective,” the police officer says. “We got into the computer in her bedroom.”
Santoro rubs his chin. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. It was password-protected, but she had the password written on a Post-it note under her mouse pad.”
Despite everything, I can’t help but let out a little snort. That is so Dawn. So incredibly careful about everything, yet careless about other things. I bet her password was something like “password1.”
But snorting was probably the wrong thing to do. Detective Santoro gives me a look like I’m being inappropriate, and he’s probably right. But like I said, he doesn’t know Dawn the way I do.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s see what’s in there.” “Do you still need me?” I ask.
“Nah, you’re good.” He waves his hand. “But do you got a business card or something?”
I reach into my purse and pull out one of my business cards (or “cahds,” as he said it). As I pass it to the detective, I notice he takes it only with the tip of his fingers. It strikes me as a little odd, but I try not to get too paranoid.
The detective and the policeman disappear into the house, leaving me alone. Good—I can finally get the hell out of here. I turn around to walk back to my car just as the slightly beat-up green Ford pulls up in front of the house next door.
Caleb. Thank God.
I sprint over to him as briskly as my too-tight Louboutins will allow me. Caleb is getting out of his car and I throw myself into his arms before he can even get the door closed. I bury my face in his chest, the tears gathering in my eyes. This is the worst day ever.
“Hey.” His large hand strokes the back of my head. “It’s okay, Nat. I’m here.”
“Something terrible happened to her,” I murmur into his shirt. I’m probably getting tear stains and mascara all over him, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“Don’t say that.” He squeezes me to his chest. “I bet she’ll turn up.”
I pull my face away from him to stare up at him. Even in my heels, he’s nearly a head taller than me. I’ve always liked tall guys. “What are you basing that on?”
“Um…”
“Because if you saw how much blood was in her living room, you wouldn’t be saying that.”
“Look, I don’t know.” He offers a helpless shrug. “I just think the best we can do is hope she’s okay. You know?”
I feel guilty for snapping at him. He didn’t deserve that after running out here for me. “I’m sorry. I’m just so shaken by everything.”
“Yeah,” he breathes. “I know. It’s awful.”
I rest my head back against his chest. His heart thumps reassuringly in my ear. We remain that way for a good two minutes—me pressed against him, him gently stroking my hair. More points for Caleb—he’s kind to me during a tragic event. This is taking our relationship to the next level.
“Hey,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“I need you to do me a favor.” “You need a ride home?”
I would love a ride home. But my car is here, and there’s no way I’m going to leave it here. So I have no choice but to get back in there and drive back through the treacherous rush-hour traffic. “No, that’s okay.”
“So what do you need? Anything you want.”
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear as I pull away from him. “I need you to tell the police we were together all night last night.”
Caleb stiffens. “What?”
“It’s so stupid.” I shake my head. “The police were asking me where I was last night. Like I need an alibi or something… As if I could have done something to Dawn! It’s just a formality, I’m sure. I was there, so they had to ask me. So anyway, I told them we were together all night last night.”
“But…” He scratches his chin. “We weren’t together all night last night.
I left around 9:30.”
“Well, so what? We were together most of the night. That’s good enough.”
“So that’s what I’ll tell them. That we were together most of the night and I left at 9:30.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Is it that big a deal? I mean, you work with Dawn too. It helps you also to have an alibi.”
His eyebrows scrunch together. “But it’s a lie.”
“It’s a white lie. Neither of us did anything to hurt Dawn. So it will just confuse the investigation if we don’t have an alibi.”
“I don’t know, Nat.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t feel right lying to the police. Why is it so important that we have alibis? They’re not going to think either of us did anything to hurt her.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Right, but I already told him we were together. So if you don’t go along with it, I look like I’m lying.”
“But you were lying.”
There is a stubborn tilt to his jaw that’s pissing me off. Caleb is a decent, honest guy. I always thought that was a good quality. Now I’m realizing it’s not necessarily a positive thing.
“Caleb…” The tears that had started to dry up spring back to my eyes. “This has been an awful day. Look, they’re probably not even going to ask you. But would it really be so awful to go along with my story?” Hesitation is in his eyes, and I squeeze his arm. “Please?”
After what feels like an interminable pause, his shoulders sag. “Fine. I guess it’s not that big a deal.”
I’m surprised by the rush of relief I feel when Caleb agrees to confirm my story. I mean, it’s not like I would be a murder suspect or something. But given everything, it’s better to have an alibi.
