After Her (26 page)

PART FOUR

THE LIE

28

I don’t recall the minutes after.

It’s as if everything around me happens in fast-forward from one event to the next with me powerless to stop or rewind it. Someone called the police. I don’t know who. The next thing I know, Vivian’s party is invaded by officials—men in uniforms with masks. Cops. EMTs. Medical examiners. Detectives.

EMTs zip Sasha into a body bag, allowing me no time to say goodbye, no time to ensure they handle her with care. Police swarm the area in a mass of methodical chaos, questioning the party guests as I remain in the garden sitting along the fountain’s edge, draped in Adrian’s blazer and staring at the caution tape warding bystanders away from the scene.

“Cassandra?” someone replies though I'm too preoccupied to acknowledge the person that sits beside me. I hear the voices, a plethora of mournful voices overlapping, offering me their condolences and questions. So many goddamn questions.
How did you know the victim? What was her name? Did you see her with anyone? Did she seem afraid for her life? How long have you two known each other?

“Can’t you see that she’s still in shock?” says Adrian whose voice is the only one I can pinpoint amidst the others. “You’ll have to question her later.”

“I'm sorry, but it’s best we get the basics out of the way now,” says another, but Adrian argues in my defense nonetheless. I’ll have to remember to thank him. I’ll have to remember to remind myself. Gratitude isn’t an often-felt emotion when it comes to him.

“Miss Tate, I'm sorry for the current circumstances,” says the aging little woman that kneels at my feet. This woman, with eyes of genuine concern, manages to take the edge off my anxiety just by looking at me. My eyes scan the garden floor, searching for something, spotting the area where Sasha once lay.

“Miss Tate? Can you hear me?” she asks.

“She’s distraught,” says Adrian. “I already told you that she couldn’t answer your questions.”

Once more the two of them argue over me like I'm not here, debating what to do next, how to coax answers from this withering shell of a girl that I’ve quickly become. Adrian stands sentry, guarding me like a rabid dog.

“If she’d just answer a few questions—”

“Let me take her home and we’ll see about bringing her down the station in the morning for a formal interrogation,” he interjects.

After a while, I'm exhausted with the discussion, tired of hearing the voices debate the subject of me. I can’t deal with being the center of everyone’s scrutinizing attention. I lurch to my feet without thinking, releasing a scream loud enough to silence every voice, loud enough to clear my head so I can finally speak for myself.

“Cassandra, you don’t have to do this right now,” says Adrian.

“If it gets everyone to just shut up, I’ll do anything to make it stop,” I reply, hearing my voice quaver, the words burning in my throat, entrenched in my aching heart until reality finally sets in. “I’ll answer your questions,” I tell the female detective. “Just get me somewhere away from here.”

The little woman nods.

“There’s a conference room down the hall. We can talk there if you’re comfortable.”

“Fine. I don’t care. I just want to get this over with.”

Like a migrating herd, we move in unison, her, Adrian and me.

“I’m sorry, sir, but perhaps Miss Tate would be more comfortable if it was just us girls,” she says to Adrian.

Adrian hesitates midstride to glance at me, seeking some validation of her suggestion. Seeing him so willing to accompany me in my dead state of emotional inertia, relinquished to this strange woman’s custody, I feel like an orphaned child, cut loose from its parent, craving the parental warmth of familiar arms.

He was there when I found Sasha, the first person to steal me away from the scene to keep me from having to stare at her lifeless body until the police arrived. I didn’t expect him to become the haven I need right now, but he is.

“No,” I say. “He can come. I’d be more comfortable if someone I knew were in the room with us.”

“Very well,” replies the woman reluctantly. Adrian’s hand links with mine, guiding me to where she wants us to be. Inside the conference room, is a mahogany table, so big it nearly engulfs the room with so many chairs that I'm sure it could seat fifty people at one time.

Before the questions, I distract myself with inconsequential things.

The dead bug carcasses upturned in the buzzing light fixture overhead. The water stains on the table from where glasses sat with no coasters. The fading wood of the table face. To the naked eye, this would all be inane. To me, it’s where I need my mind to be, to keep from coping with the actuality of the situation.

The female detective places a small notepad onto the table as Adrian and I sit. He claims the chair next to mine. She plops into the chair across from ours, sitting for several long seconds in silence organizing her papers. Soon, she places a small tape recorder between us, atop the table, pressing
play
.

The ensuing silence is somehow deafening. Never thought I could find frustration in silence, but this is proving to be one exception I never want to encounter again. Adrian’s hand rests appropriately on my forearm. I'm surprised by his discretion, his ability to restrain from the usual lasciviousness of our conversations.

“Okay, Miss Tate, we’ll start with my name,” she says. “I’m Karen Weet, senior detective of the OCPD. I’ll be handling the Sasha Hawthorne case. Could you please state your name for the record?”

“Cassandra Marie Tate,” I say though I have no idea why I felt the need to share my middle name. Perhaps it reminds me of Sasha. She had a weird fascination with my middle name, using it anytime she was frustrated or pissed at me.

For some reason that small detail of her personality is the one I remember the most. Of all the things to mourn, her awkward use of my middle name is the most significant thing I can bother to remember.

Karen scrawls something onto a handheld notepad. I can’t imagine what she could be writing. What kind of notes about me could be worthy enough to write? I can’t possibly be a suspect in any of this, can I?

“And how did you know the victim?”

“She was my best friend,” I say with hesitance, feeling a bit of sting from the aftermath of the words, unable to reconcile with the fact that I now have to refer to her in the past tense.

Karen writes more, still unwilling to divulge the contents of her notes.

“Alright, the easy questions are out of the way. Let’s get into the difficult ones. What I'm about to ask next might be hard, but I need you to be strong, Miss Tate. You need to remember the specifics and answer every question as best you can. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” I say, wishing I could flee from the interrogation altogether. Somehow, Adrian’s presence isn’t a disruptive one. He remains steady like a brick wall for me to lean on anytime my body feels depleted. I catch myself leaning closer, wanting some proximity, needing some familiar warmth.

“So you and the victim—”

“If you don’t mind,” I interject. “I’d like for you to stop referring to her as ‘the victim.’ She has a name. Don’t dehumanize her by talking about her like she’s some fictional character from some crappy police procedural television show!”

Karen flinches, visibly shaken by my outburst. I reign back my hostility, suddenly aware of how inconsolable I am. At once, I allow myself to breathe. My face sodden with tears that I'm sure weren’t here before. I didn’t plan to fall apart, not in front of so many lurking eyes. No one needs to see me like this.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to explode like that. I just…we were together a few hours ago. We were standing in my bedroom getting dressed for this stupid party. What the fuck am I going to tell her parents? How am I gonna explain to them that this is my fault?”

Adrian grips my arm instantly, urging me to shut up while I still can. Karen takes to her notepad, scrawling furiously. I swear I hear the pen scratching the paper. I should stop talking.

I will myself to bite my tongue, but I can’t help the outpour of words and emotions that come blubbering out of me in a mouthful of slurred syllables.

“What do you mean this is your fault, Miss Tate?” she asks. “Were you in the garden prior to the crime?”

I automatically glance at Adrian, my co-conspirator, neither of us willing to admit guilt.

I look back at Karen who notices my exchange with Adrian and I know what she’s thinking. I’ve seen those eyes before. Judging me. She’s made her assumptions. There’s nothing I can do to neutralize her.

“Miss Tate, if there’s something you’re not telling me, I advise you to tell me now.”

My lips part, wanting to speak the truth. Adrian intervenes, “Is this the part where she asks for a lawyer?”

“Adrian,” I say, wanting to assert my position. “I wanted you here for the interrogation as moral support. I didn’t call you here for legal advice because I did nothing wrong. Sasha was my best friend. We’ve known each other since middle school and been like sisters since. I would never hurt her. And if Detective Weet had any evidence that I did, she’d already have me in handcuffs.”

Neither of them object to my speech. Adrian reluctantly fades back into the background. Karen sets asides her notepad, admitting defeat.

“You’re correct,” she says. “There is no conclusive evidence to link anyone to the incident as of now. We haven’t even established whether a crime took place. Last I checked, the medical examiner was declaring this an accidental death judging by the wounds on Sasha’s body.”

“How did she die?” I ask with a heavy breath in my chest.

She flips through her notes once more, stopping on a specific page.

“Fatal wound to the head. From what I can tell, Sasha may have been walking through the garden, tripped and fell. Upon landing, she fractured her skull and bled to death. Forensics place her time of death around 9:20 pm.”

9:20 pm.
Right around the time I took that sedative from Amelia. While I was getting high, Sasha bled to death less than thirty feet away from where I’d been with Adrian. That thought numbs me.

“I think I'm gonna be sick,” I murmur while clasping my stomach and leaning against the table. Tears rush in on cue, making my eyes burn from the mascara leaking into them. I’d like to curl up into a ball and roll away.

“Did she suffer?” Adrian asks abruptly. I glare at him, wanting to reproach him for asking such an insensitive question. Nevertheless, I’d like to hear the answer. I’d like to know if Sasha’s final hours were painful.

“Are you sure you want to hear this?” Karen asks.

Unable to speak, I only nod.

“They believe she may have bled out slow,” she says. “There’s substantial evidence to prove that the skull fracture began as a mild concussion that she might not have been aware of until it was too late for her to seek medical care. She may have fallen and figured she just had a headache so she probably wasn’t concerned. Unfortunately, that headache probably led to an aneurysm that eventually burst and killed her.”

“So her brain just swelled up and exploded? Is that what you’re telling me? That she walked around that garden for hours disoriented and dying when she didn’t even know it?”

“These are only guesstimates, Miss Tate. The autopsy will know for certain.”

“I need to go home,” I say. “Can we finish this tomorrow? I need to…shower Sasha’s blood from my skin.”

“Yes, of course. Um, but I’ll need to know Sasha’s next of kin to inform them of the news,” she says.

“I’ll call them myself. They should hear it from me.”

With a placating smile, she nods.

“Okay. Then, we’ll call in the morning to set up a time for the interview. They’ll want to rush her autopsy to uncover results that are more accurate.”

I grab her hand after swiping her pen. One digit at a time, I scrawl my cell number into her palm before sliding the pen toward her.

“That’s my cell number,” I say. “Call anytime. I’ll answer. Tell them to take care of her. The dress she was wearing was her favorite so you have to make sure that they don’t tear it during the autopsy.”

Karen smiles once more, but not in a joyous feel-good kind of way. It’s more of a smile one would give to a dying child. She’s conciliating me.

“I’ll tell them,” she whispers maternally. “You should go. Get some sleep. We’ll pick up on these questions tomorrow.”

I try dismounting my chair, but my legs feel gelatinous, two wet noodles incapable of functioning properly. I might as well be in a vegetative state. Adrian grips my forearms. With one quick tug, he manages to prop me upright. I nearly collapse from the weight of heavy encapsulating my limbs as if someone’s injected them with lard.

“Can you walk?” he asks.

I manage a weak nod in response while shrugging away from him, using the wall to guide myself out of the room. I see nothing clearly. Red blinds my view, making me see double.

“This way,” says Adrian while escorting me toward the ballroom entrance where all the party guests remain. I enter and every head turns to stare at me. Some whisper. Others appear distraught. Only one face sticks out in the crowd. One face propels me to walk on my own.