Takeover (3 page)

He must know that I heard the sound, and am growing a little nervous about his next surprise, as he calls out, “Don’t worry, you’re going to love it.” He probably doesn’t know that I can hear him quietly add, “I hope,” but at this point, he could serve me spaghetti made with shoelaces—again—and I’d still be happy.

I don’t remember a time in my life where I felt so good about a decision that I’ve made. Sure, I’ve had more than a little back-and-forth on the idea of moving in with him, but he’s made me feel not only welcome, but like this is truly my home too.

He comes back out to the living room as I’m admiring the fact that he actually went to the trouble of organizing my books by author’s surname. I don’t know if it makes me old fashioned or not, but that just seems like the only way to arrange books that makes any sense at all.

“So,” I say, teasingly, “you’re cooking, huh?”

“I’m cooking,” he says. “Don’t worry. I’ve been practicing this recipe all week. The first few tries didn’t go so well, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it.”

As if on cue, the smoke detector in the kitchen starts blaring, and I can’t help but laugh loudly as he runs back to the other room. I shrug and whisper to myself, “Life is just too perfect sometimes.”

Then I get my own little synchronicity: my phone rings. I don’t care who it is, I’m not answering. I press the button on the side of my phone, silencing the ringer, but in another minute, the phone rings again.

“Seriously?” I ask my phone as if the incredulity in my voice will make it feel bad for disrupting my moment. I silence it again, but it’s not long before it’s ringing once more, so I finally answer. “Rose Pearson,” I say.

“Rose,” says Melissa from the office, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I thought you should know because they’re coming to your house.”

“What? Who’s coming to my house? What happened?”

“It’s Rory,” she says, out of breath and frantic, “he’s dead. Cynthia found him in his office that way. The police are on their way to your house.”

“My house?” I ask. “Why?”

“Right now it looks like you were the last person to see him alive.”

“What, did he have a heart attack or something?”

“No,” Melissa says sharply. “Somebody killed him. They stabbed him in the neck, Rose.”

“Jesus.” I don’t know what to say. It couldn’t have taken Cynthia long to get there, and I think I would remember someone walking toward his office. Cynthia. “Cynthia found him?” I ask suspiciously.

“I know,” Melissa says, “that’s what I thought when I first heard, but Mark down the hall said that she barely got the door open before she started screaming. It wasn’t her, Rose. The police are coming—” She continues talking, but I lower the phone as I hear at least two vehicles come to a screeching halt outside the house.

How did they know I would be here? I still have my apartment.
“James!” I call out.

The tone in my voice must convey my fear and confusion clearly enough, because he doesn’t say a word until he’s back at my side. “What’s going on?” he asks as the police knock on the door.

“I have no idea.”

The officers only knock once before the door crashes open, and James and I are standing in the front room with our hands in the air and guns in our faces.

Politics

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A
fter being told, “Get the fuck on the ground with your hands behind your heads,” and being swiftly and jarringly handcuffed, James and I do a lot of waiting while the officers present tear the house apart in search of a murder weapon or any other evidence that might link me to the death of my boss.

Every time I start to ask a question, I’m quickly told to shut up, and before long there’s a foot pressing hard against my upper back. The weight of the officer is compressing my chest, making the simple act of breathing difficult enough itself that I’m no longer able to ask questions.

James hears the sound of air being forced from my lungs, but can’t turn his head quite far enough to look at me. “Are you okay?” he asks in a tone I’ve never heard before.

“Yes!” I wheeze quickly, hoping that it’s enough to dissuade my fiancé from doing whatever it is that he would do if I answered any differently.

“Why are you here?” James asks.

“Your wife killed her boss,” the man with his foot in my back answers.

“No she didn’t,” James says without hesitation. “That’s ridiculous. Besides, even if you suspected her of something, don’t you need a warrant or probable cause to just bust into our house and assault us like this?”

The weight on my back grows for a moment, and then relaxes again as the officer answers, “We have a warrant.”

“We’ll cooperate,” I say, trying to make this all go away as quickly as I possibly can.

The man’s foot comes off of my back, and he says, “You’re ready to give a full confession?”

“I didn’t kill my boss,” I respond, “and I can prove it.”

This isn’t the answer the man wanted, so his foot is back where it was. “Why don’t we just wait until the detective gets here?”

“I want to see the warrant,” James says, and the man takes his foot off of my back long enough to put it hard into James’s side.

“Stop resisting!” the officer shouts; apparently, he’s the only one in the room at the moment, and so he kicks James again.

“I’m not resisting!” James groans, and I’m already flinching as I expect the officer to kick him again.

He doesn’t.

“Officer Robertson, what do you have there?” a new voice asks.

“Detective,” the man who had just finished kicking my fiancé answers, “these two were resisting, and—”

The new voice, assumedly the detective answers, “You know, every time an officer greets me with a rationalization, I can pretty much assume that he’s just done something seriously wrong.”

“I didn’t—”

“Why don’t you wait outside?” the detective interjects, more an order than a request.

Robertson quickly leaves the room, and the detective’s voice is mild as he says, “I think you can get up off of the floor now. Robertson out there has a bit of a loose temper, but I don’t think the two of you are going to pose any threat to me or anyone else if I uncuff you.” He waits a beat. “Are you?”

“No sir,” I say, having somehow managed up until to this moment to keep from crying.

“No,” James moans through a thick breath.

The detective walks over and uncuffs me and then James and directs us toward the couch. “Don’t worry,” he says, his voice still so sickly-sweet that I’m having trouble believing in his benevolence, “Robertson will be reprimanded for the way he treated the two of you.”

“It wasn’t exactly him that was the problem in the first place,” James says, trying to contain his anger, but hardly succeeding. “Your people broke down the door and put guns in our faces without identifying themselves or showing us a warrant.”

“Your fiancée is accused of murdering a very powerful man,” the detective responds. “But you do have a right to see the warrant.”

“Murder?” James asks, the charge still not computing in his mind. “Rose would never hurt anyone, much less kill them.”

“That’s not for me to decide,” the detective says. “Well, actually, I suppose that right now it kind of is.” He turns to me. “It’s my understanding that you were the last known person to have spoken with Mr. McDaniel, is that correct?”

“I don’t know who talked to him after I left,” I answer, my voice feeble, seeming to come from a great distance even to me.

“I’m sorry,” the detective says, “could you repeat that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“I don’t know who talked to him after I left,” I repeat, my voice only slightly louder, “but he was perfectly fine the last time I saw him.”

“I see,” the detective says and makes a note in his pocket tome. “And when was this?”

“I don’t know,” I say, looking at the clock on the wall, “about an hour ago maybe? I could check my cell phone. I called James after I got off of the elevator.”

“Maybe later,” the detective says. “Did Mr. McDaniel seem agitated when you left?”

“Well...” I start, but I don’t want James to find out that I’ve been protecting him from what I’ve had to live with at work, so the sentence trails off.

“It’s my understanding,” the detective says, “that minutes before you left his floor, he had been publicly reprimanding you. From what I hear, he was screaming at you about something.”

James looks at me with nothing but pure confusion, and the remaining pain in his side. “He was screaming at you?” he asks. “You always told me that Rory was a great boss.”

“I didn’t want you to worry about me,” I say, finally permitting myself to turn and look at James straight on. “He wasn’t always the most... pleasant man to work for.”

“So, you would say that he
was
agitated when you left,” the detective says, and I can’t help but feeling that my hiding the way that my boss treated me—I can hardly believe that I’m using the past tense—from my husband has gone a long way toward damaging my credibility.

“He had yelled at me,” I say quietly, “but he apologized and told me to take the rest of the day off.”

The detective makes another note. “Was that a normal thing for him to do? You know, scream at you and then let you go home?”

“Not really,” I say, but quickly add, “I mean, it’s happened before, but he usually doesn’t send me home.”

“But he
does
chastise you on a common basis—I’m assuming publicly?” the detective asks.

“Rose, if he was doing this to you, why didn’t you just quit?”

“I didn’t want to feel like I wasn’t contributing,” I say, and my fiancé-for-now must be losing a great deal of trust in me.

“Rose,” James says, “you know that my parents left me enough that you never have to work if you don’t want to. You told me that you worked there because you loved what you were doing.”

I look to the detective, but it seems that he’s satisfied enough with James’s questions at the moment that he doesn’t need to interject. “That’s
your
money,” I say. “I didn’t want you to think that I was a burden, or that I was just after your bank account.” The way I’m saying all of this is implying some sort of ego that I never thought I had.

“Rose,” the detective finally speaks, “did you kill Rory McDaniel?”

The tears are back, and I answer, “No.” I look at James. “You have to know that I would never hurt anyone.” I look back to the detective, and I feel like I’m already bound to the stake, just waiting for the villagers to spread the fire around me. “He was that way to everyone,” I say. “I never liked being yelled at, but I would never kill him.”

“You know what?” the detective asks, tapping his notepad with the end of his pen, “I don’t think that you killed anyone.”

“Oh thank god,” I breathe, and I’m sobbing openly now. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The detective holds up his hand. “Before you start a new religion in my name,” he says with half a smile on his face, “there are a few things that we need to go over. Did you see anyone else enter the office, or approach his office as you were leaving?”

“No,” I say, “nobody.”

“I really need you to think hard here, Rose,” the detective continues. “Is there anyone you know of who might want to hurt the deceased? Anyone with a grudge? Personal or professional?”

I chuckle through my tears, and answer, “Like I told you, Mr. McDaniel treated everyone the way he treated me. I don’t know of anyone who would go as far as to actually try to hurt him, but he did rub a lot of people the wrong way.”

The pain seems to have left James’s side and moved into his eyes. I don’t know if that pain is there because I lied to him, or because of the way that I was treated, but I do know that I’m responsible for it being where it is.

“Did anyone make any threats against Mr. McDaniel, even in passing or jokingly?” the detective asks.

“There was the usual office stuff, I guess,” I say, wiping my nose with my sleeve. “I don’t think anyone said anything about actually stabbing him, though.”

“Who said anything about stabbing?” the detective says, his ears perking up.

“Oh my god,” I breathe, “I forgot about Melissa.” I go to stand up, but the detective holds up his hand.

“Who’s Melissa?”

“She called me,” I say. “Right before the police came. I never hung up. She might still be on the phone.”

“It’s true,” James says, trying to offer something to help me out of this. Even though I doubt this is going to be the thing that removes all suspicion, it’s just good to know that he still loves me enough to try. “She got a phone call less than a minute before I heard the cars pulling up.”

“Where is the phone?” the detective asks.

I point toward the bookcase, now a broken shell of the masterpiece it had been only a short time ago. The detective walks in the direction that I’m indicating and finds the phone on the ground.

He puts the phone to his ear and says, “Hello?”

Apparently the line is still open because he has a quiet, brief conversation. A minute passes, then two. Three minutes, and I’m starting to wonder what they could possibly be talking about when the detective looks at me, his eyes inscrutable, but focused.

“Thank you,” he says finally and sets the phone on the now ruined bookcase. I can hear the other officers somewhere in the house, tossing the place as the detective walks straight to me and tells me to stand up and turn around.

“What are you doing?” James asks.

“Rose Pearson, you are under arrest for the murder of Rory McDaniel. You have the right to remain silent...” the rest is a blur of confusion and disbelief, and I can only assume that he finished the Miranda when he asks if I understand my rights.

Right now, I don’t understand anything.

Handcuffs

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I
’m taken away from James and stuffed into the back of a cop car. I don’t know why this is happening, but it’s a mistake. I know that I had nothing to do with Mr. McDaniel’s death. He may not have been in the top twenty of my “favorite people” list, but it would never even occur to me to kill him. I don’t want to kill anyone and I never have.