Luckily, no one had given Tessa a hard time about running off earlier today. Maybe grief and shock gave you a pass from formalities.
Or maybe, Tessa thought, they had hardly even noticed. Like with Kit gone, Tessa had somehow become invisible too.
In the end, she had easily slipped out of the house that night, saying she needed air, and took the long walk over to the station.
When she pushed open the door, she was overcome with lightheadedness. She wasn’t sure what she’d envisioned, having never been inside this place before. Maybe something like in a seventies crime drama: low ceilings and yellowed walls, fat, old cops drinking strong coffee and referring to case files stored in manila folders. But the station in Devil’s Lake had recently been redone: it was spacious and clean, full of giant windows that looked out on a well-lit parking lot. Everyone seemed professional, friendly, and well dressed. The soft clack of keyboards filled the open space, a calming soundtrack.
Tessa didn’t believe in the afterlife, but if she had, she might’ve thought purgatory would be like this: bright light. Order. Process.
“How can I help you?” The woman at the front desk was slender and pretty, with dark skin and even darker hair swept up smoothly on top of her head.
“I’m, um, I need to talk to someone,” Tessa fumbled. “My um, my sister, was, she was, well—”
The receptionist squinted, then her eyes widened in recognition. “Oh, honey, I know exactly who you are. Wait here just a minute.” Tessa stared at her lips, which didn’t seem to move as she spoke. The woman hustled out of her chair, leaving it spinning, and returned shortly, followed by a tall, young-looking cop with a buzz cut and dimples.
Tessa recognized him—he’d been in their house at least twice since Sunday morning. Officer Raúl García. His smile was so nice and accommodating that for a moment she forgot why she was here.
García ushered her into his office and offered her some water. She held it but put it down without taking a sip. She had the craziest thought that if she swallowed the water, it would rush through her, dissolve her body into nothingness, carry her away like a river.
At birth, 78 percent of the human body is water.
“I wanted to know . . .” She cleared her throat. “To know the details. About my sister. About Katherine. About her . . .” Once again, the word death lodged behind her teeth, refusing to come out.
García sat back in his chair. “What do you want to know?”
“I heard someone—a boy, Patrick Donovan—ran away on the night of . . . the night of.” Say it. “The night it happened. Shouldn’t that make him a suspect?”
García sat back in his chair. He looked at her for a minute, and it felt like he was seeing through her to the other side of the room. Like his mind had gone somewhere else, and his eyes were as blank as the frozen lake.
“I’m just saying, have you looked into whether there’s any connection—”
“Listen.” García sighed. “Sometimes, a case solves itself. Sometimes it really is that easy. It’s nearly always the boyfriend, sweetie. I wish I could tell you otherwise. But facts are facts.”
Boyfriend.
“But Boyd and Kit weren’t—they weren’t dating. It wasn’t like that. He’s our friend. He’s—”
He’s mine, she wanted to say. They were lying on the carpet in her bedroom, talking about bio. Then they were kissing . . .
García gave a weird half smile. “Are you sure about that?” He began clicking on his keyboard. “Fingerprints tell their own story. I’m so sorry, but it’s just the way it is.”
I’m so sorry. The words landed softly over her, like snow. Just the way it is.
She swallowed. “So he just left all the evidence for everyone to find it? The truck, the keys. That makes no sense.”
“Actually, it’s commoner than you might think. Almost like they want to be found—or in the moment, anyway, they just want to be seen. A crime of passion is often like that. Someone felt betrayed, felt invisible, this one act is their big send-off to the world.”
It didn’t sound like Boyd at all.
Her throat hurt. “But what would his motive have been?”
“Jealousy, usually?” García said. “Besides, we found all kinds of suspicious items on him, in the home.”
“Like what?”
García shrugged. “A mashed-up doll that looked like the victim. That sort of thing.” He said it so casually, but the image lurched into Tessa’s stomach, making her feel like she’d been kicked.
“Look. All I can tell you right now is there’s a state-appointed lawyer, and I’m sure she’ll be arguing for involuntary manslaughter. Autopsy says cause of death was the hypothermia and not the injury. So we may not be able to prove intent to murder.”
She practically choked. The words sounded so scary—so real.
“Usually a lighter sentence for that sort of thing. We’re not talking death row. Least as far as I’d guess. Have to see how it all pans out, of course—not for me to say.”
She was having trouble thinking straight.
Now he was hitting a button on his keyboard. Several documents began to rhythmically spit out of the printer next to the desk. Zzzzrt. Zzzzrt. Zzzzrt.
Zzzzrt.
Zzzzrt.
Zzzzrt.
The sound started to remind her of the quiet thrum of a heart monitor in a hospital room. She felt dizzy. Tessa wondered briefly if she was still in bed, dreaming this. Or if she was out in the snow, with Kit, cold beyond comprehension.
Jealousy. Could Boyd have been jealous? Or had it been the other way around?
The last memory Tessa had of Boyd, before that night, was their study session, their kiss.
What did it mean? Had Kit found out? But how could things have gone so badly unless . . . unless what this cop was saying was true.
No. No.
He turned to her and sighed. “You never really know someone, do you?”
He put the papers in a stack on his desk, tucking them into the mouth of a folder. “This is the report and the photos. For the protection of your family and issues of confidentiality, I can’t let you leave the building with these, but feel free to look through, and take your time.” He paused. “It may be difficult to see some of that. But it’s your right to, if you want to know.”
Was it her right? Why was he being so nice?
He vanished, and there the file was, a blank face.
She opened it. She tried to look for something about a ring, but the words blurred before her.
She focused. The first page was just a scanned form with hand-scribbled answers in the blanks, like the cover page of a school test: name, age, date, address, various badge numbers and car numbers. She flipped to the next page. Details of the scene. The truck, with its headlights still on. Footprints in the snow—some large, some small.
The fingerprints. Just like she’d been told: all over the car, the steering wheel. Boyd’s truck, his hat. García was right. The clues weren’t subtle.
And then, found on the ground near one of the truck tires: a small bag of white pills. Prescription sedatives. Tessa stared at this detail for some time but couldn’t make sense of it. No one in her family had any prescriptions. She wasn’t sure about Boyd or his dad, Innis. But the detail was unsettling. Had Kit been drugged that night? Why hadn’t anyone thought to mention this detail?