Norm nodded. “We share a garage. I got home from work, and her car was in there, so I assumed she was home. I just walked right in. I always do.”
“Were you dating or—”
Norm snorted. “No. I’m not Petra’s type. Not most women’s type, I guess.”
Silently they watched as uniforms went in and out of the duplex. Ants scurrying, Jake thought. No stretcher covered in a white sheet emerged.
After a while, the ambulance lights flickered to dark, and the vehicle pulled away, struggling down the congested street that hours earlier had been void of life.
Eventually a short, brawny man in brown slacks and a mismatched gray blazer approached them. “Norman Groesbeck?” The man locked small, brown eyes on Norm.
He carried himself with an air of authority, and Norm straightened at the sight of him. Jake felt himself doing the same, firming his legs and rolling his shoulders back as if he were a soldier and his lieutenant had just called him to attention.
“Yes, I’m Norman Groesbeck,” Norm said, offering a shaky hand.
The man shook it gruffly. “I’m Detective Bryant. I’d like you to accompany me to the station to answer a few questions.”
Norm’s face paled, and he glanced nervously at Jake. “Of course, yes, anything to help.” His voice had taken on the high-pitched tone Jake had noted earlier. “Umm…” Norm gestured at Jake. “This is Jake. He called the police. He called you guys.”
Jake frowned, aware that Norm wanted to shift some focus away from himself and onto Jake. He wondered suddenly if the man standing beside him was involved in Petra’s disappearance.
Jake stuck out his hand. “Jake Edwards.”
The detective gripped his hand, watching Jake with interest. “You phoned it in? Do you live nearby?”
Jake shook his head. “I live in Saginaw. I called Petra and Norm answered the telephone. He was panicking, I guess. He’d just walked into the apartment—”
“And seen all the blood,” Norm cut in, voice tiptoeing notes that seemed higher than most men could muster. “Blood on the walls and the couch and her white shoes. The high-heeled ones with little bows.” Norm’s face twisted, and he made crying sounds, though no tears fell from his eyes.
The shoe comment struck Jake as strange and he could see it had a similar effect on the detective.
“Maybe both of you could join me at the station? The sooner we get statements, the sooner we can find the missing woman.”
“Okay, sure,” Jake agreed. He thought of dinner. Allison meticulously placing bobby pins in her hair. He hadn’t called her to cancel. She’d be sitting at the kitchen table, watching the clock, hurt turning to anger.
Detective Bryant disappeared down the hall with a shivering Norm, whose teeth had been chattering despite the warmth in the police station.
Jake felt suddenly as if he’d fallen into a strange movie. Had he called Petra only moments after Norm attacked her? If Norm had hurt Petra, what had he done with her body?
A young woman sat behind a bulletproof window. She slid the glass open and offered him a wave. “Can I get ya a coffee? Or some water?” she asked.
“Coffee would be great,” Jake told her, though he knew drinking coffee after five would leave him running through his mind and to the john all night.
When she pushed through the door a moment later, Jake saw she was tiny, barely five feet tall. She handed him the Styrofoam cup of coffee and pulled two creams from her jeans pocket.
“Not to judge a book by its cover, but you seem awfully out of place here,” Jake told her, taking the coffee.
She grinned. “My dad’s Detective Bryant. I’m an intern for the summer. He hoped I’d choose something safer like teaching grade school, but cops are in my blood.”
Jake widened his eyes. “You’re going to be a cop?”
“A detective. But everyone starts somewhere. I’m Adrian,” she told him.
“How old are you, Adrian?” Jake asked.
“How old do I look?” She winked at him and backed toward the door.
He chuckled. “My mother told me if a woman asks that question, I should pretend I didn’t hear her and compliment her hair instead.”
Adrian laughed. “Considering I didn’t wash my hair today, if you compliment it, I’ll suspect you’re lying.”
“I’d peg you at twenty.”
“Twenty-two,” she corrected.
“Just a baby,” he said, sipping the coffee. It was thick and grimy, but the heat soothed him as it flowed into his stomach.
“Hardly.” She pushed backwards through the door and took up her post behind the glass window.
He sipped his coffee and watched her on the phone. Fresh-faced with not an ounce of makeup, she wore her hair secured in a topknot, though he imagined if she shook it loose it’d be long and wavy—a color his mother would have labeled something quirky like coriander. She’d called Jake’s hair candied ginger.
The clock read seven-forty p.m. He thought of Allison and a sliver of guilt wedged between his ribs. He hadn’t called her.
He tried not to picture her sitting at home with her hair and face done, mascara lines dripping down her cheeks. Allison was a good girl. Pretty, nice, and ready to get married and settle down. Not to mention her clock was ticking and her sister had just given birth to her fourth baby, a girl they’d named Allison after her beloved sister. Allison’s family expected Jake to do right by their daughter, but lately he’d known more and more that he and Allison weren’t destined for the long haul.
“Jake?”
Jake looked up to find Detective Bryant watching him from the doorway.
“Where’s Norm?” Jake asked.
“In the back with my partner,” he said curtly. “Follow me.”
4
Adrian offered him a thumbs-up as he followed Bryant into a small box-like room with thin blue carpeting and four white walls. A video camera hung in the room's corner.
“Are you taping this?” Jake asked.
“Yep. That okay with you?” the detective asked, but Jake sensed if he said no, the polite edge in Bryant’s voice would fast disappear.
“Sure, fine with me.” Jake sat in a stiff metal chair and crossed his legs at the ankle.
Bryant sat on the opposite side of a small rectangular table that was bolted to the floor. “Full name, please?” Bryant asked, pen poised above a blank page.
“Jake Fritz Edwards.”
“Can you give me a timeline of your day, starting with what time you woke up this morning until right now?”
Jake squinted and thought back to the morning, which felt as if it had been days earlier. “I woke up at six am. That’s what time my alarm went off, same time every morning. Made coffee, took a shower. Woke up Allison at six-thirty.”
“Who’s Allison?”
“My girlfriend.”
Bryant nodded. “Go on.”
“I had some cornflakes and left for the shop at six fifty.”
“The shop?”
“Yeah. I own Dig Deep Excavating.”
Bryant cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. Jake realized how the name Dig Deep Excavating must sound to a detective searching for a missing woman.