“I told you I didn’t the last two times you asked. One of the patrol officers checked before you got here.”
His eyes dropped to my jeans. “Turn your pockets inside out. I need to see.”
Although frustrated, I did as he asked. Everyone had a job to do.
Dobbs seemed satisfied. He nodded at the CSI.
The man with the clear plastic bag stepped up beside me and held it open.
I frowned. “Right here?”
“If you’re shy, we can go into the hallway or the kitchen. Bathroom and bedroom are both off-limits.”
I thought about my super out in the hallway. Probably Mrs. Dowell and who knew who else were standing out there too. I turned my back to Dobbs, faced the couch, and stripped off my clothes. Everything went into the plastic bag, and I dressed in the clothes Dobbs had brought me.
The CSI investigator pulled the drawstring on the bag, then took out a Sharpie. He wrote my name, a case number, and 47 on the front. The shoes found beside my bed had been tagged with an 8 and a 9. That meant there was a lot of evidence I had yet to see.
Through the bedroom door, I caught a glimpse of the open drawers, bare mattress, and items pulled from my closet and stacked against the wall—everything from clothing to sports equipment, photo albums, and various boxes I hadn’t bothered to unpack since moving in.
Wilkins saw me and closed the door.
Dobbs asked me to take a seat on the couch. “Was anyone here when you left?”
I’d gone over this a dozen times. Not just with him but with the first responders. He’s just doing his job, I told myself. I drew in a breath and started from the beginning. “I got in late last night and slept until a little after two this afternoon.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Working.”
Dobbs read from his phone. “You said you’re a long-haul truck driver, correct?”
I nodded. “For Nadler Distribution, off Wilshire. I pick up wine here in California and haul it back east. On that end, I load up with craft beer and bring it back.”
“How often do you make the trip?”
“Three times per month.”
“When did you get in last night?”
“I pulled into the distribution center just after midnight. By the time I finished up the paperwork and offloaded, it was nearly three. I got home around three thirty.”
“You didn’t stop anywhere between the distribution center and your apartment? No late-night snack, cigarettes at a convenience store, no bar, nothing?” Dobbs had his phone out again, no doubt comparing what I’d said this time to what I’d said the previous times.
I shook my head. “I ate on the road. I don’t smoke, and I’m not much for the bar scene. I was tired. Everything ached—sleeping in the cab of a truck for a week will do that to you. I just wanted a shower and my own bed. I came straight here.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.” I nodded.
“Did anyone see you? Is there someone who can corroborate that?”
“Nadler Distribution will have records of my arrival, offload, et cetera. There’s cameras.”
Dobbs said, “We’ll get that information. That’s not what I mean. Can anyone confirm you arrived home alone?”
“At three thirty in the morning?”
He nodded.
I looked down at my hands. “No. The building is quiet that time of night.”
Dobbs typed something into his phone: “Let’s backtrack a little bit. How did you get home? Where did you park?”
“I walked. It’s not very far. I like to stretch my legs after a long haul.”
“You walked,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll need the exact route.”
I told him. I imagined he would check traffic cameras.
He looked toward my front door. “You don’t have a security system. Don’t you worry about your possessions, being that you’re away from home so much?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really have anything worth taking. Nothing that can’t be replaced.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About two years.”
“Yet you haven’t hung up any pictures. Looks like most of what you own is still boxed up. Sparse furniture. A few essentials in the kitchen. Toothbrush, razor…not much of anything in the way of personal items,” Dobbs pointed out.
“Like you said, I’m not home very much.”
“No real security on your building either. No cameras. Your key unlocks the front door. No records, no time stamps.”
“It’s private. I like that. Sometimes it seems like everything people do is under a microscope. Recorded and cataloged in a dozen different places,” I said.
He looked down at his phone. “When we check your social media accounts, are we going to find Alyssa Tepper?”
“I don’t have any social media accounts,” I said. “I told you, I don’t know who she is. You’ve got my phone. Go through it, I don’t care.”
Dobbs glanced up at me. “Yeah, we’ve got your phone.” He returned to his notes, then said, “You got home around three thirty, showered, and went to bed? Nothing else? No contact with anyone?”
“I was tired.”
“Yeah, you said that. Then what happened?”
“I slept until around two this afternoon. Got up, took another shower to wake up. Ate some lunch, then went out to see a movie.”
“What movie?”
“The latest Marvel film.”
“I’ll need your ticket.”
“My ticket?”
“Yeah. Your ticket from the movie. Your ticket stub.”
“I tossed it.”
Dobbs tapped at his phone again. “Can you log into your credit card account and show me the purchase?”
“I paid cash.”
“You paid cash.” Dobbs repeated this softly to himself. “Tell me about the movie.”
I frowned. “I found a dead girl in my bathtub, and you want me to tell you about a movie?”
He smiled. “I don’t need the blow-by-blow, just the major plot points. I love a good Marvel movie.”
Frustrated, I closed my eyes for a second and rubbed my temples. He’s just doing his job. He’s just doing his job.
I told him about the film, what I could remember.
When I finished, he said, “Can you tell me something about the movie that I haven’t already seen in one of the previews? We’ve all seen the previews.”
The truth was, I had fallen asleep shortly after the film started. I missed most of it. I only went so I could get out of the house, relax, unwind a little. When you’re cooped up in the cab of a truck by yourself for a week, sometimes it’s nice to get out and be surrounded by people. Parks, libraries, anything to break up the isolation. Sometimes it’s a movie. I told him the truth.
Dobbs studied his notes. “So even though you slept nearly ten hours and got up only two hours earlier, you couldn’t keep your eyes open—that it?”
I nodded.
“Anyone see you there? Anyone you know?”
“No.”
He sighed. “What time did the movie end?”
“Five fifty. I checked the time on the way out.”