“I was alone,” I say. “My…boyfriend dropped me home and left.”
It isn’t like it makes a difference, after all. Kyle didn’t hear anything either. He would have mentioned something if he had.
“Very well. We’ll be there soon, Miss Miller. Thank you for your patience.”
I bid him farewell and hang up. Then I let out a gusty sigh. That’s it, then. The police are involved, now. I’m worried, though; has Jesse left any evidence? If he was clever enough to manage to break in, then maybe he was clever enough to keep things clean. That means the police will only find my prints, along with a myriad of others belonging to Kyle and my friends, who have been in and out all week.
I deflate. Suddenly this feels like an impossible task.
I just need to hang in there for a little while. Surely they’ll find something. And if they don’t…
I’ll just have to figure out another way to get rid of Jesse.
By the time the police arrive, I’m a nervous wreck, pacing around my living room. I’ve sent a message to Jacqui, letting her know that I won’t be in class and asking her to take notes for me, but she hasn’t replied yet. She’s probably in class, wondering where the hell I am and worried about my odd absence.
There’s a knock on my door which swings open slightly. I dash toward it and pull it open the rest of the way.
“Miss Miller?” asks the man in front, and I recognize his voice from the phone.
“That’s me,” I say, holding my hand out to shake it. “Are you Officer Bryant?”
“Yes, yes, I am,” the man says with a smile. It falls, however, when he eyes the broken door frame. “May we come in? You can tell us what happened.”
I let the officer and two others into the apartment. The other two instantly set about examining the door frame.
“They’ll be looking for evidence,” Bryant explains. “Are you absolutely certain that the person who broke into your apartment was Jesse Willis?”
“One hundred percent,” I say, handing over the card. “He left this card with those flowers.”
Bryant frowns and hands the card over to one of the officers. The other officer walks over to examine the flowers at my words.
“We’ll see what we can get off both,” Bryant assures me. “In the meantime, I need a list of everyone who has been in your apartment in the last fortnight, particularly those who might have touched your door.”
My stomach falls. It’s quite a long list. As I start naming names, I see Bryant’s face fall, too. There’s too many people that have been here.
“And the most recent?” Bryant asks when I’ve finished.
“Uh, Kyle Jacobs...my boyfriend,” I say. “He’s the one that dropped me home last night.”
“Well, we do have a set of prints for Jesse Willis on file after a complaint was made against him last year; we had him in a cell overnight before his girlfriend bailed him.” Bryant glanced at me. “You?”
“Yeah,” I say with a grimace. “That was me.”
Bryant sighs and shuts his notebook. “With luck, we’ll find some evidence. You don’t happen to have a sample of Jesse’s handwriting around here?”
“Sorry,” I sigh. “I don’t.”
The officer mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “no one makes it easy,” before he nods with a wry smile.
“We’ll do our best, Miss Miller,” he says. “In the meantime, I might suggest that you find somewhere else to stay. Your apartment is no longer secure.”
“Yeah, I was considering that,” I say, eyeing the front door. “I’m going to have to get the landlord to fix it and…well, that’s going to be enough of a fight.”
Bryant chuckles. “The terrors of cheapskate landlords. I’ll be talking to them myself; the apartment building’s front door lock is shot, and there aren’t any cameras at all. This isn’t a safe place for residents.”
“I’ve been trying to tell him since I moved here,” I say heavily.
“Now, is there anyone else in the apartment who might have noticed something was amiss last night?” Bryant asks.