“Alright.” The corner of his mouth tugs up, and he gets an almost devious glint to his gaze that makes my stomach do funny things. “Harlow.”
I trail slightly behind him as he leads me through the bull pen, noting the lean, but still toned, strokes of his shoulders. I take in the other detectives. Some are looking up at me curiously and others are nose deep in thick binders. A buzzing sort of excitement hums in the air.
He shows me to a meeting room and closes the door. This room is different from the first interrogation room. For starters, there are actual windows on the walls, and the wall facing the bull pen is one big window. He must notice me looking because he says, “I can pull the blinds down if you’d be more comfortable.”
“No, that’s okay.” He gestures to the small, round table in the center of the room and we both pull out chairs and sit. Another distinction is the carpeted floor. Our chairs pull out noiselessly on the low-pile carpet, instead of grating sharply as metal on concrete does.
He pulls a recorder from his pocket, along with a small note pad and pen. He sets the recorder in the center of the table and clicks his pen. “You don’t mind if I record this, do you?” I shake my head, suddenly feeling nervous rather than excited. It all feels so ominous, a bad déja vu when he says, “Okay, tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”
I tell him everything from the moment I woke up. I leave out the part about living in a landfill. Detective Saxon strikes me as the type of person who keeps an immaculate home. I doubt I’d find a single speck of dust in his place. He’d be disgusted if he knew how I am living right now. And for some reason, I find myself caring about what he thinks of me.
“...And that’s when I called you,” I wrap up.
“Did he see you?” Leo clicks his pen, and I sweep my shoe across the carpeted floor, swinging my legs.
“I don’t think so.”
He nods his head and wets his bottom lip—my gaze locks on the small movement—but he doesn’t say anything. Just nods and clicks his pen again with a pensive look.
“So…? Are you going to arrest him or what?” I break the silence.
He braces his forearms on the table and leans forward. He uses the same tone he used last time when he spoke to me like a trapped rabbit. “Here’s the thing, Harlow. The man you saw is Cash Fox. He owns Peaches and The Fox’s Den and various other establishments in the city.” That makes my skin scrawl. Knowing that a serial killer is living his life out in public without any shame, running businesses.He was Beth’s boss for Christ’s sake.
“Isn’t that good? He has a connection to Beth and the place of the crime.” My palms start sweating as Leo bites his lip, like he’s considering what he’s going to say next very carefully.
“It’s all circumstantial. Yes, the connection is there. That’s why we were already looking into his alibi when you remembered the tattoo. So, we’re still stuck at the same place we were before.”
“And what place is that?” My throat tightens up, and I beg myself not to cry. This conversation is going very differently than I thought it would.
“You are still just a witness who thinks she saw something that an alibi proves is impossible.” I feel like I’m crashing from an epic high. All the nerves, adrenaline, excitement, anticipation, and elation of today drop suddenly and dramatically, leaving me in free fall.
“What? No, there has to be something we can do. I saw him, Leo. I fuckingsaw him.”
I was the one who lay aching and dazed on the pavement as my best friend was stabbed to death, unable to do anything.
Nothing. I did nothing.
Except commit every line and shading of that godforsaken tattoo to memory.
“What’s this alibi? It can’t be truthful. It’s him, it has to be.” I hate how desperate I sound, but I hate what Leo says next even more.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss those details.”
My body vibrates with rage. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snap. “I have to relive the worst night of my life, and you ‘aren’t at liberty to discuss’ anything with me?” I stand up, ready to storm out if this asshole says one more idiotic thing.
“I’ve already told you more than I should have, Harlow.” The tension in my neck dissipates a little at the apologetic way he says my name. “You shouldn’t know that Fox is, or was ever, a suspect, let alone details of his alibi.”
“But, but—” I run my hands through my hair, my thoughts zipping around like fucking gnats in the summer. “How can he explain away that tattoo? It can’t be anyone else.”
“Any defense lawyer worth his salt—and trust me, Fox can afford the very best—would argue that you met Fox before and your brain is misremembering the tattoo, projecting a different memory onto the memory of the murderer because of the trauma. Witness statements, especially when it’s a traumatic incident, are notoriously unreliable. We need irrefutable physical evidence, and we just don’t have it. I’m sorry, Harlow.”
“I don’t give a shit about your sorrys,” I say under my breath, but it’s apparently loud enough for him to hear by the way his jaw ticks.
I can already feel it closing in on me, encroaching on my essence. The numbness. Numb, but still cold and dark, and it’s coming back.
“Can I walk you out?” There’s a sadness to his question.
I don’t look him in the eyes. I don’t want to see the pity, the misplaced sympathy. “Don’t bother.”