The Winter Sister(31)
Maybe that was why, when I took Mom home, got her settled in her recliner with a glass of ginger ale and a blanket (“I’m not an invalid,” she protested), I lied and said I’d be back in a few minutes. After picking up her prescription from the pharmacy, I drove past the turn that would have taken me home and headed instead for the Spring Hill police station, a place I hadn’t been since I was fourteen years old. I pulled into the parking lot and got out of my car, stepping over patches of ice to make my way toward the entrance.
I’d believed, once, that justice was an infallible thing, that when I sat in an interview room and told the detectives about painting over Persephone’s bruises, they would show up at Ben’s door with an arrest warrant that very afternoon. But now, as I gripped the cold brass handles of the station’s double doors, my heart hammered against my ribs at what I knew: justice was as flawed as any human; it was easily dodged and fooled. Ben had escaped it once. And I would make sure that he did not escape it again.
10
“I need to speak to a detective,” I told the uniformed woman behind the glass window inside the station’s lobby, my voice booming with urgency.
The woman looked at me, bored and unimpressed. “What is this regarding?” she asked.
“I have a . . .” I struggled to find the right word. “Complaint, I guess. Or a request.”
She pulled a sheet of paper from a folder on her desk. “Do you wish to file a report?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not like that. I need to speak with Detective Parker and Detective Falley. Please—it’s important.”
It had been so long, but I still remembered their names. I remembered the stubble on Parker’s chin and the way Falley tucked her hair behind her ears before she spoke. I remembered that they’d promised to find out what happened to Persephone, no matter how long it took.
The woman behind the glass raised one eyebrow, as if the detectives’ names legitimized my presence. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Sylvie O’Leary.”
She picked up a phone and punched a couple of numbers on the receiver. “Detective Falley doesn’t work here anymore,” she said to me. “She—yeah, hi. I’ve got a Sylvie O’Leary here. She says she needs to see you and that it’s important.” The woman listened, her eyes still focused on my face. “Okay.” Hanging up, she gestured with a quick nod of her head toward a couple of chairs against a brick wall. “Detective Parker is on his way. You can have a seat over there.”
“Thank you,” I replied, but I didn’t sit down. I only moved a few feet away from the woman’s line of sight, pacing slowly in a small circle.
After a few minutes, a door opened and a man in a brown suit stepped into the lobby. He had gained a little weight over the years, and the stubble on his face was now gray, but other than those differences, he looked exactly as I remembered him. Even the way he held the door open seemed familiar, his arm stiff and outstretched as he looked at me with a solemn squint.
“Ms. O’Leary,” he said.
When I was younger, he’d called me Sylvie, but the way he said my name now reminded me of how he’d stood outside Mom’s locked door, trying to convince her to open up and answer his questions. Neither of us knew right then that she wouldn’t be coming out, that she’d make a life inside those walls, shrinking into herself like a plant without light.
“Hi,” I said, slipping past him through the doorway. “Thank you for seeing me.”
He let the door close behind us and then led me down a long hallway with fluorescent lights that buzzed. Near the end of the hall, he held an ID card to a black keypad just outside a room. After a high-pitched beep and the sound of a bolt unlocking, he opened the door and gestured for me to head inside.
“We can talk in here,” he said. “Please—have a seat.”
As the lights switched on, illuminating the small, sparsely furnished space—just a metal table, two padded chairs, and a desk that held up a stack of boxes and folders—I had to swallow a lump that instantly swelled in my throat. The room looked exactly like the one I’d sat in with Aunt Jill, and it still gave me the prickly feeling of being a suspect, just as it had all those years ago.
The chair scraped against the floor as I pulled it away from the table. I sat down and waited for Detective Parker to do the same, but he remained standing, looking at his watch and passing his hands over his tie. “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Coffee? Water? Stale doughnut, perhaps?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
“All right.” He reached for the chair across from me and settled himself into it. “I’m afraid I have to preface this by saying that I don’t have a lot of time. I have a meeting that I have to get to in a few minutes, but when I heard you were here . . . well, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” He folded his hands together. “So what can I do for you, Ms. O’Leary?”
“I—” Where was I supposed to begin? Looking at Parker’s fingers, which he knotted and unknotted as he waited, I cleared my throat and took a breath. “I need you to reopen the investigation into my sister’s death.”
Parker nodded a little, as if expecting me to go on, but when I didn’t, he sat back in his chair, his face gently sympathetic. “The investigation was never closed,” he said. “The case is still open, but with no direct evidence or witnesses or new suspects, it’s long been considered what we call a ‘cold case.’?” He used air quotes on the last two words, as if he assumed the phrase was foreign to me.