We Were Never Here(95)
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His parents looked so much like him: Aaron had his father’s lush hair and angular jaw, and his mother’s sharp nose and pretty eyes. Their faces were contorted with fear, but Aaron seemed delighted to introduce us, quick to joke about his injuries. I wanted to spend the night at Aaron’s side, but they were politely firm in that parenty way, so they dropped me off at the hotel and promised to pick me up at eleven a.m. sharp, in time for visiting hours.
But around ten a.m., I got a call from the police station. A bored-sounding woman asked me to come in again—voluntarily, she added, if I wanted to help. They’d pick me up in fifteen minutes. I hung up, my head swimming, already racked with what felt like a full-body hangover.
A different officer wanted to speak to me this time, a detective, and he gave me his condolences on the loss of my friend. He was friendly as well, but there was a wolfish quality droning right below the surface. My heart thudded; I blinked hard, trying to clear my fuzzy mind.
“We’ve been in touch with the Los Angeles police,” he announced. “And we don’t want to jump to any conclusions. But it seems that Miss Czarnecki matches the description of a suspect in an April slaying in South America.”
He tapped a few things on his phone, then turned it to me: the police sketch, carefully penciled in, like the ones on TV. God, they’d nailed it, wise feline eyes and all.
“We ran her passport. She was in Chile with you in April, correct?”
Damn, that was fast. “Yes.”
He put his phone away. “We know Miss Czarnecki flew into Phoenix separately. On a flight she booked last-minute. And several witnesses at the hotel saw the two of you fighting in the lobby right before her death. So let’s go over the details together one more time. Since this isn’t as cut-and-dry as we thought.”
Suddenly it was blindingly clear, as bright as fresh mint, as crystalline and cold as a laser-cut diamond: They thought Aaron and I had killed Kristen to shut her up. God, now that I thought about it, every detail pointed that way—the evidence she’d cached linking me to the crimes in Chile and Cambodia, all her vaguely threatening texts, the way she plummeted to her death less than an hour after the sketch was released…
And no one had been there to see it. No one knew she shoved me into traffic first—that Aaron swerved not to hit Kristen but to avoid hitting me. All my insides contracted and a retch shot up my throat.
“We got investigators on the scene right away,” he went on. “They’ll be looking into the tire marks, the crash site, all that stuff too. And forensics will be taking a very close look at Miss Czarnecki as well—dirt under her fingernails, that kind of thing.”
He took a sip of coffee. I reached for the water in front of me and then went cold all over. The detective saw it too: a patch of purply bruises on my forearm, clustered like a bunch of grapes. And scratches, too, angry red stripes, lined up like stretch marks. Battle wounds where Kristen had grabbed me as she clawed her way up the cliff.
And then I touched the flimsy cup and the last piece thunked into place. I’d pressed my mouth to a cup here yesterday, too, left behind wet pieces of my DNA.
Dirt under her fingernails. Or skin cells. Irrefutable proof that there’d been a struggle before Kristen plunged to her death.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked, my voice strangled.
The detective leaned back, eyebrows high. “Nope. This is just a friendly chat.”
“Then I’d like to go now.” I pulled my hand back. “Please.”
We stared at each other, each locked in a frigid glare.
Finally, he shrugged. “Of course. We can have someone give you a lift to your hotel.”
“I’d like to go to the hospital, please.” When he didn’t say anything: “Aaron’s parents are waiting for me there.”
“Sure thing. Maybe I’ll see you there later.” He braced his beefy hand against the table to push back his chair. “We have some questions for Mr. Meuleman too.”
CHAPTER 45
Aaron looked clear-eyed today, more focused and alert. My heart twisted at the sight of him; I feared it was the last time he’d look at me like that, his expression warm and brimming with love. His parents gave me hugs (they were huggers!), and I tried to seem casual as I requested a few minutes alone with their son.
When they’d closed the door behind them, I glanced around—no cameras, at least none that I could see. I’d keep my voice low and hope for the best.
“Aaron, I need to tell you the truth,” I murmured. “It won’t be easy, but I need you to hear it from me first.”
“What is it?” He stared at me, his eyes so full of concern that I thought I might disintegrate like a shooting star, which, after all, is just a lowly meteor that lost its way, burning up as it plunges into the atmosphere.
My throat tightened. I took a deep breath and braced myself.
And I finally, finally told the man I loved the truth.
It wasn’t hard, once I got going. I started with Cambodia—how Kristen had felled Sebastian with a lamp, kicked his head into the bed frame while I howled for her to stop. How, afterward, I’d wanted to call the police, but she’d threatened me, too, forced me to clean up the hotel room, to help her dump his body over the ledge like a coin into a well.