White Rabbit(38)

In the half second it takes me to trip over this seed of doubt, I’ve already missed my window of opportunity to give an innocuous answer; just enough time has now passed for a “no” to look like deception, an “I don’t know” to sound evasive, and a “yes” to go without saying. I lick my lips again, preparing to blurt some kind of brilliant damage control … and am spared—miraculously—when the door to the room bangs suddenly open.

“What the hell is going on?”

To my shock, it’s Peter, his face a familiarly livid shade of scarlet.

“Sir, I’m afraid you can’t be in here.” Detective Lehmann is on his feet in an instant, already moving to intercept my father. “These rooms are off-limits to—”

“What has he been asking you?” Peter demands of me over the detective’s shoulder. “Did he tell you that you have a right to counsel?”

“Sir, you need to leave,” Lehmann snaps sharply, his palsy-walsy demeanor gone in a hurry. “I am interviewing a potential witness in a sensitive—”

“‘Interviewing,’ my ass!” Peter shoots back, glaring at the hapless detective like he’s trying to incinerate the man’s soul with his eyes. “You’re aware that Rufus is a minor? You have no right to interrogate him without notifying his—”

“This is not an interrogation; I am merely taking his statement, and there is no need—”

“‘Taking his statement?’ You’ve been in here for almost fifteen minutes! How long does it take to ascertain that he got a phone call from his sister, picked her up, and drove her here—to you?” He manages to make it sound like Detective Lehmann is not only incompetent but possibly also corrupt. To me, Peter barks, “Have you told him that much already?” Meekly, and somewhat dazed, I nod, and Peter nods back. “Good. Then get your things together. It’s time for you to go home.”

“Sir!” The beautiful detective is plainly aghast. “You have no right to—”

“I happen to be Rufus’s father, as well as his attorney, so I’m afraid I have every right,” Peter returns icily, “and unless you plan to arrest him for something, he is free to walk out of here any time he chooses. I won’t have you exploiting his ignorance of legal process to pressure him. He’s told you what happened, and that’s all he’s obligated to do. If you have any more questions for him, you can ask them through me.” With pointed rudeness, my father produces a business card and tucks it into Detective Lehmann’s breast pocket—the white-collar equivalent of go fuck yourself. “Also, for the record, I expect a copy of his statement to be forwarded to my office. If I discover that any part of it was coerced, I’m going to have your badge, Detective. Rufus, let’s go.”

I’m too stunned to argue, and don’t know if I even have the wherewithal to try. As if under remote control, I rise to my feet and duck through the door, singed by the laser grid of white-hot glares that pass between the two men. I don’t look up at either of them.





12

Wordlessly, I follow Peter down the empty corridor leading back to the lobby, expecting armed policemen to jump out of nowhere at any moment and stop us from leaving the building. I still don’t entirely understand what’s just happened, and I’m not at all certain that Peter actually has the right to yank me out from under Detective Lehmann’s nose like that.

It’s not only Peter’s intervention in the nick of time, though—saving me from an increasingly curious policeman who seemed to have caught the scent of my dishonesty—that has me so jumpy and off-balance. It’s also the way that he authoritatively identified himself as my father in front of the detective. It’s a biological fact that he has only ever admitted to in the past while under legal duress.

As grateful as I am to have been rescued from the interview before having had a chance to shoot myself in the foot, however, I’m not about to say thank you. I know Peter far too well to make the mistake of believing that his fierce performance of paternal concern has anything to do with my rights being abused. As if to drive the point home, my father stops abruptly in the middle of the narrow hallway, grabs me by the arm, and hauls me with him into a small unisex bathroom. Locking the door behind us, he then slams me—hard—against the wall. “What the fuck did you tell him?”

“Nothing!” Sixteen years of ingrained fear streak up my spine and race around my brain like a feral cat. “I said what you said—April called, we picked her up, and we drove her here. Let me go!”

His eyes bore into me like oil drills, the same dark gray as my own. We have the same wheat-colored hair, the same Cupid’s bow mouth; I hate that I look so much like him. I hate that I have to be reminded of him every time I look in the mirror. Saliva gathering at the corners of his lips, my father snarls, “I know you had something to do with this. I don’t know what, but it’s got your stink all over it.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with anything! Now, let. Me. Go!” I shove him, and he shoves back harder, slamming me into the wall again and driving the air from my lungs. The room flips upside down and turns red, rage knotting suddenly together and throbbing in my chest like an alien spawn just below my heart.

“April is a good kid. Her friends are good kids—respectable kids,” Peter rants on, clearly having no idea what he’s talking about. “What did you do? There’s no chance in hell you were invited to the Whitneys’ lake house tonight, so what were you up to out there?” His face is lavender now, his teeth bared just inches from my nose. “You’re the one who did it, aren’t you? You killed that young man, and you’ve somehow talked April into covering for you—”