I sat at a bare table in the police interrogation room. Idly twirling a strand of my long red hair, I blankly glanced upon my surroundings. The austere chamber looked roughly the way it did in television and movies; plain white walls rising up to meet a drop ceiling, with one single fluorescent light sickly shining down upon me. Embedded in the wall to my left was a one-way mirror. On my side, the reflective side, I took a moment to glance at how I looked.
My body still looked strange to me; it was only a few weeks ago that I had noticed my hair getting so long, and straight, rather than curly, like my mother's. And my breasts there had been rumors at school that, over Spring Break, I had gotten implants. I didn't blame them. Since then, I'd seen my doctor, and seen an endocrinologist, and the ultimate verdict seemed to be that there was nothing hormonally wrong with my body and I'd just had an incredibly rapid growth spurt, possibly caused by a change of diet. In lieu of going through more testing, I decided I would just learn to live with these and report back to the endocrinologist if things got any more unpleasant.
My wardrobe hadn't had a chance to change as fast as my body had, however. All my bras were worthless now, obviously. I bought a couple with what little money I had, and hid my new assets under a heavy hooded sweatshirt, but it was late April, now, and as the temperatures rose, I'd have to start removing layers, which would alert everybody to my newfound curves. On the other hand, I wasn't very social at all. Once school was dismissed for the summer, I planned on retreating to my room, so it wasn't like a lot of my peers would have more than a few months to stare at me.
Still, as odd as the reflection was, I still didn't think I looked like a murderer. Would the police really believe that I was? Ideally, I believed in the power of the justice system to prosecute those who were guilty, but it was always the miscarriages of justice that people heard about. OJ Simpson got away, and JonBenet's killers were never identified.
"Karyn Scott?" a masculine-sounding-voice rang out, in tandem with the sound of the door opening. I immediately dropped my fidgeting and raised my head to greet whoever it was, but the plainclothes Hispanic officer continued before I could say anything. "I'm Detective Jacob Murilla, the lead investigator in Sarah McMillan's murder case. I'd just like to ask you a couple of questions?"
I shrugged, trying to look affable, but I didn't really succeed. "It's what I'm here for. Go ahead," I answered. I hoped my apathy wasn't incriminating. I hoped my paranoia wasn't incriminating. I just wanted to go home.
"Here's some water for you," the Detective said as he gently set some bottled water on the table and pushed it towards me. "Don't worry. We're not ready to charge anybody with anything yet."
I just nodded, bringing the bottled water closer to my half of the table. There was a brief pause in the conversation as he pulled out a notepad, a pen and a small tape recorder and fiddled with them for a moment before they were arranged to his liking. The silence was killing me. I just wanted him to ask his fucking questions and have somebody drive me home.
"You knew Sarah McMillan, right?" He asked, sounding rather uninterested in the question. I didn't blame him, because it was one to which he already knew the answer.
I nodded again. "She was my classmate. We went to the same middle school, and we were going to the same high school," I answered, trying not to make my voice crack. I didn't want to give him too much information. He would ask for whatever it was he needed. It was a hard enough effort trying to keep from sounding emotionally engaged.
"So, you saw a lot of her, then," the officer continued, sounding just as bored as before. It was clear he was trying to sound conversational, but it sounded condescending, as well.
I blinked before giving that one an answer. "Well, we moved around in different social circles, so we only occasionally encountered each other outside of school. But because we were both in mostly Advanced Placement classes, we tended to share a classroom often." I noticed him scribble something down on his notepad, before continuing with the next question.
"But you weren't friends," He replied. It was more of a statement than a question.
I nodded sullenly. "No. We weren't."
Detective Murilla flipped back a couple pages in his notepad before continuing on. It seemed he was starting to abandon this façade of a friendly interview and start asking some of the hard-hitting questions. Well, that didn't take too long. "I spoke with Melissa O'Grady and Erica Henderson yesterday. You're familiar with them, right?"
"Yeah," I said, already bored with this line of questioning. "Sarah's friends."
"Well," the detective went on, "they told me a few stories. Stories about how you were treated by Sarah McMillan. How they witnessed her calling you names like 'loser' and 'slut ' picking on you egging your car, then convincing the principal that you had done it yourself to get her in trouble That girl liked to torment you, didn't she? I even heard that she made fun of you for getting sexually a-"
"Yeah. It's all true!" I intentionally cut him off before he could finish speaking. "Except for that part about them witnessing it. That's a crock of shit. They participated," I scoffed. So much for trying to seem emotionally distant. Detective Murilla knew that I had no love for Sarah McMillan. He'd done his fucking homework.
"I believe you," he said, nodding. "Trust me, sis, I know. People are capable of doing some fucked up things. I once worked on a case where a mother exacerbated her son's schizophrenia to make him commit suicide. She went to criminal court and played the bereaved parent routine, and went home smelling clean as a rose. Girls like Sarah's friends are all too willing to pretend to be innocent angels once the shit hits the fan. But on the inside, they're the worst of us, man."
I shrugged. I didn't really want to talk about this. I didn't doubt that this man was a friendly guy, but right now what he was doing was trying to appear unthreatening so that I'd say something that would incriminate me. I hated Sarah McMillan, but I wasn't about to tell him that. I just wanted to be left alone.
The detective noted my silence, and immediate changed the line of questioning. "Your parents own a gun, right? A Smith & Wesson Model 36 revolver, according to the information I have?" And so the detective finally went for the jugular.
"I guess," I answered meekly. "You should really ask them. It's not my gun, obviously."
In reality, I knew all about that gun. My parents had purchased it my sophomore year in an attempt to make me sleep easier, after I had been raped while walking home from school. It didn't work, and even to this day, I rarely slept soundly. When my parents bought me a car, so that I wouldn't have to walk to school anymore, I felt a little better, but only because I got a little more sleep in because the journey to school was about a half hour shorter. Of course, that car now had several horizontal scratches on the exterior, which apparently, I'd intentionally placed there.
The detective seemingly ignored my last response. "You know what condition Sarah was found in, right? She was found in a dumpster outside a convenience store in Zodiac Beach. Bullet wound straight through the back of her head. She wasn't raped or abused in any way that we've detected, and all of her belongings were still with her when she was discovered by the store's manager. This was an execution-style killing. Somebody specifically wanted her dead. Moreover, the lethal wound was created by a .38 Special caliber bullet. The same kind your parents' gun uses."
My eyebrows widened. It was worse than I had realized. The evidence really did seem to point out that I was the one who had murdered Sarah McMillan. I hadn't, but this was some really unfortunate fucking evidence! I didn't need police officers sniffing through the wreckage that was my life. Especially when that would mean that whoever did kill Sarah was still on the loose.
"My parents aren't the only ones who own that kind of gun. And I'm not the only person who didn't like Sarah," I said bitterly, trying to keep myself above the surface.
"No, not by a long shot," Detective Murilla nodded, "but there's one more thing. I was on the phone with representatives from the Colgate Foundation earlier today. I asked them who the frontrunners for the Kristen Colgate Scholarship were, and, to my surprise, they were Sarah McMillan and Karyn Scott. Now, from everything I've learned, I know that Sarah's parents had more than enough money to send their daughter to any college on the planet. But as for you I'm not so sure. You're relying on that scholarship in order to get into Brown University, right? Otherwise, you're going to have to go to Angel Grove Community College, right? Sort of a waste for a promising student like yourself, wouldn't you say?"
I glared at the detective without realizing I was doing it. "Look, I know what you're going to ask. So just ask it already."
"Fine," the detective said, his tone not changing in the slightest. "What's your alibi for the night of Friday, April 14th, between the hours of ten 'o' clock PM and one 'o' clock AM?"
"I was in my room reading, and then sleeping," I answered quickly, knowing that Detective Murilla wasn't going to be at all satisfied with that answer. I didn't have very many friends, though, so it's not like I would have been hanging out with them. I spent most of my Friday nights indoors, reading or playing video games. The only people who saw me were my family members, and they would say I was there even if I wasn't.
The detective's forehead wrinkled, and I noticed him wipe his brow theatrically. "Nobody saw you? That's not going to be enough, Karyn."
"Dammit, I didn't fucking kill her!" I practically shouted at the detective. "You don't have any evidence linking me to the crime scene, everything you do have is circumstantial, and I know that you can't hold me here until you get a warrant, so I would like to go home now."
Detective Murilla shrugged. "Fine with me," he said nonchalantly. "There's just one thing, though. You've got considerable reason to hate the victim, you have easy access to the same type of weapon that was used to kill her, you stand to profit significantly from her death, and you've got no alibi as far as I'm concerned. Like I said, nobody's going to charge you with anything right now. But I want you to be perfectly aware that you are the prime suspect for the murder of Sarah McMillan. You've got nothing to worry about if you didn't kill her. But if there's anything you're keeping from me, I'm going to take you down."
I shrugged back. "Fine."
When a police officer drove me back home, it was about 6:30, but there was still a little light left in the sky. My mom was waiting for me at the front door. She wanted to know everything about what was going on, but I told her I didn't want to talk about it right now. I told her she needed to find me a decent criminal lawyer, and leave me alone for a while. Then I walked around to the back porch, and took a cigarette out of the front pocket of my hoodie.
"I saw the police officers drop you off," a familiar voice rang out from behind me. "What's up?"
It was Zoë Merlin, pretty much the closest approximation of a best friend I could ever hope to have. I'd known her since longer than I'd care to mention; she was two years younger than me, but as we were the two people of closest age in the entire neighborhood, we sort of gravitated towards each other. Still, though, we had our differences; she was very dedicated to Wicca and occult magic, and I had always thought that stuff was sort of puerile. Still, because it was so important to her, I had developed a begrudging respect for it. I even respected her friend Athena enough not to call her by her real name, Amy. I got along with her friend Zelda, too.
I sighed. "The police think that I killed Sarah McMillan. Do you have a light?"
Zoë's jaw dropped. "You're fuckin' kidding me! They actually think you murdered her?"
"Yeah," I said glumly. "I couldn't believe it either, until I heard the evidence against me," I said, telling her all about my encounter with Detective Murilla. Zoë couldn't believe it at first, but once she accepted everything, she visibly felt terrible for me. She was even tearing up a little.
"Karyn that really sucks," Zoë said, taking a long drag off her own cigarette. "I wish there was something we could do to get them to leave you alone. Anybody who knows you would know you're not capable of killing somebody. Even a fucking bitch like Sarah McMillan. It's like she can't leave you alone, even after she's dead."
"Yeah," I said resignedly. "But what can I do about it?"
Zoë shrugged. "I'm not really sure. We could always try investigating the murder ourselves," she said, sticking her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket and leaning against the exterior of my house, before taking her cigarette out of her mouth to speak. "I mean, one thing that I might want to try is holding a séance for Sarah. Zelda's mother is a spirit medium. If we could communicate with Sarah, she could tell us who killed her, and then we could locate that person and try to produce some evidence that they were the one who did it. And, if the séance failed, well we could order Chinese food delivered, so it wouldn't be a total waste."
I sniggered. "Even putting aside the fact that I don't really believe in that stuff like you do, and that I love Chinese food, why would Sarah have any reason to linger around Zelda's house after she's dead? I don't even think she would be able to just linger around all over the place as a ghost. I mean, you know how Sarah McMillan was. If there's an afterlife, she's probably being tortured in Hell," I said, puffing off my own cigarette thoughtfully.
"It's not like in Ghost, you know," Zoë scoffed. "They're summoned directly from where they are to speak through the body of the medium. And I don't believe in Hell, as much as I might like for Sarah to be there right now. But like I said, I would just like to try it."
"Yeah," I said, "Maybe we could try it. I don't know " I said somewhat dismissively. "Oh! On a brighter note, it looks like I'm going to be getting the Colgate Scholarship."
Zoë groaned. "Yeah, assuming you're not behind bars before the end of the summer."
