“So this is what you look like?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t quite remember.”
“Have we met before?” the attorney asked.
“I think so.”
A light went on in his head.
“Stella Sandell. I should have realized. Ulrika’s daughter?”
I nodded.
“This’ll be quick,” he said. “They have nothing on you. Some cops nowadays have awfully itchy fingers. They have their homicide guidebook and stuff to follow. They think the first few hours are totally crucial so they haul in the first best option, for better or for worse.”
He sat down, his legs spread wide, and placed his large hands on his kneecaps.
“But they must have something,” I said. “They said there was some witness who pointed me out in a photo.”
“She can hardly be called a witness. Some silly girl who claims she saw you from a window. In the dark! And she’s one hundred percent certain it was you, even though she doesn’t know you. No, that’s not much of a witness.”
I could picture her in my mind. A shady figure in a window on the second floor. Was that really all they had? Was that the only reason I was sitting there?
“They want to continue questioning you as soon as possible,” said Blomberg. “You’re lucky. Agnes Thelin is one of the most sensible people in this place. Good to talk to.”
He stood up and messed with his phone a little, holding it half a centimeter from his nose. Apparently the thought of wearing glasses made him feel old or ugly, or maybe both.
“Forgot my contacts,” he mumbled.
My legs felt like overcooked spaghetti when I stood up. The attorney walked ahead of me to the door.
“So what am I supposed to say?”
Blomberg turned around so fast his hair fell down across one eye.
“What do you mean?”
“What should I tell the police?”
“Just tell it like it was.”
He looked at me, slowly, up and down, until I pulled my cardigan over my chest. I felt like a show cat. The attorney brought his hand to his forehead and stroked away both hair and sweat.
I stretched.
“Is that all you’ve got? Tell it like it was. That’s your strategy?”
Blomberg shrank a bit.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re supposed to be one of these big-shot lawyers,” I said. “Haven’t you won a bunch of major cases? Didn’t you have a better strategy those times either?”
Blomberg threw up his hands.
“What do you want, exactly?”
I had managed to arouse some uncertainty in him. Some philosopher once said that knowledge is power. That is definitely true. Other people’s ignorance is also a powerful factor.
“What if I did it?” I said.
Blomberg had transformed completely. He had come marching in here like an alpha male straight out of the tanning bed. Now he looked like nothing but a pale little boy.
I thought of Dad’s motto, how lying is a rare skill. Did Blomberg share that belief?
“Why would you have done something like that?” he wondered.
It was, of course, a good question.
46
The book Shirine brings me is three hundred and seventeen pages long. Single-spaced, no room to breathe.
“I thought you might need something to read,” she says. “There’s not much else to do around here.”
I page expectantly through it, my fingers eager. I read the first sentence: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.
Six months ago, I would have laughed. If someone handed me a fifty-year-old book full of long sentences and references I didn’t get, I would have assumed it was a bad joke. I can’t remember the last time I read a whole book. I’ve never been able to hold still for long enough. After a few minutes, my thoughts wander off and I completely forget what I’ve read and I have to start all over. But in here it’s different. I long for something that can kidnap my mind for a while. I’m so tired of myself.
“So what kind of book is it?” I ask, as I glance through the blurb on the back.
“It’s something of a feminist classic.”
I raise one eyebrow.
“Give it a chance. I think you’ll like it.”
I bring it back to my cell anyway. Then I buy a large Coke and two chocolate bars from the commissary cart. The guard who locks me back in is new, must be one of the temps always coming and going. She stares at me in horror as I reluctantly return to my hundred square feet of smell. The new girl keeps standing there in the doorway, and I feel her eyes writhing across my body like terrified larvae.