She isn’t wearing makeup like she was at the headquarters, and I have to strain really hard to look at her eyes and not at the group of scars on her cheek. They trickle down like a snapshot of rainfall, this brownish color that is only a shade or so darker than her skin, so it almost blends in.
“What are you doing?” I pull her fingers from my wrist, step back from her.
She reaches her hand out, begging me to return. “Don’t go back into the light. Can only talk to you if you come back behind the lamp. Please.” She’s frantic, standing in the corner of the patio, shadowed by the lamp towering behind her.
“Don’t understand what you want to talk to me about. You know I already talked to your people at the station. Thought we were finished with this.” I step back toward her so I’m standing in the same shadow. I get a better look at her scars here anyway.
“You know why they called you in to talk?”
I nod. “Wanted to question me about some investigation.”
“It’s a suicide.”
I pivot to the side. “Don’t know nothing about no suicide.”
“Suicide isn’t the point. He left a note. An officer killed himself and left a note and he talked about you in that note. He talked about you and more men on this police force than I can name and when they found that note, they opened an internal investigation. My department does all the internal affairs investigations and all we got back was a transcript of your interview where you said the equivalent of ‘it’s my fault’ and left within the hour. Thing is, I saw you walk out of that office six hours after our cameras say you walked in and I’m going to guess you told less than the truth.”
A suicide. In the dark of the patio, it’s hard to even process what she’s saying, but that sticks. The word. How short and simple it seems, innocent, even though it’s really the bloodiest image I have ever seen. Not that Mama succeeded. I imagine some man squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the world to close on him, all because of me. I wonder how he did it, if he was smarter and richer than Mama and took some pills instead of trying to bleed his way to death. It’s hard to even believe any of them felt remorse for how tight they’d grip the back of my neck or how they’d buckle their belts and open the car doors, shove me out, and say I’m lucky they don’t arrest me. Hard to believe they’d bleed because of me.
Purple Suit is still standing and looking at me, waiting for me to tell her about that day in the station, when they kept me at that table, crescent marks on my wrists.
“Told them what I had to. Don’t matter to me what they know or don’t know. I ain’t getting nothing from telling them the truth.” I fold my arms across my chest, lean into my hip. I want her to walk away, to take the blood scene and the suicide with her.
She nods. “That’s the thing. The rest of this police department might not have a moral code, but I do. And I’m betting they’re doing more taking advantage of you than you even realize. Why you think they waited to interview you until you turned eighteen? Now you aren’t a minor and these men will do whatever they have to in order to cover up your age, but it’s unethical and unfair and I have too much respect for you to let them file this and forget about it. A man died and in his last hours he wrote about you.”
I can picture some faceless cop scribbling, panicked, spelling a name he thinks is mine. Purple Suit needs to stop before he is all I can see, before I want to bleed too just so I don’t have to carry another death.
“I don’t know nothing about that. Don’t matter anyway, this my job. They pay me or they give me information that might as well be payment.”
“Bullshit.” Her tongue is quick.
I step back again, halfway in the light. “Why you even here telling me this?”
She looks at the ground and back up at me. Her eyes wobble in their sockets and she speaks softly. “Only way any justice is going to come around is if this goes public. Kiara, right? They call you Kia, but it’s Kiara?” I don’t respond. “Kiara, I’m going to leak this.”
The space between my lungs and stomach clenches and I feel almost seasick, like the bay has entered my chest when I wasn’t looking. I step closer to her again and speak between my teeth. “If you do that, you fucking my whole life over.”
“If I don’t, I’m still fucking you over and whatever other girls they’ll play with after they’re done with you. We both know they’ve probably already got their hands on a handful of other girls younger than you are that no one knows about. This is a chance at saving them.” Her eyes are pooling, but not with tears. Might be pity or guilt, but they’ve glassed over completely. “I’m telling you because I can take out your name. I think it’s best for everyone to know, so you can speak for yourself, but it’s your call.”