“I know who did it,” she said.
* * *
—
The forensics team didn’t arrive until after dusk. A tent had been erected to shield the body and evidence from the rain that afternoon.
Scarlet’s body lay at the bottom of a twenty-foot cliff. The ME’s preliminary cause of death was a subdural hematoma from the fall, though he couldn’t rule out other injuries. Detective Oslo, after notifying the parents, had slipped out of the station. The coroner didn’t require an official ID at that point, since the deceased had been carrying her school identification card.
Oslo arrived at the base of Black Oak Bluff, spoke to the ME, and ducked under the tent to look at the deceased. Her body was twisted like a rag doll, her right knee bent inward, foot jutting out. She was wearing a gray peacoat over a short black dress with tights. The girl wore high-top Converse, no tread. Her tights were pulled down to just below her knees. She was splattered with mud and blood. Oslo asked the usual questions—cause of death, signs of struggle, sexual assault. Then he nodded at Craig, the campus officer, to walk with him up the path to the overlook. Oslo’s Florsheims sank deeper into the boggy ground with each step. Craig followed behind, stopping several times along the way to catch his breath, marveling at Oslo’s lung capacity. The trail narrowed as they snaked along it. Oslo stopped at the top of the overlook, where some murky footprints remained. The path was no more than four feet wide. He began snapping photos of the ground and what looked like a rain gutter, about four inches wide, carved in the mud. Next to the gutter was an imposing yet suicidal-looking oak, rooted precariously on the edge of the bluff.
“Any chance she jumped?” Officer Craig asked.
Oslo shook his head and directed the officer’s attention to the mud gutter. “Looks like a heel, trying to get purchase.”
“So maybe she slipped?” Craig said.
Craig and all the campus police desperately wanted the death not to be a homicide. If an accident was a headache, a suicide was a migraine. And a murder would be more like a brain tumor. Specialists would have to be called in.
“Maybe. Or she was pushed,” Oslo said, as he aimed his flashlight down at the craggy rocks below the bluff.
Oslo and Craig made their way down the path as Scarlet’s body was bagged. A young man in a coroner’s windbreaker jogged up the last few yards to meet them.
The windbreaker guy delivered a baggie that appeared to be filled with mud. “Found a phone about ten yards from the deceased. Battery died. But it could be hers.”
* * *
—
Owen was asleep when the police came. It was Sunday, after all. The knocking on the door intruded into his dream and twisted it into a gestapo-style home invasion in which he’d been accused of unspecified crimes. Later, Owen would remember only a fragment from the dream, a feeling of bottomless guilt, a sense that his conscience was truly unclean. He’d gone to sleep wearing earplugs—there had been an impromptu hallway party the night before. The knocking sound was muted just enough that Owen didn’t wake up until the police were inside his room. His RA had given the key to the cops.
“Owen Mann?” said a large man in uniform.
As he came to, Owen noticed that the man in his room had a gun. There was another, older guy in a uniform standing behind him. It was like his gestapo dream had taken a pedestrian tangent.
“What’s up?” Owen said.
He was trying to keep himself calm. To an outsider, he looked remarkably, ridiculously calm.
“I need you to come with me,” said the guy with the gun.
“Where?”
“Deerkill station.”
“Train station?”
“Nope. Police.”
“Why?”
“Your girlfriend was found dead last night,” said the older cop. Students began to spill into the hallway. What happened? Scarlet’s dead. Scarlet Hayes? Yes. Oh my god.
The cops let Owen put on a pair of pants and a sweatshirt. Owen wasn’t being arrested, so there were no handcuffs and no perp walk, but the way people looked at him as he followed the two men with guns out of the dorm, there might as well have been.
“Is Scarlet really dead?” Owen asked on the drive to the station.
“Yes,” said the cop behind the wheel.
The news of Scarlet’s death evoked some feeling in Owen, but there were too many other emotions, all vying for attention, canceling one another out. What remained was an oppressive depression mixed with caffeine withdrawal.
“What happened?” Owen asked. “How?”