The door to my room is open and neither of them is blocking the way out. I’m glad. I may have to bolt again, even though I don’t have anything to hide.
At least… I’m thinking I don’t have anything to hide.
Instantly, I remember my visions of blood and of Greta in my morgue with her lipstick smudged.
Oh, God, I can’t remember taking that shower. Or lying down to go to sleep.
But that doesn’t make me a murderer. I mean, surely, I didn’t…
In a daze, I move past them and sit on my bed. As I tuck my boots under the springs and curl my fingers into my mattress, I try to think about what I need to say. I also make sure I have a clear exit.
“I was here all night.” I point to the crinkled towel on the back of my desk chair. “The only time I left my room was when I had a shower, and I fell asleep with that in my hair. I woke up at my normal time.”
Detective Bruno’s eyes narrow. “And what about your roommate.”
“Strots?” I ask.
“Where was she?”
I glance at the other officer, the uniformed one. He’s staring at the wall about two feet to the left of my head, like there’s a mirror hanging there and he’s checking out his own reflection.
I nod toward the other bed, and am so glad that the sheets are messy because for once, my roommate didn’t tidy everything up before she left.
“Strots was here. And in the morning, too.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure. Where else would she be?”
Other than maybe with Keisha because they were still talking things out. Can these men arrest them for being gay? I don’t think so. At least… I hope they can’t. And I’m glad I can protect my roommate. It makes up for my earlier cowardice a little.
I resolve to keep Keisha very far out of this, to make sure these cops stay off the third floor, but I worry they can somehow see my obstruction of justice in my eyes. My heart begins to pound and I clear my throat. I try to remember what relaxed looks like on other people. Loose shoulders, I think. I need to loosen my shoulders.
I rotate the left one. Like it hurts. “Where else would Strots be?” I repeat.
It’s at that point that I hear the crying. It’s very soft. I lean forward, so far forward that I nearly fall off my bed. Across the hall, Greta’s door is shut, but that’s where the sound is coming from.
Her roommate, I think to myself.
As the implications of what I saw in that riverbed trickle into my consciousness, I am hit with the realization that Greta will never, ever open that door again. She will never wear her pink silk bathrobe or the Benetton clothes she laid out—or any of her underwear, no matter the color.
She will also never sleep with another married man. Or somebody Francesca is dating.
She will never again hurt anybody.
“You’re absolutely sure Ellen Strotsberry was here all night,” Detective Bruno prompts.
A calm comes over me, giving me the composure I was trying to fake.
“I’m a light sleeper, so yes, I’m sure. I would have heard if she left.” I frown as if I am engaging in all of this for the first time. “But why are you asking about last night? Greta was alive this morning. I heard her in the shower.”
“You did?”
“When I went to the bathroom first thing. Someone was in the shower and her bucket with her shampoo and stuff was gone from her cubby. It had to be her.”
I state all this like it’s dispositive, even though I know it’s really not. Greta’s bucket could just as well have been in her room for a reload of bottles or something.
As if the detective comes to a similar conclusion, he gives me a noncommittal nod. “How well do you know the deceased?”
“She lives across the hall.”
“So you were friends?”
In a flash, I wish I hadn’t gone to Mr. Pasture with the accusation of bullying. Maybe it gives me a motive. Then again, he didn’t believe me, and as devastated as I was at the time, I am now relieved by this.
“I don’t think she cared for me. I’m… different, you know?”
Another nod comes back at me. “It’s our understanding that you and Miss Strotsberry had an altercation with Miss Stanhope in the phone room recently. Can you tell me a little bit about what happened?”
“It was no big deal.” Liar. “Greta—Miss Stanhope—played a joke on me. That’s all.”
“What kind of joke was it?”
“She put an essay of mine in—well, she gave it to a couple of other people.”
“We understand that your essay was shared with everyone in the dorm. And just to be clear, you believe Miss Stanhope was complicit in that dissemination?”
“Yes, it was her.”
Detective Bruno’s eyebrows close in on each other, two brown caterpillars facing off like they’re about to wrestle over the bridge of his nose. “How can you be so sure?”
“She can be a prankster sometimes. Could be, I mean. But like I said, it was just a joke.”
“Is that why you argued in the phone room? Because it was a joke?”
“We didn’t argue. I didn’t say anything to Greta. And what she did didn’t really bother me.”
“Then why did you go to Mr. Pasture, the dean, about the incident?”
I blink and try to hide the fact that I’m panicking, I’m drowning in a whirling pool of truth and lies. Except then I remember—
“I didn’t go to the dean. The dean came to me.”
Detective Bruno gives me a level look, like if I were his kid, he would be telling me not to be such a smartass. “When you were in Mr. Pasture’s office, you asserted that Greta played a number of practical jokes on you.”
“Like I said, she was a prankster.”
“And you maintain you were not at all bothered by the fact that the essay you believe she put into the dorm’s mailboxes contained personal and private information about your…”
“Insanity?” I fill in for him.
“About your mental challenges.”
“It is what it is. And when I was at Mr. Pasture’s office, sure, I mentioned the pranks, but he’ll tell you himself, it wasn’t what he brought me there for.”
“Yes, it was about your roommate and Greta. Can you tell me what you know about them?”
“I wasn’t here last year. I don’t know anything.”
“Miss Strotsberry never mentioned Miss Stanhope to you? Even in passing?”
“Do I look like someone you’d take advice from?”
As his eyes make a quick pass over me and he clears his throat, I figure I might as well use me to my own advantage.
“Miss Taylor, we’ve talked to a number of students about the incident in the phone room. They all say the same thing, that your roommate was trying to protect you. So I find it hard to believe you felt the pranks were no big deal.”
I drift back in time, sifting through the previous few days, and then the previous two months, figuring out how to evade without lying too much. I hated Greta. I wanted to be her mortician. But that is not the banner headline you want as your newspaper is read by the cops.
I shrug in the way Francesca did with me in the toilet stall, relaxed, one shoulder only. “When it came to what Greta did to me, I guess I was just resigned. She liked to pick on people and I was her flavor of the semester. What could I do? You just have to take it and keep going.” And then I tack on, “Besides, it isn’t the first time I’ve been singled out for this kind of stuff.”