She stops, gaping at me. Her breathing goes back to normal.
“It’s okay,” I tell her quietly. “But you need to calm down. There’ll be time for that later. We have to stay strong. For Elise.”
Melanie nods wordlessly, but she scooches her knees up to her chest and hugs them again, turning her face away from me. I exhale.
“Sorry,” I tell her quietly. She doesn’t reply.
The main precinct doors swing open, and another serious-looking man strides through. He was part of the crowd back at the house too: squat and bulky and balding on top. Although he’s not in uniform, people quickly move out of his way as he steams across the floor toward us.
“Has something happened?” I ask. “Did you find something?”
He looks at us all for a moment without speaking, then turns and enters the interview room, the door slamming shut behind him.
I swallow. “Maybe you’re right,” I say softly to Tate. “Maybe we should have a lawyer.”
• • •
When Max is done, the bald guy calls Tate back in for another hour. Chelsea and Mel try to get some sleep; stretched on the bank of chairs with sweatshirts draped over their faces to block out the strip lighting overhead. I can’t even try. Every time I close my eyes, Elise is staring back at me, empty and lifeless, so I keep them open—playing Tetris and Super Mario on my phone until my whole world shrinks to the lines of tiny colored blocks and there’s no room even to think. It’s bliss. As long as I keep my mind filled with jumps and moves and left/right commands, I can pretend I’m anywhere—waiting for a ride or killing time in study hall. Anywhere but here, for any reason but this.
“Anna?”
I don’t register the voice at first, I’m so focused on the tiny screen.
“Anna.” Lamar’s voice is sharper. “Judge Dekker needs to talk to you.” I look up to find the bald guy waiting, his face blank. Tate emerges from the interview room behind him, looking drained, his tall frame slouching.
“I already went,” I tell them.
The Dekker guy gestures for me. “Just a few more questions.”
I don’t want to go back in and talk them through it again; The phone, and the door, and the blood. “I’m tired,” I say, a plaintive note creeping in my voice. “Can’t we do this tomorrow?”
But he’s unmoved. “Miss Chevalier.”
I pull myself upright and stumble toward the room, catching AK’s eye as I go. He looks so freaked, I lean in as I pass.
“It better not take long,” I tell him, managing a weak smile. “I’m so hungry, I could slaughter a goat.”
THE TRIAL
“She said that?” Dekker pauses for effect, a note of horror in his voice. “ ‘Slaughter?’ ”
“Yup.” AK is sitting confidently on the witness chair like he’s slouched on the front steps before class, watching cheerleading practice across the lawn. The dazed confusion and thousand-yard stare from that night are long since gone: This is the AK who has a weekly commentator’s spot on the Clara Rose Show, offering his valuable opinions on news, crime, and—of course—this case. Last week he closed his million-dollar book deal. Today, he’s wearing a designer shirt and a signature red pocket square in his blazer, all the better to pop for the cameras.
He hasn’t looked at me once during his testimony.
“And what was her mood like that night?” Dekker asks.
My lawyer leaps up. “Objection.”
Dekker sends him a crocodile smile. “Let me rephrase. How was the defendant acting? She must have been very emotional. After all, you’d been through such a terrible trauma.”
I can feel my lawyer tense beside me, like he wants to object again, but he doesn’t.
“She was . . . normal,” AK told him. “That was the weird thing. I mean, we were a wreck. Mel was crying, and Chelsea . . . Max could barely keep it together. But Anna was totally calm. Like nothing had happened.”
“She didn’t cry?” Dekker sounds shocked again, but after the theatrics he’s put on this week, I’m not even surprised. The guy could step into a Broadway production any time he liked.
“Never.” AK shrugs. “Not that I saw, anyway, and I was with her all that night. She didn’t cry when we found the body, or when the police came. She didn’t do anything, except . . .”
“Yes?”
“She hit the vending machine, at the police station. She just exploded, swearing and everything.”
“A violent outburst?” Dekker turns to the room, to drive his point home. It’s packed with reporters, Elise’s family, my former friends lined up to watch the show. I just have my dad with me now, and my lawyer here, trying the best he can.
“It was weird. It freaked us out.” AK nods. “It was just, like, this flash of rage. She looked possessed. And then she hit Melanie.”
“Objection!”
Dekker smirks. “The defense counsel objects to the witness testimony? I wonder why.”
My lawyer glares. “It’s on the record—a slap; Miss Chan was hyperventilating.”
The judge nods impatiently. “So noted, continue.”
Dekker pauses a moment. “No further questions.”
Judge von Koppel makes a note, icy blond and steely-eyed at her table. “Any follow-up?”
I scribble a note to my lawyer. He glances over, then stands. “Mr. Kundra, that slaughter line, it was a running joke in your group, wasn’t it?”
AK coughs. “Uh, yeah.”
“You would remark on your hunger by using bigger and bigger animals,” he explains for the sake of the room. “ ‘I’m so hungry, I could slaughter a pig, or a cow, or an elephant.’ Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, but—”
“In fact, you said it yourself, on many occasions.” He holds a piece of paper. “March eighteenth, your status update. ‘So hungry, could murder a f**king rhino’.”
“Yeah, but that’s a joke!” AK exclaims.
“Right. And that’s what Miss Chevalier was doing, wasn’t it? Joking?”
AK slumps, his self-righteousness gone.
“Mr. Kundra, answer the question.”
“Yeah, she was joking.”
My lawyer turns, giving me a smile, but AK hasn’t finished.
“But who does that?” he asks, his voice loud in the silent courtroom. “Elise was dead. Someone hacked her apart. We still had blood on us, and she’s joking around? Who does that?”