"She left."
"She left," he repeats, and I suddenly understand why it annoys Karissa when I repeat what she says. His condescending tone makes me want to punch him. "Where did she go?"
"You'd have to ask her."
"How can I get a hold of her? Where can I find her?"
"You're the investigator," I say. "Investigate."
He glares at me with so much hatred it almost makes me smile. Almost. He leans forward, across the table toward me. "Is she dead, Mr. Vitale? Did you kill her?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Because she let us into your house yesterday," he says. "Maybe that was what finally did it for you."
"You think I'd kill her for talking to you?" I ask, mimicking his movements and leaning forward. My lawyer tries to stop me, interjecting, but I ignore him. "If that's the case, shouldn't I have killed her long ago, when she first started talking to you?"
His brow furrows, and I see a hint of genuine confusion in his expression. He's struggling to recall when she talked to him. That tells me right away that Karissa had been telling the truth. Had she been his source, he would've purposely kept his expression blank.
"The fact of the matter, detective, is that Karissa's alive, so whatever your source told you is bullshit."
"So you didn't take care of her for talking to the police?" he asks. "Raymond Angelo didn't want you to get rid of her?"
"Raymond Angelo isn't the boss of me."
"Ah, right, because you walked away."
The moment he says that, it all clicks into place. He's practically reciting my conversation from this morning word-for-word. He had a bug planted there, but it wasn't the electronic kind. Ray sweeps for them daily, carefully controls who comes in and out of that place. No, he had a bug in the form of a rat. His source.
There was only one other person there.
One that's always there.
Brandy.
"I have nothing else to say." I sit back in my chair as I turn to my lawyer. "You want to handle this?"
"I'm trying," he grinds out, clearly annoyed I even played along with the detective's questions, but it gave me what I wanted. He goes into his usual spiel—charge him or release him, stop hassling my client or you're looking at a lawsuit—before I'm brought back out of the interrogation room.
For the first time in my life, with as many times as I've been dragged down here in handcuffs, I'm booked into the system.
Second Degree Criminal Trespass
"That's a bit much, isn't it?" I ask as they fingerprint me. A misdemeanor. "My mother invited me in."
"Your father said you were asked more than once to stay away."
"So he's pressing charges."
"He is."
Despite myself, I laugh.
Go figure.
Leave it to my father to make sure the first black mark goes on my permanent record. I can't even be mad.
Not really.
He warned me.
Repeatedly.
The feed plays normal speed, most of the screen obscured because it's nighttime, but there's enough light in that one section of the back lot to easily make out what's happening. I watch myself collapse to the ground behind Cobalt, watch as the spray of bullets fly at me from the shaky gun just a few feet away. Even in the fuzzy video, it's not hard to make out her face, not hard to identify who it was that attacked me that night.
As soon as the last shot goes off and Carmela turns to run, I rewind the feed, starting it all over again.
I've been sitting here for what feels like a long time. Too long. Hours, maybe. I don't know. I just keep watching the same portion of video, like maybe one of these times something will change, like maybe it'll make me feel something other than this desolation. Like maybe my regret will fade and I'll feel justified again.
It's not working.
I can't get the look on Karissa's face out of my head.
Sighing exasperatedly, I close my eyes and lean back in my chair at my desk in the den. I scrub my hands down my face. I need to purge this frustration, purge this aggression, before I fucking implode. My house is quiet, too quiet. I used to appreciate the silence here. But today it feels less like peace and more like penance. The silence isn't a gift. It's punishment.
Opening my eyes again, I look at the laptop just as Carmela panics and turns to run. I reach for the button, to rewind it a few minutes, to watch it all over again, when something catches my eye. On the corner of the screen, I'm stumbling to get in my car, but my eyes right now are trained on Carmela, fixed on a flash of something hitting the ground as she runs.
She dropped something.
I rewind it a few frames before rerunning it again, freezing the frame and zooming in. My stomach clenches, my chest tight, when I make out my keys falling from her hand. She doesn't stop for them, doesn't pick them, disappearing into the darkness and leaving them there.
No.
That's not right.
It can't be.
Did she come back?
Did she return just for the keys?
I hit fast forward, staring at that spot, watching as chaos erupts in the lot, people running onto the scene to try to figure out what happened. Time whisks away, an hour, almost two, before somebody finally stumbles upon my keys.
It's a man.
I hit play again, watching as he turns toward the camera.
Kelvin.
Disbelief seizes me as Kelvin tosses the keys to someone else, someone with their back turned to me, but I don't need to see a face to recognize Ray. He palms my keys for a moment before slipping them in his pocket and walking away.
I hit stop, the screen going black, putting the den into total darkness.
Ray had my keys the whole time.
That son of a bitch toyed with me.
I reach across the desk, to where Karissa's phone lay, and pick it up as I contemplate what to do about everything. I run my thumb along the jagged crack down the center of the phone, guilt-ridden that I never got around to buying her a new one.
I'm a terrible boyfriend.
A terrible fiancée.
An even worse husband.
I'm not a good man. I prove it over… and over… and over again.
I press the top button, relieved when it actually turns on. I swear the thing has more lives that a cat. Opening her contacts, I scroll through them, not surprised to find a listing for Brandy.
I understand now why the girl tried to befriend Karissa.
She was trying to get to me.
I can't help but wonder now if Ray knew. Does he know who the rat really is? Did he plant the seed, bring her in on a scheme, and use her to make sure it all ended the way he wanted it to? After what I saw, I wouldn't put it past him.