look into going to school, but it just never happened.
When Luke called last night I told him about my afternoon sketching. 'That's great, Annie, you always liked art.' He didn't ask about seeing my drawing, and I didn't ask if he wanted to.
Christina's come over a couple of times to help me paint the other walls in my house. She keeps it light, like I asked, but it feels strained in a way. Not tense, just odd. But the second I think about sharing anything that happened on the mountain, a massive wave of anxiety presses in on me. Right now all I can handle is gossip about Hollywood stars and people we used to work with. The last time I saw her she told me about this goofy cop who taught her self-defense class.
Took me right back to the ones I had to deal with when I first got off the mountain. Let's just say, since my expectations were based on TV reruns, I was hoping for Lennie Briscoe but I got Barney Fife.
I was happy to see a woman behind the front desk of the cop shop, but she didn't even glance up from her crossword. 'Who you looking for?'
'A policeman, I guess.'
'You guess?'
'No, I mean, yes, I want to see a policeman.' What I really wanted was to leave, but she waved over some guy who was just coming out of the men's room and wiping his hands on the legs of his uniform.
'Constable Pepper will help you,' she said.
It's a good thing his title wasn't sergeant, the guy already had enough to deal with. He was at least six feet tall and had a really big gut but was skinny everywhere else--his gun belt looked like it was losing the fight to hang on to his narrow hips.
He glanced at me, grabbed some files from the front desk, and said, 'Come on.'
He stopped to pour himself a cup of coffee from a beat-up coffeemaker--didn't offer me any--and dumped sugar and creamer into the mug. He motioned for me to follow him past a glass-walled office and three cops in the main area crowded around a table with a small portable TV, watching a game.
He pushed a stack of files to the side of his desk, set his coffee mug down, and waved me into the chair across from him. It took him a two-minute rummage through his drawer to find a pen that worked and another few were spent pulling out various forms and then shoving them back in. Finally he was settled with a working pen and a form in front of him.
'Your name, please?'
'Annie O'Sullivan.'
He looked straight at me, his eyes searching every angle of my face, then he got up so fast he knocked over his coffee.
'Stay here--I have to get someone.'
Leaving the coffee soaking into his papers, he went into the glass office and started talking to a short gray- haired guy I assumed was important because he had the only private office. Judging by his hands waving around, Pepper was pretty excited. When Pepper pointed to me, the older guy turned to look, and our eyes met. I already had that get-out-of-here-NOW feeling.
The cops near the television turned it down and looked back and forth between me and the office. When I glanced at the front desk, the woman there was watching me. I looked back at the office. The old guy picked up his phone and talked into it, pacing around as far as the cord would go. He hung up, pulled a file from a drawer behind him, then he and Pepper looked in the file, talked to each other, stared at me, looked at the file again. Subtle these guys were not.
Finally the old guy and Pepper--carrying the file--left the office. The old guy leaned down close to me with one hand resting on his knee and the other stuck out. He spoke slowly and enunciated every word carefully.
'Hello, my name is Sergeant Jablonski.'
'Annie O'Sullivan.' I shook his outstretched hand. It was cool and dry.
'Nice to meet you, Annie. We'd like to talk to you in private--if that's okay?' Why the hell was he dragging his words out?
'I guess.' I got to my feet.
Grabbing a couple of legal pads and pens off his desk, Pepper said, 'We're just going to take you to one of our interview rooms.' At least he was talking at a normal speed.
As we walked away from the desk, all the cops in the room stood still. Pepper and Jablonski moved to stand on either side of me, and Pepper tried to hold my arm, but I pulled it back. You'd think I was being escorted to the electric chair--I swear the phones even stopped ringing. Pepper managed to suck in his gut slightly and walked with his shoulders back and chest puffed out like he'd hunted me down all by himself.
It was definitely a small town. So far I'd seen only a few cops, and the cold concrete room they led me into was the size of your average bathroom. Just as we sat down across from each other at a metal table, Pepper got up to answer a knock on the door. The woman from the front desk handed him two coffees and tried to peer around him, but he stepped in front of her and shut the door. The older guy nodded to me.
'You want coffee? A pop?'
'No, thanks.'
One of the walls had a large mirror on it. I hated the idea of someone I couldn't see watching my every move.
I pointed at the mirror. 'Is anybody there?'
'Not at this time,' Jablonski said. Did that mean there might be someone later?
I nodded toward the upper left corner. 'What's the camera for?'
'We'll be audio-and videotaping the interview--it's standard procedure.'
That was just as bad as the mirror. I shook my head. 'You have to shut it off.'
'You'll forget it's even there. Are you Annie O'Sullivan from Clayton Falls?'
I stared at the camera. Pepper cleared his throat. Jablonski repeated the question. The silence continued for another minute or so, then Jablonski made a quick slicing motion across his neck. Pepper left the room for a couple of minutes, and by the time he came back the little red light on the camera was off.
Jablonski said, 'We have to leave the audio recorder on, we can't conduct an interview without it.' I wondered if he was bullshitting--on the TV shows, sometimes they use one, sometimes they don't--but I let it go.
'Let's try this again. Are you Annie O'Sullivan from Clayton Falls?'
'Yes. Am I on Vancouver Island?'
'You don't know?'
'That's why I'm asking.'
Jablonski said, 'Yes, you're on the island.' His slow, precise speech disappeared with the next question. 'Why don't you start off by telling us where you've been?'
'I don't know, other than that it was a cabin. I don't know how I got there, because I was doing an open house, and a guy--'
'What guy?' Pepper said.
'Did you know this man?' Jablonski said.
As the two spoke--at the same time--I flashed to The Freak stepping out of the van and turning toward the house.
'He was a stranger. I was almost done with the open house, and I went outside to--'
'What was he driving?'
'A van.' I saw The Freak smiling at me. Such a nice smile. My stomach clenched.
'What color was it? Do you remember the make and model? Had you seen this van before?'
'No.' I started counting the blocks on the concrete wall behind them.
'You don't remember the make and model, or no you hadn't seen it before?'
'It's a Dodge, Caravan I think, tan and newer--that's all I know. The guy had the real estate paper. He'd been watching me, and he knew stuff--'
'He wasn't a past client, or maybe some guy you turned down in a bar one night or chatted with on the Internet?' Jablonski said.
'No, no, and no.'
He raised his eyebrows. 'So let me get this straight. You're trying to tell us this guy picked you out of thin air?'
