Detective Klingman is now practically gaping at me. Even Panko blinks. “All right,” he says. “But you’ll have to come with us.”
PANKO AND KLINGMAN drive me to the nearest APD station, which is in Buckhead behind a giant PetSmart store. I sit in an interrogation room with Detective Klingman, who says nothing but reads his phone, occasionally glancing at me. I gaze at the wall, trying to stay calm, and wait for Johnny Shaw to arrive.
Shaw is older than my uncle and wears a gray seersucker suit and a regimental tie, like Andy Griffith in the old Matlock TV show. There’s no folksy Southern charm about Johnny Shaw, though. When I called him earlier, he cut me off halfway through my explanation and told me to keep my mouth shut until he got to the station. Now, twenty minutes after I’ve arrived, he bursts into the interrogation room and barks, “Don’t say a single word, Ethan.” I raise my hands and shake my head. Shaw turns to Klingman. “I need a moment with my client,” he says. Klingman reluctantly stands up and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
“Hi, Mr. Shaw,” I say. “Thank—”
“Save it,” he says. “Gus had to drive me here. You know how hard it is to drive from downtown to Buckhead in rush hour?” He pulls out a chair, the legs scraping the tile floor, and drops into it. “Your uncle told me what happened,” he says.
I look meaningfully at the closed door. It has a glass window, but currently no one is looking into the room.
Shaw shakes his head. “No two-way mirrors in here, just the glass in the door. And they wouldn’t tape our conversation because it’s protected by attorney-client privilege and they know I’d sue them six ways to Sunday.” He leans forward, resting his arms on his knees, and lowers his voice. “Your uncle says you didn’t kill the girl. That true?”
“I didn’t kill her,” I say, my voice somewhere between detached and disturbed.
Shaw nods, once. “They show you a warrant?”
“No.”
“Good. They didn’t arrest you, so they don’t have anything on you. They may think they have motive, but that just makes you interesting.” He scratches his nose. “Where were you the past two nights?”
“At home.”
“Got a witness for either time?”
“No.”
Shaw quirks his mouth. “So you tell them the truth. Answer every question unless I tell you not do, and do not give them any more information than they ask for. Understand?” I nod, and Shaw stands and opens the door, leaning out into the hall and calling out that we are ready.
Detectives Panko and Klingman conduct the interview, recording it on an iPhone that sits on a tripod in the corner. As they question me, I’m both hyperalert and a step removed from the entire proceedings because of how surreal this is, as if I’ve walked into an episode of Law and Order. Johnny Shaw sits quietly, eyes closed as if he’s taking a nap.
Klingman starts by asking where I was the past two evenings, and I tell them I was at home, alone. Then I remember that last night around eight o’clock I took Wilson on a walk and saw my landlord, Tony, out power-walking. We waved at each other. Klingman writes this down, while Johnny Shaw cracks an eye open and glares at me, then goes back to being a statue. Then Panko picks up the questioning and asks me how I met Marisa. I tell them about meeting Marisa at the conference, then spending the night with her at the hotel.
“And then you hired her to teach with you?” Panko asks.
“I didn’t hire her,” I say. “The school hired her as a sub for my coteacher.”
“But you weren’t against hiring her.”
Shaw’s eyelids flutter, but he says nothing. “No,” I say. “She mentioned our night together, said it had been fun, but we were both adults and this was about her doing a job.”
“Did you tell anyone at work about your prior relationship?”
“It wasn’t a relationship,” I say. “We had a one-night stand before she was hired. But no, I didn’t. Marisa was right—we were both consenting adults, it was our business, and as I wasn’t going to be her supervisor, I didn’t think I needed to share that with anyone else.”
Klingman sits forward. I make an effort not to stare at his stained tie, but it keeps catching my eye, like a comma splice in a student’s essay. “When did your relationship at work change?” he asks.
“When did we start dating? Maybe three weeks after she started at Archer.”
“Who instigated it?” Panko asks.
“She did,” I say. “I didn’t really resist.”
Klingman nods. “I saw a picture. She was real attractive.”
There’s a pause like an unspoken sigh at Klingman’s observation. I’m aggravated by the bluntness of his words. It’s the was that really bothers me, the past tense a crude reminder that she is dead. “Yeah,” I say, my voice tight. “She was.”
Panko frowns slightly at his partner, then shifts forward in his seat. “Mr. Faulkner, we understand that you broke up with Ms. Devereaux recently.”
“Yes,” I say.
Panko smiles slightly. “Can you elaborate a little for us?”
I let out a long breath and tell them how Marisa Googled me and found out about my parents, how she tried to get me to talk about them, and how she manipulated the Faculty Award vote. Klingman takes notes on a pad while Panko just listens. When I get to the part about confronting her in my classroom, Panko and Klingman both lean forward in their chairs.
“How did she react?” Panko asks.
“She asked if I thought she was only good enough to be my whore,” I say. “Then she took off her shirt and her skirt and told me to fuck her right there, on my desk in my classroom.”
Klingman is on the verge of gaping at me again. Panko raises his eyebrows. Even Johnny Shaw peeks at me. “Then what?” Panko asks.
“I turned my back on her,” I say. “And
