Klingman sits back and clears his throat. “So that was it?”
I shake my head. “She started impersonating me on Twitter.”
“Yes, your head of school told us about your allegations,” Panko says, looking at his own open notebook. “Including stealing your grade book and putting a picture of a naked woman in it for a custodian to find in the hallway.” He looks up at me. “And saying some pretty nasty things on Twitter, pretending to be you. Caused one of your students to attempt suicide.”
I draw in a shuddering breath and let it out. Suddenly I’m exhausted. “Yes,” I say.
Panko nods slowly. “If that had been me, I don’t know,” he says. He glances at Klingman. “I’d be upset.”
Klingman snorts. “I’d be pissed,” he says. “My girlfriend turns into a psycho bitch and gets me suspended from my job? I would not be happy.”
Johnny Shaw opens both eyes, his glance sharp and keen, but he says nothing, just watches.
“I wasn’t,” I say. “I wasn’t happy. She called to gloat, and I hung up and blocked her number.”
Klingman nods, commiserating. “This was after you got suspended?”
“Yeah, I—” I stop, thinking. “No, sorry, that was earlier. It was last Saturday.” I have to keep my timeline correct. The last time she called me was the last time I heard from her. That is the story. I resist the urge to wipe my palms on my pants.
Panko regards me from under half-lowered lids. “She contact you again after that?”
I think about the litany of texts Marisa sent to me on her own phone. I’m going to eat your heart. “No,” I say.
“You sure about that?” Klingman says.
Could they know something? I hesitate but look steadily at Klingman, trying to turn my hesitation into a deliberate pause for emphasis. “Yes,” I say. “I’m sure.”
Klingman’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t believe me.
Johnny Shaw brings his hands together in a soft clap, startling all of us. “Asked and answered,” he says. “What other questions do you have, gentlemen, because it’s getting late in the day.”
Klingman is annoyed and tries to land a jab. “Why’d you need a lawyer anyway, Ethan?” he asks.
Shaw stands abruptly, his chair legs squealing on the tile floor. “Because we are in America, Detective Klingman.”
“Okay, counselor,” Panko says, palms up and facing Shaw. “No need to get riled up. Mr. Faulkner, if you have anything else to share with us, please—” He makes an open gesture with his hands, welcoming anything else I have to say.
“I hope you find who did it,” I say, surprising everyone in the room, including myself, with how forcefully I say it.
“Ethan,” Johnny Shaw says, one hand on my shoulder, and I nod, throttling back my emotions. Shaw makes a show of looking at his watch. “If you don’t have any more questions …”
“Actually,” Panko says, standing up and wincing slightly as if his back hurts. “We wanted to ask if you would be willing to give us a DNA sample, just a cheek swab, help us rule you out as a suspect—”
“Absolutely not,” Shaw says, his hand still on my shoulder and now gripping it as if my shoulder has somehow insulted him. “Not without a warrant.”
Klingman makes one last attempt. “If it helps exonerate your client—”
“Do you know,” Shaw says, voice rising to thunder pitch, “how many false positives there are on cheek swab tests? And if word got out to the press that the police were conducting a DNA test, forget the fact that you have no evidence whatsoever that my client had anything to do with Ms. Devereaux’s tragic death? His career would be finished. You want a DNA test, you get a warrant and we pick the test and an independent lab.”
There’s a knock on the door, and it opens to reveal an older cop with a lot of brass on his uniform. He looks at me blankly, then waves Panko over to him. Klingman sits sullenly across from me as Panko and the cop talk, the cop doing most of the talking while Panko listens, but I don’t really hear what the cop is saying to Panko. Instead I sit in that interrogation room, imagining the walls are made of metal bars and I can’t leave. I’m having a hard time keeping my breathing steady, and I can feel my face flush. Acid is slowly burning a hole in my stomach. I need to go outside. I need air. And then I’m standing, Shaw’s hand on my arm guiding me, and the cop with the brass on his uniform is gone and Panko puts a card in my hand and says to call him if I think of anything, that they’ll be in touch, and then Shaw is leading me out of the room and down the hall past more cops and through three different doors until we exit the building into the warm, humid night that tastes of hot asphalt and exhaust, and I want to put my hands on my knees and bend over to catch my breath for just a minute.
“Ethan,” Shaw says in a low voice, his hand like a vise closing around my upper arm. “Walk. Let’s go. Just a few more steps. Breathe. That’s it.”
Dimly I register a black car and Shaw’s gorilla-sized assistant, Gus, in a too-tight jacket and tie standing by the open door. Shaw pushes me into the car and I scoot across the back seat and drop my head down to my knees. Shaw gets in next to me, the door whomping shut, and then Gus gets in the front seat behind the wheel, the entire car tilting slightly from his weight, and then we are pulling away from the police station as if on smooth rails.
“You going to puke?” Shaw asks me, not unkindly.
I shake my head and take a long, deep breath, then another, and then I sit up, the dizziness momentary and then gone. “Thanks,” I say. “Thank you. That was …”
“That was bullshit,” Shaw says. “They’ve
