I tried to stare Hanson down, but didn’t do such a good job. “Jeremy fell. Hit his head.”
She smirked. “Do you have any idea how often I hear that?”
Then I realized what was happening. Yeah, I should have figured it out before. Maybe I should have even been expecting it. “You think I killed Eddie. Why? Why would I kill him? I barely knew him.”
“How long have you been into scarfing?” Hanson asked.
“I don’t know what that is,” I said truthfully.
“Yes, you do,” she insisted. The look on her face made it clear she found whatever it was disgusting.
“Erotic asphyxiation,” Tripp explained helpfully. Immediately, I flashed to what I’d done with Jeremy just the day before. I suppose I did know what it was, sort of. Was it just a coincidence that Jeremy wanted to do that? Or was there more to it?
Tripp continued, “It’s the kind of thing that sometimes gets out of hand. People make mistakes. Did you make a mistake?”
“What a minute. Which is it? Am I violent killer? Or pervert who screwed up? Maybe the two of you need to go figure out which one you’re going for.”
Hanson gave me a mean look. “We don’t know. That’s why we’re asking you.”
“Neither. I’m neither.”
One of the officers came over and pulled Hanson and Tripp aside. The officer held a fingerprint brush in one hand. They talked for a minute or so while I waited. When they turned back to me, Tripp asked, “Do you have a maid?”
“I can’t afford it. Why? Are you going to arrest me for poor housekeeping?” I almost bit my tongue after I said it. Being a smart ass wasn’t going to convince them of my innocence. Hanson glared at me.
“Surfaces have been wiped clean,” Tripp explained.
“You don’t have to give the suspect all the information,” Hanson hissed under her breath. “Let him answer.”
I struggled not to freak out. She’d called me a suspect. I couldn’t believe…I forced myself to focus. I’d cleaned the living room. Well, apparently that was a mistake.
“I cleaned my living room. I live here. Isn’t that okay?”
“Not just the living room,” Tripp said. “We’re not finding fingerprints anywhere in your bedroom, either.”
“I only cleaned the living room.”
They stared at me. Like they expected me to confess something.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You think I’m trying to wipe away fingerprints? That’s crazy. I live here. It’s logical my fingerprints would be here. And you know Eddie was here. I told you, he spent the night. It makes sense that his fingerprints would be here. So whose fingerprints do you think--”
Something occurred to me. I flashed on walking into my house feeling like someone had been inside. “Someone’s been in here. Yesterday. I wasn’t sure, but now I am. They must have come in to wipe everything down. To get rid of their fingerprints.”
Hanson looked at me like I’d just claimed I could make a nuclear bomb out of laundry detergent, string, and a can of baked beans.
“Or you wiped everything down so you could say dumb ass things just like that,” she said. “Some time between Wednesday night and this morning, you got nervous. Figured you need a back-up plan. Wiped everything down so it would seem like someone else had been in here.”
“Or someone else has actually been here,” I said. “Someone was here the night Eddie--”
An officer walked over holding one of the boxes from the garage. He whispered a few words to Detective Hanson and then put the box on the table. She looked inside, then began to take DVDs out of the box and spread them across my dining table. The DVDs were pornos depicting bondage, water sports, fisting.
“Those aren’t mine,” I said quickly. “They belong to my ex. He’s curious.”
Actually, Jeremy was something of a sexual dilettante. He liked to know about fetish behavior, he liked to give it a try, but he never settled on just one thing. His little performance the other morning wasn’t out of character. Not that it made it any more fun to think about. But nothing stuck with Jeremy. The little I knew about the fetish world suggested people found what they liked and stuck with it. Jeremy was a tourist.
The look on Hanson’s face made it clear that, in her opinion, kink was kink. If she could prove I liked any kind of fetish behavior, it meant that I would have enjoyed squeezing the life out of Javier Hernandez.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Guilty people need lawyers,” Hanson said. “Are you a guilty person?”
She had me trapped. She’d decided I’d done it, and if I asked for a lawyer that just proved it to her. I was screwed either way. They didn’t seem to be arresting me, they hadn’t read me my rights, they hadn’t offered to provide a lawyer...so, if I asked for a lawyer now it would cost me money I didn’t have.
“I don’t have to answer your questions, do I? Legally, I mean.”
Hanson and Tripp looked at each other. He answered, “That’s right. You can refuse to answer questions.”
“I refuse then.” If I really needed a lawyer, I could figure out how to get one later. In the meantime, I shouldn’t make things any worse. “I’m not saying anything else.”
“You’re not helping yourself,” Detective Hanson said.
I kept my mouth shut.
After a few moments, they walked away, leaving me alone at the table. I couldn’t believe they thought I killed Eddie. I watched an officer walk out of the house with my laptop. I looked at the search warrant that I still held in my hand. What guarantee did I have they wouldn’t fake evidence? For all I knew, they’ve been sitting in my bedroom looking up websites on “scarfing” just so they could say that I was into that.
Wow, I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’d heard stories about the
