She sat in the passenger seat of her car while the patrolman stood, towering over her. She felt as though she was receiving an interrogation—rather than the killer.
"So let's go through this again," he said, making it sound like Johanna had not already told him three times what had happened.
"I was here last night," Johanna said. "I came back to my car, and there was another car beside mine. It was parked so that anyone would have trouble sliding into the passenger side. I wasn't happy about that."
"So what did you do?" the man asked.
"I saw the car was moving a little, and of course, I assumed that something sexual was going on in there." Johanna had practiced what she was going to say. She didn't want to use her everyday vocabulary for the police.
"What changed your mind?" the officer asked.
"The woman. She pounded on the window. It seemed more like she was trying to get my attention than—you know. When I got past my embarrassment, I looked more closely, and the guy had her pinned down and had one hand across her neck."
"Then what happened?" Johanna looked around, wondering what the other officer was doing, but he was nowhere to be seen. She thought it odd—perhaps they didn't believe her.
"The last time she pounded on the window, it was softer than it had been before. Then I saw nothing else."
"Nothing?"
"Not for a short time. Then the killer turned and looked out the back window and saw me. He started to open the door, and I ran. I ran until I couldn't run anymore, and then I just stayed there all night."
Johanna knew this would raise some eyebrows. She'd chosen to stay outdoors, alone and in the woods, rather than come back at some point. Johanna had assumed that the man would be looking for her. She'd witnessed a murder, and she could identify him—a clear path for him to the death penalty.
"Can you show us where exactly you stayed all night?" the officer asked.
Johanna shrugged. "I’m not sure. I wasn’t running in any particular type of pattern, so this morning it took me a while to find a sign to guide me back to the parking lot.”
“Okay, so probably not,” he muttered, as he took some notes. Johanna hadn’t figured out the methodology of his writing. He seemed to choose the most bizarre things to scribble down.
The other officer traipsed over. He stood on the other side of Johanna so that she now had to turn her head to look at one or the other. Her neck, which had protested the lack of a comfortable bed last night, reminded her of the adventure.
“What did they have to say?” the officer taking notes asked.
“The car is registered to a woman named Jessica Dunphy. I’ve got the address. We put in a call, but there was no answer.” The second officer had apparently been working the phones, Johanna surmised.
“No signs of a struggle inside the car?”
The second officer shook his head. “I mean, things are scattered around inside the car, but nothing looks like a struggle took place. Of course, that’s hard to say, the way some people keep their cars.” He looked inside Johanna’s car, and she was glad that she’d cleaned it out earlier in the week.
The second officer turned his head toward Johanna and spoke directly to her for the first time. “Are you sure about what happened in the car?”
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t have run, staying outside all night, if I hadn’t been sure that I saw a killing.” She was feeling defensive now. These officers had gone over her story multiple times, and now they were questioning the most salient point of the story. She’d seen a woman strangled to death last night.
“There’s no body in the car. There’s no body in the vicinity. I did a thorough search around, and I saw nothing. No drag marks to show that someone had been moved out of the car. No signs of anyone else either. No cigarettes, no wrappers, nothing.”
The first officer, who had continued to take notes, looked up. “So that means that the killer—if there was one—had to go get another car, come back, load the body into the car, and then take her somewhere else to dump the body. This is pretty isolated. I can’t imagine what he was looking for if not to hide her from discovery.”
Johanna put her face in her hands. “I can’t tell you why he did what he did. I’m just telling you what I saw last night. Have you checked the car owner’s house? Is anyone there?”
The second officer shot her a look. “Ma’am, you shouldn’t be listening in on our conversations. This is police business.”
His phone received a text, and he turned away from Johanna, as if she could read through its cover.
“We’re going to need you to come with us,” he said, when he turned back around.
“What? You don’t have a body or a crime yet, and you’re arresting me?” Johanna felt her skin flush, as she sat there. She wished that she’d never called 911 to report this matter. She had a feeling then—as now—that she would regret it.
“We’re not arresting you. We need an identification.” He walked back to the patrol car without waiting for the others.
The first officer closed his notebook, shoved it in a pocket, and offered Johanna a hand in getting up.
She didn’t need it, but she felt that it had been proffered as something of
