Chris said, ‘Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes.’
‘It’s OK Chris. I’ve called Michelle, she knows you’re fine. She’s a bit worried, but she’s happy that I’m here to help you. Now listen to me, you haven’t been arrested, at the moment you’re simply helping them with their enquiries. We’re going to have a chat with Detective Naylor, I don’t want you to say a thing. Let me handle this. We’ll be home for dinner, and then I can see how you’re looking after that beautiful wife of yours. OK?’
Bob’s smile was reassuring and Chris began to feel better, no wonder he was so good at his job. Finally, Chris felt his world was starting to make sense again. He said, ‘You make it sound so easy, but there’s a lot of evidence stacking up against me.’
Bob took a long and serious look at his son-in-law. ‘Did you kill that girl?’ he said.
‘No. No I didn’t,’ said Chris.
‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ said Bob. His smile was one of total assurance. ‘You may think things look bad, but believe me, if they had any evidence at all, you would be arrested and we would be having a very different conversation. You just need to understand how these things work. They pull you in for a nice friendly chat, no doubt you were asked to give your statement down here for some trumped-up reason. Am I right?’ Chris nodded and Bob continued, ‘They get you to repeat your statement, over and over. They’re looking for you to make mistakes, minor differences, and then they pick away at that, until they’ve opened up your story enough to get some leverage, like scratching away at a rock face, waiting for a crack to open up. They want you to sweat. They’re trying to get you to lie, to cover yourself and then when you get caught in the lie, you’ll lie more to get out and before you know it, you feel you’ve nowhere left to hide. It’s standard police procedure, son, but don’t let it get to you. They’re talking to you because this is one hell of a mystery. They have nothing.’
‘But what about my gun? I was at the firing range the day before she died. I’ll have residue on my hands.’
‘So what? There’s plenty of people shoot, there’re plenty of legitimate reasons for a positive GSR test and, without other evidence it means nothing.’
‘I’m pleased you’re here Bob.’
‘So am I Chris.’
The meeting with Detective Naylor went as Bob had predicted. The emails from Chris’s computer were a bit of a surprise but Bob was not fazed. There were plenty of reasons why Jasmine may have wanted to meet with Chris on the day she died. The chances are, Bob argued, she had gotten herself in some kind of trouble and was worried. She wanted Chris’s help in getting things straightened out. She was either killed by some crazy in the park, or whoever she was having problems with got carried away and shot the poor girl. There was no evidence linking Chris to the primary crime scene, there was no motive for Chris to have killed her. The cops had nothing. Bob pushed Naylor to either arrest his client or let him go. It was a heart-stopping moment for Chris. Naylor looked at Chris, and then at Bob, a penetrating gaze that was asking the question,
did he do it?
He broke off the stare and looked down to his file, as though he was waiting for something theatrical to happen, some new evidence to be brought in by his assistant that he could spring on his suspect and close the case. Nothing happened. He looked up again and nodded. They were free to go. Chris felt he hadn’t seen the last of Naylor, but for now he didn’t care. He wanted to get out of there and get back to Michelle.
Bob offered Chris a ride home. His car was a Mercedes CLK in silver with gray leather seats. He pressed the button on his key fob and the alarm chirped as the doors unlocked. Chris thought of Detective Naylor’s car. It was the polar opposite to this luxurious automobile that was in pristine condition. The car smelled of new carpet and leather.
As they drove Bob spoke in a serious tone, not as Chris’s lawyer now, but as Michelle’s dad. He said, ‘I’m sure you’re itching to call Michelle, but before you do we need to have a little chat.’
Chris waited, but he knew what was coming.
Bob said, ‘I believe you didn’t kill the girl. If I didn’t, I would not be driving you back to be with my daughter, and I sure as hell would not have gotten you out of that police cell. You should bear that in mind if you ever call on my services again. Family comes first you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Good. Now the detective seemed to think you may have been having some kind of affair with the dead girl. I’m going to ask you once and I want you to be truthful. Were you?’
Chris looked over at Bob, ‘Are you asking me as my lawyer or as Michelle’s father?’
‘I’m asking you man to man. I think you’re a good man Chris, if I didn’t you wouldn’t have married Michelle, no matter what she thought of you, I would have made sure of that. Michelle’s a smart girl and I trust her judgment, but I want to know the truth and I want to hear it from you.’
‘I was not having an affair with Jasmine. I love Michelle. I would never do anything to hurt her.’
Bob gave a slight nod, as though he’d heard what he wanted to hear. He said, ‘OK, that’s good enough for me. Let’s get you home to your wife. You should focus on getting your life back to normal. Don’t wallow in this shit Chris, let it go. Let the cops figure out what happened to the girl and move on. OK?’
It was OK. Chris was happy to get back to his old life. But that wasn’t really possible was it? Life wasn’t like a computer program, you couldn’t undo the bits you didn’t like. Jasmine was dead, and before she died, she’d been reaching out to him. He wanted to know why. The rest of the car journey was in silence. What needed to be said had been said. Chris knew that once they were back in the house, Bob Whittaker would be Dad once more. They’d joke and smile, share a whiskey or a beer and watch the Redskins play. He also knew that no matter how well he got on with Bob, if he ever hurt his little girl, he would be sure to find out what kind of justice he was prepared to mete out.
Naylor climbed the stairs to the dormitory room in the Foggy Bottom campus that had, until recently, been occupied by Jasmine Allan. The room was at the south end of a long corridor that had five similar doors. Each door was painted gunmetal gray, the floor in the hallway was linoleum. Everything was uniform and plain, except for the last door that had a tape across the door,
Police Line, Do not Cross
. A patrolwoman was standing at the door. Guarding the room, preserving the evidence.
Naylor nodded to the policewoman as he approached the door. He showed his badge, a formality, but necessary nonetheless. The policewoman acknowledged Ben and smiled as he ducked under the tape and entered the room. The room was simple: bed, desk, sink, mirror, and a noticeboard with tickets, photographs and letters pinned to it. He took down a photo of Jasmine and some other girls. College friends on a night out, he guessed. They looked happy and carefree. Jasmine was a pretty girl, her jet black hair tied back. Her big brown eyes shone with the joy of the moment. He didn’t recognize the girls in the photo, maybe they were friends from her home town. A farewell party perhaps? The bed was unmade, a pair of cotton shorts and a baggy Nirvana tee-shirt looked like they’d been thrown to be picked up later. The sink was clean but surrounded by cotton wool, cleansers, toners, and other cosmetics. The desk had a mixture of books on computing, make-up brushes, powders and lipsticks and a laptop computer. He picked up the computer and opened the lid. The fan and hard drive simultaneously whirred into life and the screen displayed a brief message in white text on black before changing to show dancing lights that swirled around the screen before grouping together into a corporate logo, then some text told him it was restoring from a saved state.
The screen prompted for a user, there was a single option, a tiny picture of Jasmine with her name underneath. He clicked on the picture and after a few seconds the menu options and folders of her computer were displayed. No password. He clicked the icon to launch a word-processing application and checked the most-recently-used files. There were some assignments that sounded technical, too technical for an old cop like him, but also a document that had been saved to a folder called
diary
, with a filename that appeared to be the date. Naylor sat at the desk and started to read the entries. There was no mention of any close friends, but she did write about her fellow students. The girl in the room next door, Beth, was a permanent annoyance. From the frustrated words on the page, it seemed she was always either playing her music too loud or screaming as her boyfriend fucked her brains out. Jasmine had written that she didn’t know if she resented the noise or the fact that Beth was getting sex on a regular basis and she wasn’t. There was no mention of Chris. There was nothing that indicated she was in any kind of trouble. He closed the file and opened the folder where it had been stored. There were hundreds of entries, each one had a number as the file name that could be interpreted as a date. He traced back to a week before her death and opened the file.
As he scanned through student gossip and details of Beth’s latest exploits, he came across Chris’s name and stopped and re-read the text. She’d written that Chris had finally agreed to tell his wife about them, and that he’d promised to leave her. They were going to go away at the end of term, somewhere hot for a romantic get-away. She wrote about how she couldn’t wait to be able to spend a full night with him. She was tired of having to snatch the occasional moment in his room or his car. She looked forward to having a normal relationship, maybe even being able to show him off to her friends.
Holy shit
, Naylor thought.
Maybe that creep could lie after all
. He snapped the lid of the laptop shut and put it into an evidence bag. He would take this back to the lab for further reading, but for now he had some warrants to obtain. He would get an arrest warrant for that lying son-of-a-bitch Chris Sanders, and a search warrant for his home, and his gun club. It would take more than a fancy lawyer to save his ass now.
Although it was gone nine in the evening, the air was still thick with the heat of the day. Chris left Bob to lock the car and walked quickly to the front door, he was desperate to see Michelle. It had been a terrible day and now he was finally seeing the end of it. He opened the door and Michelle practically pounced on him. She hugged him and kissed him, her cheeks felt cool where little trails of tears still clung to them. He put his arms around her and hugged her tight while she kissed him on the neck, on the cheeks, on the lips. She stopped kissing and they looked at one another for a moment. Chris smiled a big beaming smile. ‘Hi honey, I’m home,’ he said.
The door opened once more and Bob walked in, he took off his jacket and hung it on the rack by the door. He smiled when he saw the happiness in his daughter’s eyes as only a father can. He said, ‘Look what I found,’ as he nodded towards Chris.
Michelle said, ‘Oh Daddy,’ then she threw her arms around his neck. His turn for hugs and kisses.
Michelle looked back to Chris, ‘Are you OK?’ she said, ‘I was so worried.’
‘I’m fine, thanks to your dad. I think I was getting myself in deep shit. It’s good he was able to bail me out.’
Bob patted Chris on the back, ‘Come on son,’ he said, ‘let’s see if we can find a drink to celebrate.’
They walked into the kitchen. Chris thought about the bottle of bourbon they had been drinking the night before, but also the different circumstances. Michelle went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of sparkling Chardonnay.
‘I’m afraid we’re all out of Champagne,’ she said. She handed the bottle to Chris and went to a cupboard to get glasses. Chris removed the foil and untwisted the wire. He held the cork and turned the bottle, as he had been taught by some Frenchman. The cork popped and the wine fizzed out the end. It wasn’t chilled enough. Michelle laughed and tried to catch the foam in one of the wine glasses she’d found in the cupboard.
The three raised their glasses and Chris made a toast, ‘To freedom,’ he said.
They all laughed and drank. Michelle’s eyes sparkled. Chris couldn’t remember when he had seen her more happy. There’s nothing like a minor disaster to bring things in to perspective.
Chris topped up his glass and did the same for Michelle but Bob made a gesture with his hand that said he didn’t want a refill. When Chris tried to pour anyway, he raised his glass, changing the angle of the neck of the bottle and keeping his glass half full. He was well practiced in keeping a clear head in social engagements.
‘So,’ Michelle said, ‘how was your day?’
Chris turned to Michelle and looked deep in thought, as though he was trying to remember anything interesting that might have happened at work. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘my day started OK.’
‘Go on.’
‘But, well let’s just say, it turned to shit pretty quickly.’
They all laughed and Michelle reached over and kissed him hard on the lips.