The Abbey (2 page)

“That’s no problem,” I said. “The kid have a lawyer yet?”

“Meyers,” she said. I nodded. That figures. John Meyers was one of the best defense attorneys in town. “He’s on his way in.”

“Did the kid ask for him?”

Olivia shrugged.

“Sort of. Nathan Cutting called him, and Robbie agreed to use him. I think we can nail this kid, so I’m not going to push and try to talk to him before Meyers comes in.”

“What do you think you have?” I asked.

“You seen the crime scene photos?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Upper–class victim without signs of trauma or injury,” she said, slipping her hands through her blond hair and securing it in a ponytail. “I think she overdosed and Robbie tried to cover it up.”

I shook my head.

“Rachel wasn’t on drugs,” I said.

“You sure about that?” asked Olivia.

“Yeah. She’s got a scholarship to play tennis at Purdue next year, and her high school tests randomly to make sure the kids aren’t doping. My sister would have said something if Rachel wasn’t clean.”

Olivia nodded and bit her lower lip.

“We’ll see how things go, then,” she said. “You hang around here. I’m going to wait downstairs for Meyers to show up and get this started.”

Olivia left shortly after that. I sat and waited, staring at the monitor. Robbie looked thin and awkward. Appearances could be deceiving, but I doubted he was Islamic. That wouldn’t sit too well with Rana and Nassir, which might have been part of his appeal to my niece.

I leaned back in my chair, wishing I had thought to grab a cup of coffee on my way in.

Olivia returned about five minutes later with John Meyers in tow. Meyers looked as if he was in his fifties. He wore a lustrous, blue suit and carried a soft leather bag over one shoulder. He sat at the table in the interrogation room beside his client while Olivia sat across with a file folder in front of her. The microphones inside were sensitive enough that I could hear the clatter of the metal buckles on Meyers’ bag strike the steel table.

“Okay, so why don’t we get this started,” said Olivia. “For the record, it’s eleven in the evening on August nineteenth, and this is Detective Olivia Rhodes interviewing Robbie Cutting. Sitting in on this interview is Mr. Cutting’s lawyer, John Meyers. Is that correct?”

Robbie nodded, but didn’t meet Olivia’s gaze. I took a closer look at him then. He had bags under his eyes, and he swayed as if he were being buffeted by wind. He looked lost.

“Good,” said Olivia, nodding. “Right now, this is an information gathering interview. I’m trying to figure out what happened. You’re not under arrest, but I can use what you tell me here in court. Just to be clear, you don’t have to say anything, and you’re free to leave at any time. Do you understand these rights, Mr. Cutting?”

Robbie looked up, hope in his eyes.

“Does that mean I can go?”

Meyers reached over and squeezed his client’s shoulder.

“We can leave now, but we should answer Detective Rhodes’ questions first,” he said. “The sooner we get the questions out of the way, the sooner you and your parents get your lives back on track. Okay?”

Robbie nodded for Olivia to continue. She smiled at him.

“Tell me about yourself. You’re in high school?”

He nodded but didn’t look up.

“I’m a senior, but I take mostly college classes.”

Robbie’s voice was so soft that even that short answer seemed labored. I shifted, unsure what to make of his apparent anguish.

“Any thought about where you’re going to college yet?”

“Purdue. With Rachel.”

Olivia and Robbie went back and forth for a while. His shoulders relaxed and his answers became more verbose the longer he spoke. Olivia was a good interviewer. She established rapport and common ground before diving into her questions. More than that, she listened sympathetically to Robbie’s answers. If I didn’t know her better, I would have thought she actually cared about him.

“Okay,” said Olivia after a few minutes of conversation. “What was your relationship to the victim?”

Robbie looked down.

“She was my girlfriend. I’ve been with her for about two years.”

I paused for a second. My sister hadn’t mentioned Rachel had a steady boyfriend. I doubted she knew, making me wonder what else Rachel had been hiding.

“What can you tell us about her death?” asked Olivia. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

“Rachel came over at four this afternoon while my Mom and Dad played golf. She’s not very good at math, so I was tutoring her. We did that for a while and then we played a video game.”

That at least sounded like my niece. She played with my family’s Nintendo Wii more than my daughter did.

“Okay,” said Olivia, nodding. “What happened after you guys played a game?”

Robbie looked down again.

“Rachel got sick in the bathroom. I don’t know what happened. Then she died.”

Olivia nodded, her eyes boring into the top of Robbie’s skull. He never looked up.

“So she puked and then she died. And you have no idea why.”

Robbie didn’t answer, so Olivia opened the file folder in front of her and began to pull out pictures. They were probably the originals of which I had copies. She laid them in an array in front of Robbie. His lower lip quivered, and his lawyer put a hand on his shoulder.

“I think we’re done here,” said Meyers. “If you have any need to question my client further, I expect you to call me at my office.”

Meyers stood, but Robbie didn’t move.

Olivia pressed one picture under Robbie’s gaze. It was a headshot of my niece. Her eyes were closed, and rigor had contracted her face into a grimace.

“I bet she was a pretty girl,” said Olivia. “At one time.”

“She is pretty,” said Robbie, a tear streaming down his cheek. “I loved her.”

“This interview is over,” said Meyers, his voice strained. “Get these cuffs off my client. Unless Robbie is under arrest, we’re leaving.”

Robbie didn’t move. Meyers said the interview was over, but it wasn’t his call. If his client didn’t want to take advice, there was no reason for Olivia to stop.

“Look at her, Robbie,” said Olivia, tapping the picture she had slid toward Robbie. “If you don’t tell us what happened, we’re going to cut her open, we’re going to photograph her, and then we’re going to put her on display. Is that how you want to remember her?”

Robbie didn’t say anything, but a tear slid down his cheek. Olivia continued.

“We haven’t found the girl’s underwear, and I know you redressed her. If you don’t tell us what happened, this girl you supposedly loved will be forever known as the bimbo who died with her pants down in your bedroom. Is that what you want?”

I winced. I’m not a prude and nor am I naive. Rachel was seventeen and had apparently been dating the same boy for two years. Of course they were having sex. Rana wouldn’t see it like that, though. Hopefully we’d be able to keep that detail out of the papers.

“Don’t say anything, Robbie,” said Meyers. “Let me handle this.”

For a moment, I thought Robbie was going to take his lawyer’s advice, but then his lips started moving. No sound came out for a few seconds.

“She wasn’t supposed to die,” he said. His voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear it above the ambient room noise.

“No, I’m sure she wasn’t,” said Olivia, matching Robbie’s voice. Meyers rubbed his brow, his eyes closed. Olivia ignored him. “What happened? Did you have some kind of accident?”

Robbie closed his eyes, his lips moving before he spoke.

“Rachel was a Sanguinarian.”

“I’m sorry?” asked Olivia.

“She drank blood. She drank part of a vial of blood. That’s when she started puking. Then she died.”

Robbie didn’t say anything after that. I took a deep breath. As a detective, I’d been to more death scenes than I cared to remember, thirty–four of which had turned into criminal homicide investigations. Even with all that experience, this was my first vampire. I doubted Hallmark made cards to commemorate the occasion.

“Okay,” said Olivia. “Let’s start at the beginning and go from there.”

Olivia and Robbie went back and forth for the next two hours. Robbie admitted redressing and dragging Rachel from the bathroom after she died, but he claimed he wasn’t trying to cover anything up. He just didn’t want his father to see her naked. Bottom line, he denied killing my niece or supplying her drugs, and I believed him. When a suspect lies, he usually pauses every few seconds or asks his interviewer to repeat questions, giving him time to think. Robbie never did. He was smooth, and he never stumbled. That left me unsure what to think. Teenage girls don’t die without cause.

Even though I was confused, Robbie hadn’t wasted our time. He claimed he and Rachel had purchased the blood from a club in Plainfield, a suburb west of town. The blood was supposed to have some sort of anticoagulant in it that kept it from spoiling. I wasn’t a blood expert, so I didn’t know what to think about that. My guess was that it had something else in it, too. Our lab would find out for sure, though.

I was still in the watch room when Olivia dismissed Robbie. She joined me a few minutes later, carrying a cup of coffee in each hand and yawning. She handed me a cup.

“You should head home,” she said. “It’s late.”

I nodded, taking a sip of the coffee and wishing I hadn’t as soon as it touched my tongue. It tasted like it had been sitting around for a while.

“Coffee hasn’t changed since I was last here,” I said, glancing at the cup. “I think I might have made this a couple of years ago.”

“Probably close,” said Olivia, sipping hers. “I’ve got an autopsy scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. We’ll know more then.”

I put my cup on a table.

“Rachel needs to be buried as soon as possible afterwards, preferably right afterwards. It’s our custom.”

Olivia nodded.

“I’ll tell Dr. Rodriguez. We’ll do what we can.”

I thanked her before heading to the parking garage. I was in my car at ten after one in the morning and in my driveway fifteen minutes after that. The lights were off in the house, but I saw the flicker of a television in the front room, which meant my wife had probably fallen asleep on the couch waiting for me.

I didn’t go inside immediately. Instead, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to sink into my cruiser’s seat. It had been a long day. I reached to my glove box and pulled out a pint of bourbon. I took two long pulls. The liquid burned down my throat and into my stomach. I closed my eyes and stayed like that for a few minutes, watching the colors and shapes swirl behind my eyelids, waiting for the liquor to hit me. I took another long drink before capping the bottle and sticking it back in my glove box.

A Realtor would say my house had charm; that meant it had plumbing and electric systems that predated Roosevelt’s tenure as president. It had nice woodwork, though, and it was big enough for my family. More than that, I was a part–time law student, so the house was all my wife and I could afford until I graduated.

I slipped through the side door that led to our kitchen and immediately went by the hall bathroom. I rinsed with a generic, green mouthwash to cover the smell of liquor on my breath before going to the living room. My wife, Hannah, was asleep on the couch. I muted the already low sound on the television and put my hand on her shoulder, gently waking her up.

“Hey,” she said, blinking several times. “You back for the night?”

I nodded.

“Is the munchkin asleep?” I asked.

Hannah yawned and nodded. Neither of us said anything for a moment.

“You smell like mouth wash,” she said.

I looked away from her.

“It’s been a long night,” I said. “You ready for bed?”

“Yeah,” she said. “What was the emergency?”

I kept my eyes on the floor.

“We’ll talk tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’m going to say goodnight to Megan, so I’ll meet you in bed in a moment.”

I followed my wife halfway down the hall but stopped outside my little girl’s room. She was so small that her legs barely made it halfway down her bed, and her brown hair was spread out on her pillow like a halo. A plastic night–light by the door created stuffed–animal–shaped shadows along the wall. She looked like her cousin. I swallowed the lump in my throat, staying in the doorway so I wouldn’t wake her up.

The floor creaked as I turned to leave, and Megan’s eyes fluttered open.

“
Baba
,” she said, rubbing her eyes. She put her arms out towards me. She was so sleep addled she probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning, but I tiptoed in and kissed her forehead as she gave me a hug.

“Hi, pumpkin,” I said, laying her back on the bed. “Try to go back to sleep.”

“
Ummi
says you were catching bad guys tonight,” she said.

“I was, but I’m home now.”

She yawned.

“I want to catch bad guys, too,” she said.

“Some day, honey,” I said. I pulled her blanket up so it would cover her chest. She folded her arms on top. “Try to get back to sleep now.”

“If I helped you catch bad guys, would I see you every day?”

I kissed her forehead again.

“I’ll try to be home more often, honey.”

“Good,” she said, squirming. “Can you stay here for a while? I think there are monsters out there.”

“Sure,” I said, sitting beside her bed and knowing full well that there were monsters out there. “I’ll be right here.”

I intended to sit with Megan until she fell asleep, but I must have fallen asleep myself because Hannah woke me up at around seven the next morning. Megan was still out, so we let her sleep and went to the kitchen. Hannah poured me a cup of coffee and sat across from me at the breakfast table. Since we had a moment, I told her about Rachel. Hannah took it stoically; it was her way. While we were talking about what to tell Megan, she walked in the room. We did our best to explain what had happened. She didn’t understand, but she would eventually.

Hannah called my sister at shortly before eight and started making arrangements. When a Muslim dies, a couple of things have to happen. The deceased has to be ritually washed at least three times. Rana, Hannah, and some of the older women in our community would do that. They’d also comb her hair and put perfume on her. After that, they’d cover Rachel with three white sheets, and we’d bury her on her side facing Mecca. Since we don’t embalm our dead, everything had to happen as soon as possible.