Josie said, “So she showed up at 6:02 a.m. wearing regular clothes with no bathing suit underneath, carrying nothing. She walked inside. What did she say to you, Gerry?”
“She said, ‘Good morning, Mr. Murphy.’ I said good morning back to her.”
Mettner said, “She called you by name. Did you know her well?”
Gerry shook his head. “No, not well. I knew her better than most of the kids on campus because she’s in here almost every day. I get to know the kids on the swim team, chat with them sometimes, but that’s it. I don’t know them well. Just names and faces, really.”
“Do you know a student named Hudson?” Josie asked.
“Sure,” Gerry said. “He’s on the team too. I see him and Nysa together a lot. He’s got a pretty big crush on her, I think, but mostly they’re just real competitive with each other. They were real competitive. Jeez.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s just hard to believe something like this happened. It’s so awful. So tragic. Poor Nysa.”
“Do you know if Nysa and Hudson were dating?” Josie asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. The kids don’t talk to me about that kind of stuff.”
Mettner said, “What time did Patrick get here?”
“I’ll show you,” Gerry said. He began to click, but Josie put a gentle hand on his forearm.
“Would you mind fast-forwarding through to the time Patrick appears so we can be assured that no one else came in between Nysa and him?”
“Of course,” said Gerry.
He clicked a few times more, and the screens fast-forwarded until footage of Patrick entering the lobby came up on all three cameras. Josie noted that Gerry remained at his desk the entire morning, so there was no possibility that he had slipped into the pool area and done something to Nysa. On Patrick’s arrival, the time stamp read 8:16 a.m. He carried a backpack which he set down beside him when he plopped onto one of the benches. They watched as he bent his head to his phone. A moment later, he stood, stretched his arms over his head, and headed toward the vending machine area. Two more minutes went by and then Josie saw herself on the screen.
The lobby was quiet. Gerry sat at his desk reading a newspaper. At 8:20, Patrick came running back out into the lobby, arms waving, mouth stretched open. Gerry jumped out of his chair, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and started running toward him. The doors swallowed both of them up.
“That’s enough,” Josie said. “Can you show us the footage from the exterior of the building?”
Solemnly, Gerry clicked out of the footage they’d been watching and returned the screen to the present views of the lobby, which showed one of Denton PD’s uniformed officers standing sentry with a clipboard; a campus officer milling around; and Christine Trostle waiting on a bench.
Gerry wheeled his chair over to the other table and clicked away on one of the other laptops, bringing up four views of the exterior of the natatorium all crowded together on one screen. All four sides of the building were accounted for. In the front where emergency vehicles sat, Josie saw Sawyer Hayes removing equipment, including a stretcher, from the back of the ambulance. Beyond that was a parking lot with room for several rows of cars stretching out of view of the camera. In the back of the natatorium was a narrower lot with only a few spaces reserved for security and other campus workers as well as a dumpster. Beyond that was woods. Josie knew they extended down a small hill toward one of the city’s main roads into campus. On either side of the natatorium were tree-lined courtyards with benches and tables for students to linger in nice weather. Josie also knew that, beyond those courtyards, on one side of the natatorium was the Health and Human Sciences center and on the other was one of the many buildings that housed athletics, but the camera views only showed the courtyards.
They watched as Gerry brought up footage beginning at five that morning. At 5:44, a small jeep pulled up out back. Gerry emerged a minute later and used his key card to enter. The courtyards and the front of the building were empty. At six, they watched Nysa emerge from the far end of the front parking lot, walking steadily toward the natatorium. She was alone, just as Gerry had said. They viewed the rest of the footage up until various emergency vehicles arrived. No one went in or out of the building besides those already accounted for. Josie felt a kernel of discomfort in the pit of her stomach.
“We’ll need copies of all the footage you’ve got,” she told Gerry. “If you could also give us anything you’ve got going back a full twenty-four hours, we’d appreciate that. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Nysa’s roommate again.”
Eight
The killing didn’t start with me. It was true that part of me always enjoyed watching people suffer. Some people. People who deserved it—like the ones who called me names, outshined me at school, or received praise or rewards for something I had worked just as hard to get. I had found other ways to make them pay for what they did to me without anyone realizing I was behind it. Few things are more satisfying than watching someone who thinks they are better than you shit themselves from the laxatives you put into their lunch, or someone who criticizes the way you look make a sour face at the piss you mixed in with their smoothie. But I’m not sure the killing would have occurred to me. I’m not sure I would have even realized I could get away with it if I hadn’t seen her do it first.
We both knew the kind of person he was—I just never expected her to do anything about it. Then one morning, I heard her call 911, speaking in a muffled tone. Maybe she was trying not to wake me. While she waited at the front door, I went into the bedroom and saw him. He had clearly been dead for a long time. I’d never seen a person so still before. Wherever his skin touched the bed or pillow, it had turned a purple so deep, it was almost black. I only saw edges of it at first, but when the paramedics arrived and moved him, I saw much more. They didn’t bother with CPR. Two of them stood in the bedroom with her, asking countless questions. I don’t think they noticed me there in the corner of the room, taking it all in. My attention was torn between him—finally gone forever—and the conversation between her and the paramedics. One of them asked about medications.
“A couple of different kinds,” I heard her say. “For his heart and high blood pressure. Some for pain. He had a knee injury a while back. But he doesn’t always take his pills correctly. Sometimes he gets them mixed up. Once he took six pills from the same bottle—all Vicodin. I had to take him to the ER to get his stomach pumped. Plus, he drinks. I’ve asked him so many times not to drink with these medications. He doesn’t listen to me. Here, you can look at the bottles.”
She motioned toward the nightstand where several orange prescription bottles sat, all arrayed for inspection. A paramedic went over and picked them up one by one, studying them.
She looked at me then. I knew damn well he didn’t get his pills mixed up. She was the one who dispensed them. I said nothing.
The paramedic shook one bottle, but there was no telltale rattle of pills inside. “Digoxin,” he said. “A high dose of this can kill you. The bottle is empty.”
I waited for someone to figure out what she had done, but no one ever did.