“I don’t know. Margot, Sierra, Avery, they’re being shady about the night Emma died. I left the party before them, so I assumed they all went home, but maybe not? Ethan, I think they’re lying. I think…maybe they killed her.”
“Oh. Shit. Wow.” Ethan’s brow furrows.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. You must think there’s something wrong with me. It’s probably nothing.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. And you’re not the first person who’s been pointing fingers.”
This is news to me. I step farther into the doorway, pretending at privacy. “What?”
Ethan turns sheepish. “It’s wild speculation mostly, since she was murdered, and so it was obviously someone on campus. I’ve heard everything from it was Paul the security guy to one of the teachers to—” He cuts himself off.
“One of her friends,” I supply. Ethan’s expression confirms it.
“Avery is the top contender, given what happened with the fight,” he says. “I know people turned over their videos to the cops. Not that they had to, since they were public.”
Ethan is very on top of this situation. Makes me wonder. “Are you writing a piece on this?”
“What?” He hesitates. “No, of course not.”
I arch a single brow. “It’s what I would do, you know, if I weren’t embroiled in it.”
Ethan coughs. “All right, you got me. It did cross my mind.”
“Aha!” I brandish my finger at him, delighted to be proven right. Ethan narrows his eyes at me. Maybe I’m a little too excited to discover he’s as ruthlessly ambitious as I am. Canadian Ken isn’t too nice for the likes of me.
Ethan doesn’t press further. Instead, he touches my forearm, sending shivers up my spine. His expression turns tender. “Are you okay, though? You lost your friend, and suspecting your only other friends…” He trails off. Whether crack journalist or caring friend, Ethan gets right to the heart of it.
“I don’t want to,” I say. “But they’re lying to me about something.”
“Well, have you considered asking them? One-on-one, I mean. As a group you’re all rather frightening, but I’ve always liked you when I get you on your own.”
I can’t tell whether this is Ethan’s version of flirting or his straightforward, honest nature. But he’s not wrong. Instead of stewing, I should simply ask. Not Avery. No fucking way. But I could talk to Sierra, perhaps even Margot, and just ask them about the timeline.
Shit, the timeline. Cataldo. I hear the bathroom door clang open, imagine Cataldo searching the halls for me.
“Thanks, Ethan. This helped. See you later?”
I don’t wait for his response before ducking out of the doorway. I have an interrogation to get to.
* * *
—
Detective Cataldo has set up shop in a small conference room in Austen Hall, a far cry from the cramped office in which the ruddy-faced and balding officer interviewed me Wednesday morning. The vast conference table for ten is cluttered with Filofaxes and stray paperwork. Although it’s only midday, Cataldo’s eyeliner is smudged, and she has the watery eyes of a long day’s work.
“Have a seat, Miss Winters.”
There are nine other chairs around the conference table, so I have my pick. I sit directly across from her. It gives me a view through the windows, where the noonish sun is obscured by gray clouds that have begun to spit snow flurries. The dense woods that edge the campus are dusted white.
The distance is odd, the table too wide to match my fantasies of being questioned by a police detective. On TV the suspect is always in a small, dingy room with a two-way mirror and a narrow desk. This feels like a job interview.
“Olivia, hello,” Cataldo begins, smiling. Or is her expression a grimace? Her eyes dart to the corner. Then she takes a deep breath, suddenly more at ease. I crane my head around to look. A briefcase sits next to a lone chair, empty. Empty because I declined the need for the Claflin lawyer. I’m eighteen, so he’s optional, and I know enough to know that asking for the lawyer can make you look guilty. And this isn’t Law & Order. It’s not dangerous.
The detective leans back in her chair. Offers a genuine, sympathetic lip press this time. “I know this is difficult, but please walk me through that night.”
“Again? I told the officer the other day….”
“Humor me.”
I sigh and launch into the timeline I rehearsed with the Ivies.
Mostly I do it with the hope of making the detective feel more comfortable so that we might establish a rapport. I’ve heard my uncle James tell enough stories about all the things suspects do that tip him off. The line between suspect and witness. I must be the latter. Cataldo seems to be lapping it up.
“And then I went to bed,” I finish. “Sorry, my night ended early because of crew conditioning the next morning.”
Cataldo hmms under her breath while looking down at an iPad. “Yes, they all stayed a bit later, until eleven, and then went to bed as well. The last time anyone saw Emma was around that time.”
This is it. My moment. Do I mention the sweater, the door, the earring, or no? Is it meaningful? Should I have told her about Avery threatening Emma? I backed off at the last minute, but—
“What was the fight about?”
“What?” I’m confused by Cataldo going backward. She accepted my explanation of simply “Emma and Avery got into a fight” with no problems.
“It’s unusual for two friends to get into a physical fight like that. Must have been about something pretty serious.”
This is a game of chicken. A test. Luckily, I’ve always excelled at tests. She must know what the fight was about. People took videos of it.
“Emma got into Harvard. Avery didn’t. It was a whole thing. Hard to explain.”
Detective Cataldo’s shoulders tense, and her mouth turns down in a frown. I’m distracted by her lipstick. It’s the wrong shade of red. Too orange for her undertone. “You think I don’t know how elite college admissions work? How competitive it is?”
Does she? I don’t say that, but Cataldo seems to know what I’m thinking.
“I didn’t go to an Ivy League school, but I’m not stupid. I’ve heard how cutthroat things are now. Avery Montfort accused Emma Russo of stealing her spot.”
She’s bluffing. I know her like I know myself. She’s lower middle class at best, and she’s approaching forty. She has the look of a comfortably single career woman, no high school–aged kids. When she was in high school, competitive college admissions wasn’t like it is now, especially not for the working class. This whole process is like a foreign language to my mom, who applied to only three schools, was accepted to two, and didn’t have to worry about six-figure debt.