I turned my attention back to Officer Willis, clasping my hands to stop them from shaking. “How’s my family?”
I ran through all the personal items stashed in my van and in my purse. Leo’s football photos. A note from Audrey’s first-grade teacher. Audrey’s medication. And, again, the registration that bore my name and our address.
That man now had all of those things.
“Have you spoken with my husband?”
Officer Willis nodded, then gestured to my arm. “We should get you looked at.”
My hand flew to the scratch from the man’s knife. “I’m fine,” I insisted. “What did you tell Sam?”
“We told him your van was stolen, but that you’re okay.”
“And they’re fine? Sam? The kids? You still have a car there?”
“We still have a car there, and your family’s okay.”
I pushed. “You’ve checked recently?” Our home was a mile away. Less than two minutes at the posted speed limit.
“He’s not going anywhere near your house.” I turned to the man who had spoken: the detective with the carefully pressed pants and bleached shirt. Now that he was closer, I saw that what I’d taken for stripes on his tie were actually strips of bacon.
“Cassie Larkin? Detective Ray Rico.” He stood only an inch taller than me, his brown face broad, his smile wide. His black hair was cut short, his dark eyes sharp above thick creases. I expected him to extend his hand with the greeting, but he didn’t.
“These questions must seem repetitive,” he said. Not quite an apology, but close. “I’m sure you’re eager to get home. Willis, please bring Dr. Larkin a jacket.”
There was no choice in it for either of us, so when the officer returned with a sweatshirt, I accepted it.
“At least the rain’s let up, right?” Detective Rico said.
My jeans were soaked through, and I could feel my feet pruning in my sneakers. “Good thing.”
He turned on a recorder and flipped open his notepad. He held a sheet of paper, too, though I couldn’t see what was on it. “Walk me through what happened.”
When I finished my story, Rico acknowledged its end with a curt nod. “That was really—brave of you, to get out of your car.” I thought he may have been about to say stupid. I wouldn’t have disagreed.
“Anyone would’ve done the same.”
“I don’t know about that.” Rico consulted his notebook. “You didn’t know him, though, right?”
“No.”
“Not a patient, or the parent of one of your kids’ friends?” When I shook my head, he asked, “You’re sure?”
I remembered the man’s face, twisted in anger, the casual way he had tossed the woman down the hill. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Would you be able to identify him?”
When I nodded, Rico held out the paper he was holding, facedown at first. “I’m going to show you some photographs.”
He flipped the sheet over. On it were the photos of six men, all white, all bald or balding, all in their late forties to late fifties.
“The suspect might not be in this group,” Rico said, his tone neutral. “So you’re under no obligation to identify anyone.”
I brushed a damp lock of hair away from my eyes, and my heart seized. It couldn’t have been clearer if the photo had been ringed with fire. There, in the middle row, was the man with the ropy scar along his jaw and the once-broken nose.
“That’s him.” The finger I pointed shook nearly as much as my voice.
“You sure?”
“Completely.”
Rico held out a pen and asked me to sign the photo I had identified. He left for a moment, and when he returned, he asked: “Recognize the name Natalie Robinson?”
I shook my head. “Is that the victim’s name?”
The detective’s eyes were twin chips of granite. “How about Anne Jackson?”
“No. Who’s Anne Jackson?”
Rico didn’t answer. He nodded and jotted something in his notebook, then gestured toward my arm. “Tell me again how you got cut.”
At the mention of the wound, I became aware of its throbbing. “He tried to stab her, but he got me instead. It’s just a scratch.”
“Carver Sweet’s a big guy.”
My heart pummeled my ribs. “You know who he is?”
“Now that you’ve identified him, we do.” His expression remained stony. “So, Carver’s a big guy, and he had a knife. You have kids, and you’d already called 911. Why risk a confrontation?”
I remembered how my sneakers lost purchase on the hillside, the brush grabbing at my knees, rocks and sticks threatening to twist my ankles. How breakable I had felt when I had slammed against him. “I slipped.”
“You slipped?”
“I’m clumsy, and the ground was wet.”
Rico stared at me, letting the pause stretch. It reminded me of the times I had talked to clients who brought animals in with unexplained injuries or signs of malnourishment. It was the way you talked to someone you thought might be lying.
Rico consulted his notebook again, the creases under his eyes deepening. “You said Carver Sweet may have had blood on his shirt. At what point did you notice that?”
“Near the end.”
“So when did you notice the victim was bleeding?”
The detective’s question made me second-guess all I had done to save the woman. Had I waited thirty seconds too long to call 911? After her attacker fled, had I stanched her bleeding quickly enough? With the police, had I forgotten a detail that would lead to Carver Sweet’s arrest? I forced these concerns aside, but when I saw Rico’s face, a new one dawned: Would my delay in answering be misconstrued as calculation?
“I noticed her bleeding after he threw her down the slope. Her nose.” Had there been other injuries? I strained to remember.
“So when you first pulled over, she wasn’t bleeding?”
“I don’t think she was.”
“You don’t think she was?”
“She wasn’t.” Was she? My certainty ebbed the longer the questioning continued, and I wondered if Rico intended to throw me off balance.
“He hadn’t taken out the knife yet? When they were standing on the trail?”
“No.” But even as I answered, I was suddenly sure there was an injury I had missed, something that might cast doubt on the rest of my story. Rico’s scribbling took several seconds, the scratch of pen on paper unnerving me.
“Will she be all right?” I asked.
The detective looked up, his brow wrinkled and eyes hooded. “The woman he attacked?”
“Of course.” Who else would I be asking about?
“I don’t know.” He flipped to a new page in his notebook. “Did you notice any vehicles alongside the road?” When I shook my head, he explained, “We found two vehicles just off the road half a mile up. Crashed. If you’d driven a little farther, you would’ve seen them.”
“If he forced her off the road, it wasn’t random.”
“What makes you say that?”
The attacker’s question was fresh in my mind: Who do you love? And then, among his last words: Let her die, and I’ll let you live.