“No. She said she wanted to go home. I offered to get Kyle and she said they’d broken up. And that he wasn’t there anyway. So Malcolm offered her a ride home, and she said okay. That’s when I left to get Ezra. Driving Brooke home was …” I pause, weighing what to say next. “It wasn’t planned. At all. It just happened.”
Officer Rodriguez’s forehead creases in a quizzical frown. “What do you mean?”
Good question. What do I mean? My brain has been whirring since Officer Rodriguez said Brooke was missing. We don’t know what it means yet, but I do know this: if she doesn’t show up soon people will expect the worst, and they’ll start pointing fingers at the most obvious suspect. Which would be the person who saw her last.
It’s the cliché moment of every Dateline special: the friend or neighbor or colleague who says, He’s always been such a nice guy, nobody ever would have believed he could be capable of this. I can’t think everything through clearly yet, but I do know this: there was no master plan to get Brooke alone. I never got the sense that Malcolm was doing anything except trying to help her out. “I mean, it was just random chance that Malcolm ended up giving Brooke a ride,” I say. “We didn’t know even know she was in the office at first.”
“Okay.” Officer Rodriguez says, his expression neutral. “So you left to find Ezra, and Malcolm was alone with Brooke for … how long?”
I look at Ezra, who shrugs. “Five or ten minutes, maybe?” I say.
“Was Brooke’s demeanor any different when you returned?”
“No. She was still sad.”
“But you said she wasn’t sad earlier. That she was joking.”
“She was joking and then she was sad,” I remind him.
“Right. So, describe the walk to the car for me, please. Both of you.”
It goes on like that for another ten minutes until we finally, painstakingly get to the moment in our driveway when I asked Brooke if she was going to be okay. I gloss over the part where Malcolm asked if he could call me, which doesn’t seem pertinent to the discussion at hand. Ezra doesn’t bring it up, either.
“She said, Why wouldn’t I be?” Officer Rodriguez repeats.
“Yeah.”
“And did you answer?”
“No.” I didn’t. It hits me with a sharp stab of regret, now, that I should have.
“All right.” Officer Rodriguez snaps the notebook shut. “Thank you. This has been helpful. I’ll let you know if I have any follow-up questions.”
I unclench my hands, realizing I’ve been knotting them in my lap. They’re covered with a thin sheen of sweat. “And if you find Brooke? Will you let us know she’s all right?”
“Of course. I’m heading to the station now. Maybe she’s already home, getting a talking-to from her parents. Most of the time that’s—” He stops suddenly, his neck going red as he darts a glance at Nana. “That’s what we hope for.”
I know what he was about to say. Most of the time that’s how these things turn out. It’s the sort of thing police officers are trained to tell worried people so they won’t spiral into panic when somebody goes missing. But it’s not comforting in Echo Ridge.
Because Nana’s right. It’s never been true.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Malcolm
Sunday, September 29
“You’re an important witness here, Malcolm. Take your time.”
Officer McNulty is still resting his forearms on the kitchen island. His sleeves are rolled up, and his watch reads 9:15. Brooke has been missing for almost ten hours. It’s not that much time, but it feels like forever when you start imagining all the things that could happen to a person while the rest of the world is sleeping.
I’m sitting on the stool beside him. There are only a couple of feet between us, which doesn’t feel like enough. Officer McNulty’s eyes are still on me, cold and flat. He said witness, not suspect, but that isn’t how he’s looking at me. “That’s it,” I say. “That’s everything I remember.”
“So the Corcoran twins can corroborate your story right up until you dropped them off at their house?”
Jesus. Corroborate your story. My stomach tightens. I should’ve brought Brooke home first. This line of questioning would look a lot different if I had. “Yeah,” I say.
What the hell must Ellery be thinking right now? Does she even know?
Who am I kidding? This is Echo Ridge. Officer McNulty has been at our house for more than an hour. Everyone knows.
“All right,” Officer McNulty says. “Let’s go back a little while, before last night. Did you notice anything unusual about Brooke in the past few weeks? Anything that concerned or surprised you?”
I slide my eyes toward Katrin. She’s leaning against the counter, but stiffly, like she’s a mannequin somebody propped there. “I don’t really know Brooke,” I say. “I don’t see her much.”
“She’s here a lot though, isn’t she?” Officer McNulty asks.
It feels like he’s after something, but I don’t know what. Officer McNulty’s eyes drop from my face to my knee, and I realize it’s jiggling nervously. I press a fist onto my leg to stop the movement. “Yeah, but not to hang out with me.”
“She thought you were cute,” Katrin says abruptly.
What the hell? My throat closes, and I couldn’t answer even if I knew what to say.
Everyone turns toward Katrin. “She’s been saying that for a while,” she continues. Her voice is low, but every word is perfectly clear and precise. “Last weekend, when she was sleeping over, I woke up and she wasn’t in the room. I waited for, like, twenty minutes before I fell asleep again, but she didn’t come back. I thought maybe she was visiting you. Especially since she broke up with Kyle a couple of days later.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut as all the heads in the room swivel to me. Jesus Christ, why would Katrin say something like that? She has to know how it would make me look. Even more suspicious than I already do. “She wasn’t,” I manage to say.
“Malcolm doesn’t have a girlfriend,” my mother says quickly. In the space of a half hour she’s aged a year: her cheeks are hollow, her hair’s straggling out of its neat bun, and there’s a deep line etched between her brows. I know she’s been traveling down the same memory lane that I have. “He’s not like … he’s always spent more time with his friends than with girls.”
He’s not like Declan. That’s what she was about to say.