Chasing Allie (Breaking Away Series #2) (13 page)

Jerk.

I walk into the police department and march up to the reception desk.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

“Excuse me,” I say.

An old woman with slack wrinkles around her mouth, that pull down and make her look like a Saint Bernard, doesn’t even bother to look at me. “Yeah?”

“I’m here to see Detective Knowles.”

“What for?”

“I’m here about Jeff Wakefield’s death.”

Her head pops up and her eyes narrow as she looks me up and down. “You Allison Boden?”

I jerk a little at the sound of my full name. “Yes.”

She nudges her head to the right. “Down the hall, second door left.”

I follow her directions. The hallway is lit with fluorescent lights that blink and twitch. It’s like something out of a Hollywood movie set. The hallway smells like cigarettes, iron metal shavings and pee. 

The door she directed me to has the words
Detective Knowles
written in black Sharpie on a piece of paper that is taped to the door. I knock. 

“Come in!” says a loud, firm man’s voice.

I reach for the doorknob, turn it, and realize that there’s an electric current running between me and the world. It feels nothing like the one between me and Chase.

I step into a room where there’s no overhead fluorescent light. Instead, the detective has a small desk light with a yellow incandescent bulb. It gives the room a warm feel, even with painted grey cement block walls and black linoleum streaked with turquoise. 

He points to a seat in front of his desk and says nothing. As I sit down he says, “I assume you’re Allie.”

I nod.

He looks me over. “You look like the girl in my son’s yearbook.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I say nothing.

“I’m sure you understand why you’re here, Allison.” 

“My name’s Allie.”

“What’s your full name?”

“What?”

“State your full name.”

All the skin on my body starts to creep. “Allison Cassidy Boden,” I say.

“Date of birth?”

What’s this all about, I wonder? “Um, excuse me Detective Knowles, am I under arrest?”  

He sighs. His hands splay flat across stacks of scattered paper along the big, battered metal desk. “No, Allie, you’re not under arrest. But I do have some basic questions I have to ask.”

“Oh,” I say. I give him my birth date.

He just nods. “And your address is the same as Wakefield’s?”

“Yes.”

He finishes filling out some papers, and then turns them over and looks at me. “Where were you?” 

“Where was I... when?”

“Just now. Yesterday. Last night.”

“Oh, uh, well... I was in Los Angeles, visiting my sister.”

“You do that often?”

A cord of fear shoots through me.

“No...?” My voice turns up like a question. He looks like his son, Sam, thick and dark with bushy eyebrows. His cheekbones are wide and his eyes are almond-shaped. If I weren’t so scared of him, I’d probably find him a kindly man. 

He licks his lips and then rolls them together. He’s thinking. “Did you have any reason to...not get along with Mr. Wakefield?”

I answer very carefully. “He’s my stepfather. Um, no. Other than the usual.” 

“What do you consider to be ‘the usual’, Miss Boden?”

Now we’ve gone from Allison, to Allie, to Miss Boden. “Um, I don’t know. You know, he would get mad at me for eating all the food in the house. Or get upset because I forgot to fill the gas tank when I borrowed the car. That kind of stuff.”

“Did he ever threaten you?”

How am I supposed to answer
that
? “Um, what do you mean?” 

He leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest. He’s wearing a white men’s dress shirt, a loose tie and a jacket. Sweat stains are under the jacket’s arms and I wonder why he bothers. In this kind of heat, in Southern California August, you have to be a little crazy to wear a suit jacket.

He looks me up and down again. This is not the same look that men normally give me, and it’s nothing like the looks that Chase gives me.

Something new occurs to me. “Detective Knowles, should I have a lawyer?”

My question is innocent, but it triggers something intense in his eyes. “Do you want a lawyer? Do you feel like you
need
a lawyer?”  

I stutter. “I... I don’t know! Uh, I just thought I would ask.”

“Because,” he cuts me off. “I can Mirandize you right now.”

“Mirandize? What’s that?”

“Allie, let me cut to the chase. Did you
kill
Jeff Wakefield?”  

“
What?
” My hands go numb. My tongue feels like it’s five times bigger than it really is. The room suddenly flickers, and everything that’s black turns white. “What? I wouldn’t kill Jeff!”  

“We have witnesses who say otherwise.”

“You have witnesses who
what
?” I wish Marissa were here. I wish Chase were here. But most of all, I wish Mom were here. I stand up so fast that I make the chair I was sitting in fall over.  

The crash brings three people to the door. Detective Knowles waves them away. They wander off slowly.

“Why did you... Why do... I can’t... I don’t understand! How did Jeff die?”  

“Why don’t
you
tell
me
how Jeff Wakefield died?” 

“
I don’t know!
” I’m screaming now, my voice hysterical, and I can hear it in my ears. It’s scratching, like claws against my eardrums. “I don’t know, I left town yesterday! I—I got into a fight with Jeff at the bar, and...” I halt, my own words echoing in the tiny enclosed room. 

“And what did you do then, Allie?” We’re back to Allie. 

“Chase was there...”

“Chase Halloway?”

“You know him?” I look at the detective with a wary eye. I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to say or not say, but my mind has turned into ten thousand snakes, all hissing in my head.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

“We know that he was in the bar yesterday,” is all the detective will say to me.

“Well, Chase... uh... took me on his bike, and... helped me to get to my sister... in LA.” The words come up with giant breaths between them, as if I can’t speak properly. As if I’m having an asthma attack, or something like that. “I spent the night at my sister’s apartment.” 

“Do you have any witnesses other than your sister who will attest to that?”

A flash of red hair fills my mind. “Morty, her roommate?” Everything I say comes out as a question. I guess it’s because I’m asking questions like,
Are you going to believe me?
 

He’s scribbling now. “And Morty’s name is...”
Angus
, I think, biting my lips so I won’t giggle. 

“I don’t know his last name, but I can get that information from my sister.” I actually do know his last name, and I feel a little sick for lying to the detective, but right now I don’t know who to trust. 

“Good, because we’ll need it.”

“Why would you think I killed Jeff?”

“We have witnesses who will attest to the fact that you threatened his life.”

“I what? Me?
Me?
” I’m pointing now to my own chest. And then I gesture to my body. “Me? I can’t... I can barely kill spiders!” 

He snorts, and then his face goes slack. “So, you
didn’t
say to Mr. Wakefield yesterday that you wish he were dead?”  

I close my eyes, my jaw open, and my hand goes to my forehead. The tip of my tongue presses against the back of my top row of teeth. “I... that was just...” I sigh. “I was frustrated.”  

“Frustrated enough to kill him?”

“
No.
Look, Detective Knowles, Chase and I stopped at a gas station to get food and go to the bathroom on the way to LA. Marissa was out... I was there with her in LA. She has roommates who will tell you that I was there.” 

These words are coming out of my mouth, and I’m explaining this to him. And yet, the fact that I even have to say these words is appalling. I’m making my own alibi. I’m defending myself against the accusation that I’m Jeff’s murderer. 

Is this what Jeff felt like when people accused him of killing Mom? A stab of sympathy for him hits me. I don’t want to feel it.

Something’s changed in Detective Knowles’ eyes. He’s giving me a different kind of look. It’s almost like he wants to believe me. It’s almost like I’ve made my case. Almost.  

“Okay Allie, here’s the deal. We’re considering you a person of interest.”

“Does that mean I’m under arrest?”

“No.” His eyes narrow. “Not yet. But you stay in town. You can’t go anywhere until this is settled.”  

“You know there were an awful lot of people who wanted Jeff dead,” I say.

“Like who?”

I open my mouth to say it, and realize I have to be careful. “Jeff had a lot of people who didn’t like him,” is all I can admit.

He gives me a hard look. “I’d like you to come back tomorrow, so that we can talk further about all these people who did not like Jeff Wakefield.”

I nod, the motion hard and tight, and stagger out of his office.

The woman at the reception desk ignores me as much as I ignore her, and then I’m outside in the blinding sun, frantically searching for Jeff’s crappy bike. 

Marissa comes around the corner, pushing my yellow banana bike. A sheaf of paper is under her arm.

“How’d it go?” she asks me.

I shake my head tightly.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go to the bar.”

“The bar?” I’m freaked out. I feel like my body is filled with vibrating marbles. “Why would we go to the bar?”

“Because that’s where Jeff’s car is. We need a car to get around for the next few days while we figure all this out,” she explains.

I blow out a long, deep breath. She’s making sense. I know she’s right. “Okay,” I say. “Then let’s go.”

* * *

“Creature of habit,” Marissa says with a sarcastic sigh, as she reaches under the driver’s seat of Jeff’s red Camaro and finds the spare key attached to the underside of the seat. The masking tape Jeff used is the same color as the seat.

“Mom taught him that,” I say, remembering. 

Marissa looks up, like she’s talking to heaven, and says, “Thanks, Mom.” A chill runs down my spine. I can almost hear Mom say,
You’re welcome
.

Oh, if only.

The bar’s closed, yellow police
Do Not Cross
tape is everywhere, covering all the doorways, front and back. We’re lucky. The car is sitting there behind the bar, and it dawns on me that maybe we should have asked the police department if we could borrow the car.

Marissa can read the look on my face. “I already called,” she says. “They say it’s fine, they already checked it for evidence. Besides,” she says. “The way that they killed Jeff was so... simple.”

“Simple?”

We’ve already thrown our bikes into the back of the car, and she turns on the engine. The low rumble of the machine doing its work is soothing.

“Someone came up to him late last night and shot him, point blank, at the base of the skull.”

“
My God!
” I say, my stomach clenching. Bile rises up and pushes at the base of my throat. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I warn her, and then I open the car door and vomit out whatever is in my stomach, which isn’t much. The acrid taste burns through my throat, my tongue, my mouth, my belly. It helps me to
feel
. I’m having a hard time feeling anything.  

When you feel everything at once, you also feel nothing specific.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

We walk back into the house to the smell of burning coffee.

“Oh shit,” Marissa hisses, as she sprints into the kitchen and turns off the machine. “We completely forgot about the coffee!” she sputters.

I sigh. My stomach feels like shattered glass is just rolling around in there. I walk into the kitchen, find the junk drawer, rumble around and pull out a cough drop. I slip it in my mouth and hope I can get rid of the nasty taste from earlier.

She looks around the house. Her eyes are so different from mine. This is where I live. Where I’ve lived my entire life. Or most of it, at least. I can’t remember a time before I lived in this house. But Marissa has a cold, calculating look in her eyes.

“According to the people at the town hall,” she explains, restarting the process of making coffee, “we own all of the belongings in the house. Jeff died without a will...”

“Oh, great,” I mutter.

“...but he doesn’t have parents, he doesn’t have siblings. And so, because he died without a will, and we’re his stepdaughters, and because our mom lived in the house...”

“And, and, and,” I say.

“Right.”

“So we’re in charge of getting rid of all his junk, basically.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

“Yep.”

“And you’re thinking, let’s get this over with.”

She nods.

I walk upstairs to my bedroom and look around for a notebook and a pen. I finally find both, and stomp back downstairs. The coffee’s almost done, and this time we’ll definitely drink it. We’re going to need it. The cough drop tastes like menthol and honey. It’s not soothing.  

Marissa looks at me. “You okay?”

“I’m holding up.”

“You hear from Chase?”

“How am I supposed to hear from Chase? I don’t have a phone. Jeff always took it.”

We look at each other, and then both wordlessly walk into Jeff’s bedroom.

I open the top drawer of his dresser. It’s filled with underwear, socks and... yup, all his spare credit cards and my phone.

Jeff never let me use his phone. He kept a cheap old flip phone that he’d give to me when I went places. It didn’t occur to me until fairly recently that the phone wasn’t given to me so that I could communicate with him. It was given to me so that he could track me down whenever he wanted. He was monitoring me. I was a valuable piece of meat, wasn’t I?