“What are you doing two summers from now?”
She stopped filling her duffel bag and looked at me. “I have no idea. Why?”
“That’s when I’m going to ask you to marry me.”
She shook her head and started packing again. “Shut up! You are ridiculous.”
I climbed out of bed and walked up behind her. When my hands slid around her small waist, she tilted her head against my chest. “I was being serious, Kar. My timing blows and right now I know what the answer would be. Two years is a long enough time for me to show you that you are all I’m ever going to want.” I spun Karrie around and looked right at those eyes as I brought my lips to hers. “I know I’m an
asshole and I fuck up way more than I should. I do things before thinking them out and pout when I have to deal with the outcome. I suck at cooking. I hate to clean and I never match my clothes the way you want me to. I know that’s a lot of negatives, and maybe you want more than I can offer, but I just thought you should know how I feel.”
She nudged me with her lips. “Don’t do that.”
I nudged her back. “Do what?”
“Make me want you. I don’t want to want you right now.” Her hands grabbed the elastic of my boxers. Our kiss was passionate, not the kind you get when you don’t want to be with someone. She pulled away and added one more thing to her bag. “I just need to grab a couple things out of the bathroom and leave my roommate a note about where I went. Get dressed. We have a long ride and I’m starving, so we’ll have to stop somewhere.”
I smacked her on the ass. “I like it when you get bossy.”
“I’m the one that should be spanking you. I’m still mad. I’m just holding it in until I’m on the rag. Then fire will come out of my ears and I’ll have you crying in a corner.” She giggled and walked out of the room.
I dressed quickly and pulled the covers up on her bed the way she liked to do every day. It wasn’t like she made it perfectly, but it looked more presentable anyway.
We got on the road a few minutes later. I wasn’t sure what Karrie was going to do about her job, but she was too adamant to insist that she stay home. Besides, I was so grateful that she was giving me a chance that I didn’t want to piss her off about anything else.
We stopped at a diner and grabbed a couple burgers. In some ways, it was obvious that we were both avoiding the reason that we were traveling back to Maryland. I never brought it up and neither did she. Instead, we talked about television and music. We talked about sports and the fact that
my favorite team won the Super bowl, but not one mention of me sleeping with married women, or the fact that one of them was now dead.
We’d pretty much wasted our whole day in bed, sleeping off the fact that we didn’t sleep the night before. When we made it to Maryland, we were tired again. Mark was on the couch watching Maryland play Duke and his face lit up when he saw us together. “What’s up, bitches?”
“Don’t talk to either of us, right now. Your advice almost cost us our friendship, douchebag!”
He threw up his hands. “What advice? Hey, did you know that a cop was here looking for you? Are you wanted for rape or something?” He laughed and started paying attention to Duke scoring.
“Suck my dick, dude.” I went to say something else, but Karrie walked up and smacked him in the back of the head.
“Behave! Now tell us what the cop said.”
He shielded his head with his arms. “He asked where Bastian was. He also wanted to know the last time I saw him and spoke to him. If you’re going to hit me again, give me fair warning, damn. He rubbed his head.
Karrie grabbed me by the arm and led me into my bedroom. She threw her bag on the bed and turned to face me with her hands on her hips. “Look, I don’t care about Mark or whatever his ass says to either of us right now. You have cops coming to your house because you were the last person to have contact with Mrs. Smith.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “So what! I didn’t do shit.”
“Bastian, didn’t you say that they have pictures of the two you? If they see that you were having an affair, it would give you motive to commit the crime. This is more serious than you realize. You could go to jail.”
I stared at her.
“No, I was with you. I drove to see you.”
“You drove to see me after you talked to her. They’ll do a timeline, Bastian. It only takes a matter of minutes to drown someone. I think you need to prepare yourself for this to get ugly.”
This can’t be happening to me.
I shook my head and finally sat down on the bed next to Karrie. She leaned her head on my shoulder and grabbed my hand. “I’d never hurt another person, Kar. You believe me, don’t you?”
She nodded and squeezed my hand tighter. “Of course. No matter what happens, I will be here for you. I’m not going back to New York until I know that this has all been settled and you’re going to be alright. I mean, right now it could just be me freaking out. You know how I get sometimes.”
“No, it’s good you think about things like that. I guess I was in such shock about her death that I didn’t consider I could actually be a suspect. What am I going to do if they want to question me? Am I supposed to tell the truth? Jesus, this is a fucking mess, Kar. What am I going to do?”
Mark was in the living room yelling at the television. My other roommates were probably out working. Karrie held me while I freaked out. She consoled me when I got emotional. She reassured me when I started to lose it.
I was going to be fine. We were just being paranoid.
I repeated that to myself until I was finally able to fall asleep.
The worst part was that the very next morning the police were at my door, and this time it wasn’t a friendly visit.
Chapter 20
I'd never been in a police car before, so you can imagine that my first ride wasn't exactly fun. Karrie was in tears as they handcuffed me and walked me outside. I looked back at her right before they ducked my head down and pushed me into that back seat.
I kept silent on the way to the station. I knew that I hadn't harmed Mrs. Smith, but they obviously had evidence to prove otherwise. I was put in a holding room, much like the ones you see on television. I knew the glass behind me was a one-way mirror. I knew they were on the other side discussing their strategy of questioning me. It felt like this was all some crazy mushroom trip. For the first time, I wished that one of my roommates had passed me something and gave me this fucked up hallucination of a dream.
Two cops came into the room and laid down a manila folder. The white guy had a cup of coffee in his hand, while his partner, a young looking black guy, sat down and crossed his arms.
"Are you going to remove the handcuffs? I asked.
They looked at each other and then back to me. "We need to ask you a few questions. This session will be recorded. You have the right to counsel. Have you contacted a lawyer?"
"I don't need a lawyer. I haven't done anything wrong."
One of the officers cleared his throat and hit record on the device. Officer number 2321 and 3713 case number B76421 Sebastian Young."
They both looked up at me like they were studying my body language. To be honest, I felt so nervous that I couldn't even act like myself.
"Where were you on the night of the 21st?"
I looked down at my hands and thought about the night that I had driven to New York. "I studied at my apartment and around midnight I drove to New York to see my girlfriend."
"Can you explain to us the content of the conversation between you and Mrs. Smith that evening?"
I sighed, knowing damn well that I had already been over this with the officer. "We discussed me not going to work the next day. I told her I was thinking of paying my girlfriend a surprise visit."
"Did you have any physical contact with Mrs. Smith at any point during the day or night of the 21st?"
I shook my head. "I told you, No!"
They opened the envelope and slid a picture across the table. "This photo was taken by a neighbor’s security camera on the night of the 21st. The time stamp was 7p.m. Are you sure you didn't see Mrs. Smith on the 21st?"
I covered my face with my hands. This was bad. I needed to call my parents. They needed to get me a lawyer.
"It isn't what you think. I assure you that I had nothing to do with her death."
They looked at each other again, like they were laughing at me in their minds. "This is what we know. You lied to us about seeing Mrs. Smith. After locating her husband, who was on a flight from England at the time of his wife's death, he informed us that he had hired a private investigator after he suspected his wife was having an affair." They pushed another set of photos in my direction. I didn't have to look at them to see what they were. They spread them in front of me, forcing me to look at them anyway. Some I had seen when I was with Alex, but some were new. "Now clearly you can see why we would question your whereabouts. So, did she tell you that the affair was over? Did she say you were just a kid or piss you off in some other way? Tell us what happened and we will tell the judge you cooperated completely."
I shook my head again. "No!" I ran my hands through my hair. "No...you have this all wrong. Yes, I slept with her. It happened a couple of times, but there was never a disagreement. I swear, I would never hurt the woman. She was kind and generous."
"Your DNA was all over the house."
"I work for her. I had permission to be in every single room. You have to believe me. I never hurt her. I’ve never laid a hand on any woman before."
"Son, we have your DNA, pictures of the affair and proof that you were the last person to be in contact with Mrs. Smith. Now, unless you have something else you need to tell us, I'm positive we have enough to hold you."
A knock startled all of us and another cop poked his head in the door. "His family is here, with their lawyer."
They looked disappointed, but stopped the recorder and got up to leave the room. The black guy stayed behind and leaned over the table. "Kid, if you know something you
need to come out with it. You're in some serious shit here and unless some new evidence comes into play, you may be spending the rest of your adult life behind bars."
Once the door closed, and before my lawyer came in, I sat in the silent room and tried to think of how in the hell I had ended up at this particular moment. I'd straightened myself up, enrolled in college, got good grades, and been a good person. Sure, I knew that sleeping with a married woman was trouble, but I never thought it would put me in jail. This was real and it was serious. I considered spending my life in a tiny jail cell. I was young and apparently good looking. I'd be beat up and worse. There was no way I could survive in a place like that; a place with real killers.
I never considered myself a pussy, but my eyes burned with tears. I was scared to death. I wanted to see my dad and assure him that I hadn't done this. They needed to know that they didn't raise a killer. I wasn't some secretly psychotic kid that killed animals for fun and then eventually graduated to
people. I was a normal guy just trying to get a degree and start a future. Sure, I made mistakes along the way, but I didn't deserve this kind of fate.
The lawyer came in and I recognized him immediately as one of my parents’ friends from church.
Great, just what I needed. A die hard Christian representing the adultery promoter
.
Better yet, give me a nail and a hammer and I will close my own coffin.
George Watkins was a little plump old man who had practiced law out of his basement office for over thirty years. He was married with three girls all around my age and a deacon at my parents’ church. I’d known him my whole life, which made all of this more uncomfortable when he came into the room and gave me that look. The look of total disgust and disbelief. Why he even took the case was beyond me. This was way out of his league. “Good morning, Bastian.” He opened up his briefcase and started setting up his things. I sat with my hands folded and nodded at his greeting.
“Nothing good about it, Sir.”
I was trying to be an adult while I sat there with this man. I knew the severity of the situation, but my thoughts went back to being in bible school with friends. This one time, we got in trouble for spitting paper spit balls off the balcony at the congregation. To punish us, he took us into this empty room and made us sit there for an hour. Every time he would walk out the door after checking on us, my friend would stand up on the table and act like a monkey, yelling ‘Suck on my nuts, Thumper’.
I get how inappropriate it was, but I guess my nerves were making my mind do crazy things. I tried not to crack a smile each time I attempted to look up at the bald man’s face.
“Son, I’ve got to be honest with you here. The evidence is piling up against you. Now, I promised your parents that I would do my best, but we are dealing with a very public case. I’m afraid that when you are arraigned, we won’t be able to
even get you out on bail. I need you to sit here and tell me exactly how you met Mrs. Smith, all the way up to the last time you saw her.”