Elixir (9 page)

Or had he seen Eva fall and fled? Maybe he thought people would think he pushed her, and he’d gotten scared and ran? It was cowardly but it sort of made sense—people
would
think that, because who would believe him that Eva had been flying? No one knows how they will handle a crisis till the moment they’re faced with it. But maybe he was still inside at the bar, and he really didn’t know? I should go in and try to find him.

“So what happened next?” McCleary asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“I heard Eva scream,” I said miserably, “and then I saw her falling. We rushed down to try to help her, but she’d already hit the ground.” A lump was forming in my throat as I tried to recount the story. “I don’t know what happened—it must have been an accident.”

“Where did she fall from?” Officer Diaz asked.

Crap, what was I going to say? How could I possibly answer that question in any way that made sense?

“I . . . I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t see where she fell from.”

I turned my head towards the building. There was the lower fire escape, the one we’d passed on our way up.

“Maybe from there?” I said, pointing helplessly.

“Why were you two up on the roof, anyway?” McCleary asked.

The tone of his voice sounded suspicious.

“I wanted to show Miss Jones the beautiful view of Manhattan,” Obadiah said.

“Bit of a cold night to be standing on the roof enjoying the view, don’t you think?” said McCleary. There was a hard edge in his voice.

“We weren’t up there for very long,” Obadiah said. “We were about to head back downstairs when we saw Mabily’s friend fall.”

Diaz jotted something down on his clipboard and frowned.

McCleary turned to us.

“Miss Jones and Mr. Savage, would you please come with us? We’d like to take you two down to the precinct to answer a few questions,” he said, pointing to the patrol car.

I didn’t understand why they needed to take us to the police station, why they needed to question us. Surely they didn’t think there’d been any kind of foul play?

“What about Eva?” I said. “We can’t just leave her.” I looked back towards the ambulance. I could see through the windows of the van that one EMT was in the back with Eva, while the other was in the driver’s seat. They were starting to pull away, the wheels churning up snow.

“Can’t we go to the hospital with her?” I asked McCleary.

“She is going to be taken straight to the emergency room,” he replied. “You can’t go in there. Are you her emergency contact? Someone from the hospital will call you if and when it’s okay for her to have visitors.”

His voice was firm, but not unkind, and I nodded.

“I just don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up,” I said, but the ambulance was already pulling out of sight. Obadiah put his hand on my shoulder again.

McCleary interrupted.

“Sir, ma’am, if you would come with us to the vehicle please?”

I didn’t see why any of this was necessary, but you don’t argue with a cop.

“Okay,” I said. “But . . .”

McCleary turned to Obadiah. “We will need to obtain a warrant for the Crime Scene Unit to investigate the premises.”

Obadiah nodded, and I could see the fear in his eyes. What if the cops found a way into his secret room?

A huge crowd of gawkers had poured out the door of Obadiah’s club. They were all humans—the supernaturals seemed to have slunk away at the sight of the cops. The human crowd was loud—talking in fearful voices and pointing at us and the officers.

“We’d like to talk to you further, but we can’t do that here,” said McCleary, gesturing towards the noisy crowd of bystanders. “If you’ll please come with us. Once we get to the precinct, the investigating detective will want to meet with you and ask you a few questions as well.”

Investigating detective? Crime Scene Unit?
I didn’t understand. This was an accident, and they were treating us like we were criminals.

“Before you enter the vehicle,” said officer McCleary, “we need to do a pat down for security purposes.”

“But . . .”

My voice trailed off. If I started arguing things would only get worse for us. Mutely, I raised my hands over my head and peeled back my coat as instructed, and winced, shivering, as Officer McCleary patted me down, his fingers rough on the delicate fabric of my dress. I felt suddenly self-conscious about what I was wearing. The way McCleary looked at me, it was like this short dress was “evidence” of something. I scowled up at him.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a female officer do this?” I asked as he ran the backs of his hands over me.

“Ma’am, in the absence of a same-gendered officer on the scene, an opposite-gendered officer is legally allowed to perform a noninvasive pat down for security purposes,” said McCleary. It sounded as if he was quoting that statute verbatim.

At last he was done, and I quickly buttoned my coat, crossing my arms tightly over my chest. I watched Obadiah undergoing his own pat down with Officer Diaz. Obadiah was shooting daggers at McCleary—the officer’s touch had been professional enough, but I could bet they didn’t manhandle ladies like that in Obadiah’s time. The chivalry was sort of touching.

“No weapons,” I heard Diaz say.

Headlights flashed on the brick wall of Obadiah’s building as a second cop car pulled up. Two more NYPD officers got out.

“Miss Jones, you’re going to come with us. Mr. Savage, you’ll go with my colleagues.”

The two new officers approached us.

I exchanged a panicked glance with Obadiah. They were going to drive us to the precinct in separate cars—and probably question us separately too—to see if our stories matched! Obadiah and I hadn’t had any time to talk since Eva’s fall; we’d had no chance get our accounts straight. What were we going to tell the cops? We couldn’t tell them the truth—that Eva had been flying! Surely Obadiah knew you couldn’t say something like that? But if he said she flew and I said she’d fallen—or if I said she’d fallen from the fire escape and he said she’d fallen from the roof—if our stories didn’t match up, this was going to seem really suspicious.

I wished I could do something, say something to Obadiah, at least mouth the words “she fell off the lower fire escape, right?” but now all four officers were staring at us. There was no way to communicate, not even a wink.

The two new cops were leading Obadiah over to their patrol car. He turned back and looked at me over his shoulder. I could see the fear in his eyes.

“Miss Jones?” said McCleary. He had opened up the passenger door to his. Diaz was already inside.

What could I do? You don’t argue with a cop.

Feeling sick in my gut, I got in.

CHAPTER 8

I
’d never been in the back of a police car before. It was nothing like a regular vehicle—the whole backseat area was made of hard plastic, and was incredibly cramped, even for a petite person like me. I couldn’t imagine how squished Obadiah must be right now. Underneath the smell of the officers’ coffees in the front-seat cup holder, there was an ever-present odor of stale sweat—all the bodies who’d been crammed back here before me had left their scents haunting the air. It was incredibly warm—heat was blasting through the small plastic vents, and I felt claustrophobic, nauseous and numb, wishing I could open the window and just feel cold, clean air on my face.

When I turned my head to look out the rear window, I could see that several more cop cars had pulled up in front of Obadiah’s club—the blue-uniformed officers moving amongst the crowd of gawkers. Maybe they were questioning these people too?

Officer Diaz was silent as he drove—it was like some twisted version of being in a taxi. I was silent too, too upset to try to make any conversation with Officers Diaz and McCleary. We drove for what seemed like a long time, though in reality it was probably only about fifteen minutes. At last we pulled up to a large brick building—built in the neo-Gothic style with a redbrick turret. I’d walked past this building before and admired it—I always thought it was an odd place to house one of Brooklyn’s main police precincts. I never dreamed I’d be going inside.

Diaz parked the car, walked around to the back and then opened up my car door. He told me to follow and I walked behind the two officers up a long flight of steps to the heavy brass double doors of the grand entryway.

Despite the ornate exterior, the inside of the building was depressingly institutional. Long rows of fluorescent lighting cast a harsh white glow over everything. The building was bustling with officers, even though it was almost 1:00 a.m. A few heads rose as we walked by, but most barely paid attention to us.

I looked around in the crowd for Obadiah, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he was already being questioned?

“Come this way,” Officer Diaz said. Mutely I obeyed, walking slowly behind him, down a long, dingy corridor all the way to a door at the very end. Diaz opened it.

It was a small, windowless room. A lone fluorescent strip cast a dim flickering light over its contents: a battered Formica desk and two blue plastic chairs.

“Wait here,” Diaz said gruffly to me, gesturing to one of the chairs. “The detective will be in to speak with you.”

I glanced in at the Spartan interior. Obadiah was probably being held in a room similar to this—perhaps very close by—but it might as well be across the universe.

Diaz was glaring at me so I entered the room. The door shut behind me with a loud click, leaving me alone.

I
sat down and waited, trying not to let my fears get the best of me, trying to think my way out of this. But every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was Eva—her splayed-out limbs, her blank, unconscious face.

I continued to wait. The chair was stiff and uncomfortable. I kept shifting my body around in different positions, trying to find a comfortable one, but there were none. I felt like some sort of animal in a holding crate. There was nothing to do in the room, nothing of visual interest, not even a clock on the wall to mark the passage of time. I could only stare down at my hands and listen to the buzzing of the fluorescent light strip, which was starting to get to me.

How long was I going to have to wait here? Maybe I hadn’t been sitting here that long, and it just felt that way—time passed so slowly in this stuffy windowless room.

The image of Eva’s body—limp and broken in the middle of the street—kept flashing through my mind’s eye. How bad were her injuries? Had she hit her head when she fell? Was she going to wake up? What was she going to be like when she woke up? I was so numb from shock I could barely even process these thoughts.

That was the problem with this room. There was nothing in here to distract me from my worst fears.

I rubbed my eyes.

I needed to be at the hospital. I needed to be with Eva. I wanted to call the hospital, to see if she was still in the E.R., to see how she was faring, but I’d had to surrender my phone to the cops when I went into this room. I felt handicapped without it.

Then the thought occurred to me—that they kept people in these windowless rooms with no clocks and nothing to do precisely to make them more anxious. By the time the detective comes in, the suspect is so cowed and vulnerable they’ll say anything.

The thought only increased my anxiety.

I jumped as I heard the door click open. A man walked into the room—fifty-something, African American, his hair shaved close to the head, wearing a slightly wrinkled suit. He gave me a brief nod of acknowledgement and held out his hand.

“Miss Jones, Detective Shawn Foster,” he said, his voice crisply professional. He took a seat in the chair opposite me.

I attempted to give him a friendly smile, but all I managed was a grim twitch of my lips.

“Miss Jones, I just spoke with Officers Diaz and McCleary, who brought you here, and the detectives we dispatched to the scene. They told me the whole story.”

His voice was devoid of emotion.

I didn’t know what to say. What “whole story” had they told him? They didn’t know the whole story—only Obadiah and I did.

Detective Foster gave me a pointed look. “You said that your roommate Eva Morales’ fall was an accident?”

I nodded.

Foster’s brow furrowed, and he jotted something down on a small pad.

“Was Eva on the roof with you and Obadiah Savage?” the detective asked.

“No,” I said. It didn’t seem right to lie about that part. “She wasn’t with us. She must have fallen from the fire escape.”

I had chosen this version of events, so I had to stick to it. But it didn’t like it. My cheeks were starting to get hot, my body betraying that I was lying. I wondered if it was visible.

“So, you saw Eva fall from the fire escape?”

“No,” I said, “I never saw where she fell from. I just saw her falling and I saw her hit the ground.”

The detective frowned, and made another notation.

“But she must have fallen from the fire escape of the building, or the balcony below it,” said Foster. “Where else could she have fallen from?”