Blind Spot (24 page)

“Warrant?” I stared at her. “Why?”

“It’s not just the pipe, Roswell. We received a tip that you bought crack for Tricia. The anonymous informant was very specific on the time and date—even said you left school to get cash at an ATM for the purchase.”

Jonathan. That asshole! First the fire and now this?
I started to shake my head. “No, I didn’t—”

“We have a bank video corroborating the claim,” Detective King said, shutting me up. “The video alone isn’t enough to arrest you—though it does support the suspicion that you purchased drugs with the intent to distribute—but your confession to being an accessory to the fire and the possession of the pipe is enough.” Detective King took a pair of handcuffs from her pocket.

Life slowly drained from my body.

“Roswell, I’m arresting you for the illegal possession of drug paraphernalia as well as arson and the suspicion of purchasing narcotics with the intent to distribute. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

Right to remain silent?
I couldn’t have spoken if I tried.

In third grade, Missy and I, and sometimes Greg, would play detective games with an old Polaroid camera and a fingerprinting kit. The villain was the sought-after role. There was something glamorous about having my mug shot taken and messy black powder smeared on my fingertips. Now that I was playing for real, it didn’t feel glamorous at all.

Someone took my photograph. Then an officer shuffled me off to be fingerprinted. There was no messy black powder. The technician doused my fingertips with water and pressed each one onto a smooth glass surface; my fingerprints magically appeared on the computer screen—“Roswell Hart” was now listed in the fingerprint database, just like a real criminal.

“As soon as your mother gets here, we’ll take you for interrogation,” Detective King explained, unhooking my left hand from the handcuff. “Would you like some water while you wait?” She reattached the cuff to the chair.

“That pipe’s not mine,” I whispered.

“Let’s wait until your mom gets here, okay?”

Hurricane Priscilla blew in twenty minutes later, still wearing a black smock from the hairdresser’s, highlighting foil layered on one half of her head. “Now you’re buying drugs?” she screamed.

“Ms. Braylor, please sit down,” Detective King said. “I’m sorry to take you from your appointment—”

“Not as sorry as she’ll be.” She glared at me. “If I knew where your father was, I’d send you there right now.”

Nogales, Mexico. Although chasing UFOs in the desert sounded good right now, I didn’t share the information.

“We wanted you present while we interrogate your daughter,” Detective King explained. “You should probably call an attorney.”

“This is going to cost a fortune, isn’t it?” Mom said.

“We have public defenders, ma’am.”

“I don’t need a lawyer!” I said. “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

“I want to believe you,” Detective King said, “but you haven’t been entirely truthful.” Mom snorted in agreement.

An officer tapped on the door. “Her prints match a few found in the Corvette—only on the passenger side, though.”

Detective King smiled at me. “That’s good—you didn’t steal Jonathan’s car.”

“I told you I didn’t.”

The officer cleared his throat. “We also got a partial off that pipe.” He handed her a sheet of paper. “Tricia Farni.”

“That’s not so good.” Detective King said. “You’d better start talking, Roswell. Let’s start with how a crack pipe with Tricia’s prints ended up in your locker.”

I felt out of breath. “I—” I shook my head. “Jonathan. It had to have been Jonathan. He put it there.”

“Earlier you said Mr. Dellian put it there,” Detective King said.

“I know, but that was before—”

“Before what?” Detective King asked. “It was less than an hour ago.”

“Before . . .” If I said
Before I knew you had a tip about my buying drugs for Tricia,
I’d have to explain, and that meant admitting I was guilty of exactly that. Why would they even want to believe me about the pipe after I admitted I bought her drugs? I shrugged and slumped in my chair. “I don’t know.”

“Roswell,” Detective King warned, “if you know something, now is the time to tell me.”

“Okay. I think it was Jonathan because I think he called that tip in, about . . . me.”

“What tip?” Mom asked.

“The tip that made us search her locker,” Detective King said, sounding annoyed. She looked back at me. “But
why
are you so sure now that it was Jonathan, and not Dellian? What changed from an hour ago?”

“Because”—I tried to fill my lungs with air—“he was the only one besides Tricia who knew about that day. He was with me when I took money out at the ATM. But I swear, it was to buy Tricia pot, not crack.” I ignored the “Oh, dear Lord” from Mom and continued. “Pot helped her keep off heroin. When Dellian took her pot away, she begged me to get more.”

“Where did you buy the pot?” Detective King asked.

“I didn’t. I gave the money to Jonathan to buy it.”

“Why Jonathan? Did he have some? Or knew someone? What?”

I shrugged. “Tricia just said he’d know how to get it, so I asked him to help me.”

“You didn’t question why she said that? Didn’t think maybe he was a dealer?”

“No.” Why
hadn’t
I questioned that? Why did I go to him without wondering how he’d know? Because he was Jonathan Webb, lightning-fast god of the ice? God, I was an idiot for ever liking him. The tips of my ears began to burn. “But he said he’d never bought it before and didn’t know what it would cost. That’s why I took out eighty dollars.”

“Eighty dollars?” Mom said. “You used eighty dollars of
my
money? For drugs?”

“It’s
my
money, from
my
Social Security check.”

“Oh, that’s even better, Rozzy. You have the government purchasing your drugs!”

“Ms. Braylor, please,” Detective King said. “Roswell, did you see the pot? See who he bought it from?”

“No. That day, Tricia got really high, though. They sent her to the hospital. Dellian said it wasn’t pot or heroin. I thought maybe something was in the pot, so I asked Jonathan. He said he gave the money to Ethan to buy the pot for her.”

Detective King tapped her pen on her chin. “But you didn’t see him give the money to Ethan or see Ethan give him the pot?”

“No, he just said he did.”
And we all know how good Jonathan’s word is,
I thought bitterly.

“Is it possible Jonathan told Ethan everything, and Ethan phoned in the tip?” Detective King asked.

I hadn’t thought of that. The way those two were, it was entirely possible. Heck, Tricia could’ve told Dellian too that day he’d taken her to the hospital. Just because I hadn’t told anyone didn’t mean no one else had. “Yes,” I said, feeling confused and defeated. “It’s possible.”

“Okay,” Detective King said. “Let’s assume for a moment that you are telling the truth about the pipe.” Detective King ignored my emphatic “I am!” “How about your locker—”

Something flashed through my mind at that moment, distracting me from what she was saying. At that first party with Jonathan, when he put money in for the keg, he had a wad of cash—but hardly any when we’d gone to the ATM the day before. Was that
my
money in his wallet? Had I paid Jonathan for Tricia’s pot?

If there even was any pot. Maybe he had lied to me. Maybe he kept the money and never gave her anything, forcing her to get another needle full of heroin from wherever she’d got the last one.

But there’d been no tracks, no needle marks.

What if Jonathan had given her something, just not pot? Something that would make her insanely high in the cafeteria? Something that would leave no tracks? Something like . . . crack?

I’d never seen her smoke it until after that day. Was he selling crack to her? When I saw her get in his car that time at lunch—he made me think I’d been mistaken, but what if I hadn’t? Could he have been giving her crack? In the loft, Tricia had said she “just needed.” Had she “just needed” the crack he could supply? Was she “paying” him that night in the loft? I shivered in disgust.

If he was supplying her with crack, there was a good chance he’d have a crack pipe with her prints on it—one he’d need to plant in my locker to keep the police from finding it on him.

“Roz?” Detective King said.

Then again, as Detective King said, it could’ve been Ethan who called in the tip. Maybe Jonathan did give him the money and he was the one who got her crack instead. He could’ve planted the pipe . . . or Jonathan could have been lying, saying he gave Ethan the money, saying Ethan started the fire. Was Ethan another scapegoat like me? Dellian too? Had the fire been about getting proof? Or something else entirely? The whole thing made my head hurt.

“Roz!” Mom yelled. “She asked you a question!”

“Sorry.” I shifted my eyes to Detective King’s face to fake eye contact. “What?”

“Who else knows your locker combination? Who else has access to it?”

“Nobody.” I sighed. That wasn’t true. “And everybody.”

“Rozzy, don’t play games!” Mom snapped.

“I’m not! Nobody knows my combo; everyone has access to it. I leave it unlocked.” Jonathan knew that. He had to have planted the pipe. It was the only thing that truly made sense. And he knew that by calling in the tip, I’d take the fall for everything. Just as I had for the fire. Because he knew drugs had killed Tricia. His drugs.

“I think Jonathan is behind everything,” I said, and laid out my suspicions.

“Sounds plausible,” Detective King said when I’d finished. “Unfortunately, it’s speculation. We need something concrete. I’ll keep digging.” She stood up. “I have to send you to the detention center now.”

“Detention center?” What was she talking about? “But I just told you—”

“You’re sending her to
jail?
” Mom turned to me, her head shaking back and forth. “You’ve really screwed things up this time.”

For the first time in my life, I agreed with her.

A police officer took me to the detention center in handcuffs and handed me over to a female guard. After my clothes and shoes were replaced with an orange jumpsuit and slippers, the guard escorted me to a windowless room with ice-blue brick walls and a steel-framed cot nailed to the cement floor.

The thick metal door bounced shut.

The lock clanked into place.

I was alone.

I picked my way across the itchy wool blanket on the cot and sat with my back against the cold concrete. Knees hugged to my chest, I stared up at the gray, UFO-less ceiling.

It was quiet. Too quiet. So absent of sound, it suffocated me, like being underwater. At first I thought I’d lost my hearing. But there simply was nothing to hear. No hissing radiator; no thumping bass from a distant car; no squeaking shoes from a passing guard. Nothing. Just a thick, deafening silence.

“They could at least get some made-for-the-elevator canned Madonna music in here.” My voice echoed off the walls and disappeared.

What the hell? How did I end up in a juvenile detention center? At what point did I take that wrong turn and land here?

“Wrong turn? Please,” I told myself. “You mean
which
wrong turn. You’ve made so many.” Trusting Jonathan. Not listening to Greg. Using my friends. Not being a friend. Being so wrapped up with my selfish self, I was blind to everything around me. “Guess when they said I was legally blind, they meant more than my eyesight.”

What seemed like an eternity later, the door of my cell began groaning and then rumbled open. A guard nodded at me. “Visitor.”

My spirits lifted when I saw Detective King. “Can I go home?”

She gave me a sad look. “Your mom and the public defender are working on it, but the process sometimes takes a while. They give you dinner yet?”

My shoulders slumped back against the cement wall as I nodded. “Yes.”

“You know you can use the phone to call your mom. They allow a phone call each day.” She handed me Ruth’s yearbook. “You left this in my office. Thought you might want it.”

I embraced it like a lost treasure. “Can I get my music and earphones from my stuff too? It’s so quiet.”

“Sorry, hon, not allowed. The earphones are considered a weapon.”

“Right,” I said with a laugh.

She made a choking motion with her hands.

“Oh,” I said. “People really do that?”

“Roswell.” She sat on the corner of my cot. “We searched Jonathan’s house, car, and locker. No drugs.”

“So he stashed them someplace.” Her sigh made me feel hopeless. I sighed too. “Check my locker again. All the evidence you need is probably in there now.”

“His prints weren’t on your locker or the pipe, Roswell, and we tested the pipe in case your hunch about him and Tricia smoking crack together was true. The only DNA in that pipe was Tricia’s.”

“So?” I rested my head on the wall and looked up at the ceiling. “My prints and DNA weren’t on that pipe either, were they? I’m still in here.”

“Roswell, I’m sorry. But the pipe
was
found in your locker. Unless we can prove it was planted, it’s hard to argue that charge—you were in possession and you admitted to purchasing drugs—”

“I didn’t purchase them! I just took the money out. For all I know, Jonathan went and bought a pizza with that money.”

“And I hope your lawyer argues that—”

Lawyer?
My heart sank. “I’m going to jail for the pipe and the fire, aren’t I?”

“You’re still innocent until proven guilty.” She shook her head. “Roz, I want to believe you’re innocent, but nothing you tell me checks out. Mr. Dellian let us search his apartment. Nothing incriminating. No photos, no cloak.”

“So, he’s hiding them!”

“Or he never had them.” Detective King sighed. “Roz—”

The exhaustion in her tone made me want to scream. “Look, obviously that pipe was Tricia’s. Your fancy tests proved that, right?” I didn’t wait for confirmation. “Well, Tricia kept her pipe in a pocket of her cape, which she was wearing that night in the loft. And when she was found, there was no cape. So, whether it was Jonathan or Ethan or Dellian or the boogyman—whoever put that pipe in my locker has her cape and is probably the person who killed her.”