River Road (10 page)

“So you witnessed the incident. You'll have to come down to the station to make a statement.”

“Of course,” I said, trying hard not to show how much I dreaded going back to the police station. Would they give me a Breathalyzer
test? But no—I hadn't been driving. Still, what would McAffrey think if he smelled bourbon on my breath?
Always take the offensive
, Anat would tell me. “Is Sergeant McAffrey on duty? I have some information to give him about Leia Dawson's death. I think Hannah Mulder might have been involved.”

*  *  *

After Hannah was loaded into the ambulance the young police officer drove me to the police station. We left Ross talking to a state trooper, describing how the accident happened. I wondered if we weren't being separated deliberately so that we couldn't coordinate our stories. But that didn't matter. As long as we both told the truth our stories would be the same. They'd realize Ross wasn't responsible for hitting Hannah and I would explain to Sergeant McAffrey my theory about why Hannah had been lurking outside my house. When she woke up in the hospital he could question her and she'd admit to running over Leia and then everyone would know it wasn't me. It didn't matter if my breath smelled like bourbon. I'd been drinking in the privacy of my own home. I hadn't been driving. Besides, I hadn't had that much . . .
had I?

I was taken to the same dreary yellow interview room as before—did the Acheron police station even have more than one?—and left on my own to wait for Sergeant McAffrey.
Because he's busy
, I told myself,
not because he wants to make you more nervous than you already are.

“Back so soon?” Sergeant McAffrey said by way of greeting. He was carrying two Styrofoam cups of coffee. “You must've missed us.”

He handed me one of the cups. The coffee smelled burnt but the warm cup felt good. I wrapped my hands around it, thinking it was a good sign that he'd brought me a cup of coffee.

“I'm sorry Hannah got hurt, but yes, I did want to talk to you. Is she going to be all right?” I asked.

“Too soon to say,” he replied, taking a sip of his coffee and wincing at the taste. “Why don't you tell me what happened.”

I often told my students that starting in medias res gave the writer the advantage of choosing the most interesting bit to begin with. So although I wanted to tell Sergeant McAffrey about the things Hannah had left on the shrine, I began instead with that moment I looked up from my desk and saw her standing on my front lawn.
Like a ghost
, I wanted to say,
like Cathy's ghost appearing to Heathcliff in
Wuthering Heights, but I didn't. Literary allusions were not going to help my case. “As soon as I moved she bolted and so I ran after her.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why didn't you call the police?”

“I knew she had something to say to me and that she might not say it in front of the police. I only wanted to talk to her but she panicked. I smelled liquor on her breath when I caught up to her at the wall. She was drunk. She stumbled over the wall and then she said she was sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I think for running over Leia. She left this at Leia's shrine.”

I pulled the pink barrette out of my pocket and laid it on the table between us. Sergeant McAffrey's face turned pale.

“You recognize it, don't you? You're the one who found it wedged into Hannah's radiator grille after she hit Emmy.”

“Lots of little girls wear these. My niece did when she was going through that pink stage all girls go through. Now she wants to be a cowgirl and will only wear stuff with horses on it. What makes you think it was Hannah who left this on Leia's shrine?”

“Because she left this too.” I took the bottle of Four Roses out of my pocket and saw his eyes widen. Too late I realized what it looked like: a drunk carrying around booze in her coat.

“I found this on the shrine tonight. It's Hannah's brand. There were daffodils too, like the ones Hannah's been leaving for me since she got out of prison. She's been hanging around my house, leaving me notes, saying she wants to make amends. Don't you see? She must have been driving to my house the night Leia died—drunk as usual.
She's
the one who hit Leia.”

I finished in a rush, gulping for air. Sergeant McAffrey was staring at me, not with the flash of epiphany I'd hoped for but not with disbelief either. Instead he looked sad, as if I'd let him down. But all he said was “Interview concluded” and the time and flicked off the tape recorder. I'd forgotten I was being recorded. Then he spoke into an intercom.

“Louisa, would you please have Ms. Lewis's statement typed up for her to sign. I'll drive her home when she's done.”

He left without looking at me. Half an hour later a woman in a red and green Christmas sweater, Santa earrings, and glasses dangling from a chain around her neck came in with my statement. She told me to read it carefully and sign if it was all correct. I reread the story I'd just told McAffrey and saw how outlandish it sounded.
But that's what really happened
, I wanted to say, just as my students did when I critiqued their writing.

A minute after I signed it Sergeant McAffrey came in, as if he'd been watching me. He looked preoccupied. When I handed him the statement he looked up from the page to my face, his eyes narrowed.

“Professor Ballantine says that he was on his way to see you when he hit Hannah on the road. Were you expecting him?”

“No,” I said truthfully. “But he said he was coming to say he was sorry that he didn't defend me at the vigil.”

“I was there and saw what happened. He didn't look sorry.”

It was what I had thought but hearing Sergeant McAffrey say it made me realize all over again how strange it all was—Ross coming to see me, just happening to come around the curve when Hannah ran out. But what other explanation could there be?

“I guess he had a change of heart,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he said, not sounding convinced. “And you said you last saw Leia in the kitchen at the holiday party talking to Ross Ballantine? Did you hear what they were talking about?”

“No, I . . .” The sudden change of topic from tonight to the night of the party had taken me by surprise. “I was upset myself.”

“Was Leia upset?”

I recalled Leia swiveling around when I came into the kitchen, spilling the wine she'd been pouring, her eyes wide and startled.
Like a deer in the headlights
. I'd thought she was surprised by my abrupt entrance but now I recalled that her eyes had been red around the rims and her cheeks were splotchy.

“Yes, I think she was upset about something. Cressida Janowicz said she was upset when she came out of the kitchen. She thought I had told her about the tenure decision.”

“Did you?”

“No!” I cried, offended. “That would have been unprofessional.”

The corner of Sergeant McAffrey's mouth twitched, amused, I imagined, that I would be offended at the suggestion I'd complained to a student about not getting tenure when I stood accused of killing that same student. “So she must have been upset about something Professor Ballantine said to her. Was that usual? Had you ever seen them arguing before?”

“Leia could be impassioned about her beliefs,” I began. “Ross was just saying, before the ambulance came for Hannah, that Leia could be impulsive.” I didn't add that he'd suggested that was why she might have run in front of my car. I was afraid Sergeant McAffrey would guess what Ross had said but he seemed preoccupied. He left the room for another ten minutes and then came to the door and waved for me to follow him out to the parking lot. I was surprised when he opened the passenger door of the police SUV for me.

“I guess you don't consider me a dangerous criminal anymore,” I said, climbing into the SUV and looking with interest at the police radio.

“You can ride in the back if that makes you more comfortable,” he replied coldly.

I shook my head, cowed by his tone, and remained silent for the rest of the drive. He turned the heater up and it felt good. I closed my eyes
and must have drifted off for a few minutes—not surprising after all I'd been through—because when the car jolted me awake we were on an unfamiliar road passing a dilapidated old farmhouse. Was this a shortcut I didn't know? But then we turned in to a trailer park. I shook my head to clear the fog that seemed to have settled into my brain. Where was he taking me and why? I peered out the window for a clue.

Happy Acres Park
read the sign in the SUV's headlights, but the park didn't look like a very happy place. The trailers huddled together like sheep trying to keep warm in the snow, their sidings dingy and dented, windows patched with cardboard and duct tape, screen doors torn and hanging crookedly on their frames. A few of the trailers were neater, their front paths shoveled, Christmas lights outlining their plain rectangular shapes, wreaths hanging on the doors, but some looked as if the residents hadn't bothered even to shovel out from the snow. The one we pulled up to on the edge of the park sat crookedly on cracked cinder blocks; the snow drifted over the stoop was pocked by uneven footprints that led to a covered carport. McAffrey got out, leaving the engine and the headlights on. I sat for a moment, unsure what to do. I looked out the back window and saw a crooked blind move in the window of a neighboring trailer.

I looked back at McAffrey. He was standing under the carport awning staring at the car parked there, hands on hips. Light from the trailer's windows fell on his face, carving shadows under his eyes and in grooves along the sides of his mouth. He looked tired and sad.

I got out of the SUV and waded across the snow to the carport. McAffrey's head nearly touched the top of the plastic awning, which was so heavy with snow it looked like it might collapse any minute. I stepped cautiously beside him and looked at the car. It was a compact sedan painted a dark color that was indiscernible in the dark. The front bumper was dented and listed to the right. That was because its flat tires had sunk unevenly into the asphalt. I looked closer and saw that there were deep ruts under the wheels. The chassis of the car was
nearly flush with the ground. When I took another step something rustled in the car and a dark shape scurried out of the undercarriage into the dead weeds growing up out of the wheelbases. The car was home to mice and rot. It looked like a skeleton of an animal decomposing into a primordial swamp. I looked back through the driver's-side window and met the wide staring eyes of something covered with mangy fur.

I gasped and covered my mouth, unable to look away, my horror undiminished when I realized it was only a stuffed animal suction-cupped to the window.

She thought she hit a cat
, the caption had read above a photo of the surprised face and the splayed limbs of a stuffed animal suction-cupped to the window of the car that had killed my daughter.

“This is Hannah Mulder's car,” I said, then turned to look at the trailer. Through the lit, uncurtained window I saw a cluttered room filled with tables piled high with newspapers and empty beer cans, a sagging couch bearing the impress of its owner, and a lump of mangy fur that might have been the litter mate of the stuffed animal in the car. “I see,” I said. “This is to show me that Hannah Mulder didn't have a car to hit Leia with. But what does that prove? She could have bought another car or borrowed one from a friend.”

He smiled at me but it was a sad smile. “Look around you. Does it look like Hannah Mulder can afford to buy another car? Does it look like she has any friends to borrow one from?”

I looked back through the window for anything to prove him wrong—pictures on the refrigerator, Christmas cards on the ledge above the television set—any sign that anyone else but Hannah had been inside her house but her since she'd gotten back from prison.

“Okay,” I said, “I get your point.”

“Do you?” He took a step closer to me and I backed up. Had he brought me here to threaten me? I wondered wildly. Would any of the residents of Happy Acres Park come to my rescue if I screamed? I had a feeling that no one here wanted trouble from the police.

But all he did was sniff. “You smell like bourbon,” he said. “You smell just exactly like Hannah Mulder did when I pulled her in after she ran down your daughter.”

I flinched. It would have been better if he had hit me. “I'm not Hannah Mulder,” I cried, my voice sounding weak and pathetic in my own ears. “I'm not a drunk.”

“Maybe not yet,” he said, looking at me steadily, “but keep going the way you're going and”—he jerked his chin toward the sad tableau of Hannah's living room—“this is what your life is going to look like in a few years.”

W
e didn't talk on the rest of the drive back to my house. I was too furious to trust myself to speak. How dare he? I fumed to myself. He didn't know me. He didn't know anything about me.

I expected McAffrey to leave me at the foot of my still unplowed driveway but he drove easily over the rutted tracks Anat had left. It was on the tip of my tongue to say my next car should be an SUV when I remembered that I might not have a car again. Instead, when he pulled up to my door, I turned to him and said, “I understand why you don't believe Hannah hit Leia, but why then do you think she was lurking outside my house—or do you think I was so drunk I made up that part too?”

“I don't think you made up
that
part,” he said, staring straight ahead, his emphasis making it clear he thought I'd made up other parts. “I've followed Hannah half a dozen times from the Swan to your home. I know she's been hanging around here since she got out of prison.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure if I found it reassuring or creepy that McAffrey had been watching my house. Maybe he
did
know more about my life than I thought. Had he watched me buying bourbon at the local liquor store? Did he monitor my recycling for empty bottles? But instead of asking if he'd been watching me I asked, “Why were you watching her?”