“I can’t believe it,” I pant and he drops his arm over my shoulder. My inner voice is laughing at how gullible he is, and how easy it was to kill Jodie. “What happened?”
“We believe she killed herself. Were you the last person to see her alive?” An officer appears in front of me and I’m dumbstruck. I don’t know how much to admit to.
“No, I was, sir,” Jason pipes up and we all look at him. Is he covering for me, and if so, why?
“She signed in before curfew and she seemed sadder than usual but I just thought she was having a rough day.” He shakes his head and rubs his palms down his face. “She said she was going to have an early night and I watched her on the monitor go up the stairs to her place and close the door.”
“Are there tapes from these surveillance cameras you can show us from the time of her arrival until now?” the other officer asks.
“No, they don’t record,” he replies, embarrassed.
They do record he’s just too lazy to keep switching out the tapes and the system is so old it’s not connected to a server like most equipment these days.
“She was under psychiatric care for attempted suicide, Officer. This is a common thing for her . . . well it was. I guess she finally succeeded,” one of the nurses says.
“I will need statements from anyone who saw her yesterday. We’ll know more when we have the coroner’s report but there’s no sign of foul play. It looks like a suicide. Unfortunately we see a number of these in the build up to holiday season,” he says, shaking his head and putting his notepad away. I hadn’t even noticed the holiday season is approaching.
“Suicide claims forty thousand lives a year in the US alone,” I say for no reason and when all eyes come to me I add, “I need some time.”
I go back in my room and watch through the window as Jodie’s body is loaded into the back of the coroner’s van.
The door opens behind me and a stoned Isabella staggers inside. Why the fuck didn’t they put her in her own room?
“I thought they gave you a sedative,” I said.
She flaps her arms up like she doesn’t have control of them. “They just gave me something to calm me down.” She sniffles. “I can’t believe she did it. Do you think it’s because of us?” She pleads with her eyes and tone for me to comfort her and tell her it wasn’t.
“Probably because of you more than me. You were the worst friend a girl could have and you should feel the full force of guilt for this. I can’t even look at you!” I grab the bag I packed last night and attempt to leave.
She jumps from the couch she fell onto seconds before and claws at my arm. “Where are you going? You can’t leave! Jodie just died.”
“She didn’t just die, it’s been a few hours and I’m not staying here with a sniffling bitch. I’m moving out of this shithole.”
Her hand clashes with my cheek and ignites a fire there. Would this bitch plundering from my window look like another suicide?
“You’re fucking horrible. I hate you so much!” she bellows.
“Feeling’s mutual, sweetheart, only I actually mean it.”
“Fuck you! You’re going straight to hell, Ryan.”
Souls go to hell and I’m lacking that vital component to make me human. I’m not going to hell. I’m the living hell staring her right in the face. Her teary eyes quench my thirst. I want to drown her in her own river of tears.
“This is hell, Isabella. I’ll be seeing you.”
AFTER SEEING RYAN AND TALKING to him, I come home, and for the first time since knowing he’s out there, I have clarity. Before I was completely clueless about what he’s capable of and the shock of his actions was just that, shock. But I had dealt with that for eighteen years. I survived his destruction. Mel and I made a life for ourselves in the aftermath.
I’d let him murder us without the knife; Mel slept in the spare room, I’m never here and when I am, my mind isn’t. I have all the resources at my disposal to keep her safe and instead of utilizing them; I drove myself insane wondering where he was and what he was planning.
He has a cell. The first thing I’m going to do is hack into that and activate his GPS.
“Dad.” My bedroom door opens to Cereus glaring at me. “I’ve been calling you. Geez, Donovan is downstairs.”
It tickles me that she calls all my friends by their last name like we do at the precinct. She picked it up from all the family barbecues she’s had to attend over the years, and just like her Daddy, she hates them. I still have little patience for most people, and when the neighbor stops me to chat when I’m collecting my paper, I have visions flash in my head of me sneaking into his house and shooting him in his sleep. I didn’t say I wasn’t still me. I still have some dark thoughts I just don’t let them control me. Everyone fantasizes about killing the annoying neighbor, or their boss. It’s normal, well more normal than Ryan’s thoughts.