Although I wasn’t wearing my headphones—I didn’t think I could handle listening to Katie attempting to match Ezra Koenig’s falsetto just yet—I didn’t hear a knock, so it surprised me to see Detective Branigan’s head peek around the edge of my open door. As surreptitiously as I could, I slipped my iPod beneath my pillow.
“I know this is a bad time, Max,” he said, “but can I talk to you for a few minutes?”
I waved him to my desk chair, which he swung around to face me.
“I need to ask you some questions.” He spoke quietly. “Do you think you can handle that?”
“Can you tell me what happened to her, first?” I asked, my voice cracking. “How did she die?”
He tapped a Winston out of a pack, looked around for an ashtray and, when I shook my head, put his lighter away and slowly rolled the unlit cigarette between his palms. “We’re not sure yet,” he admitted. “The cause of death seems to have been a blow to the head—but there just wasn’t enough blood in the bathroom for her to have died there. We think she must have died somewhere else and then been moved into the bathroom afterwards. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“But why on Earth was she naked?”
“I’m afraid we have no idea.” He wasn’t the least bit afraid, I thought, but I knew what he meant. “Look, Max, I’m truly sorry you lost a friend, but I—”
“No, it’s all right,” I interrupted. “We need to find out who did this. How can I help?”
He pulled a little spiral notepad out of his inside jacket pocket and flipped it open. “For starters, tell me where you were last night.”
The question stunned me. “Am I a suspect?”
“At this point,” he said, “I’m just trying to get a sense of who was where when it happened.”
I had to think for a moment: last night seemed so far away. “I went to the library after dinner,” I said, “around 7:30. My friend Geetika, she’s a senior, she loaned me her thesis carrel. I had to work on my psych paper, and I wanted to be somewhere where I wouldn’t be disturbed. Somewhere along the line, I just couldn’t concentrate any longer”—I paused again, making sure I had it as right as I could get it—“I guess it must have been around 1 AM, so I packed it in and came back here. I thought about stopping by my friend Larry’s room, but then I remembered that he went home for the weekend to study for finals.”
“Did anyone see you in the library?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone I knew.”
“And where were you at 3:15?”
“Here, sound asleep. Why? Is that when—?”
He flipped back several pages. “According to the computer records, that’s when Katie used her access card to let herself into the dorm.”
I frowned. “That’s awfully late for Katie. She never stays out past, I don’t know, maybe two?”
He made a note. “I see.” He let a moment go by, and then he closed his notebook and looked straight into my eyes. “You seem to be taking this really hard, Max. Were you and Katie particularly close?”