Wanting Sheila Dead(97)

“Looked up what on the Internet?” Mr. Demarkian said.

“Looked up the house,” Janice said. “The first night we were here. We aren’t allowed to have Internet, really, but there was a computer in one of the offices downstairs and we didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be in there, so we were using it. We were IM-ing, if you want to know the truth. It’s terrible, being stuck up here without being able to talk to anybody practically ever. Anybody outside, I mean. We’re really not allowed to. So we did that and we looked at pictures of the house and talked to people, except I didn’t talk to anybody because, you know, nobody I knew was on.”

“Tell us where you were when you heard the shots,” the detective said.

Janice took a deep breath and brightened right up. This really was exciting. Nothing like this ever happened in South Dakota. There was crime there, but it was the kind of crime that would make anybody bored.

“I was standing behind the couch in the back row,” she said. “Not that there were really rows, if you know what I mean. It’s just that even though the couch is big, it isn’t big enough to have ten girls strung out in a single line behind it, so we were all sort of squished together. I had Coraline in front of me to my right, a little, and then in front of me to my left a little there was Deanna Brackett, Coraline’s roommate.”

“And who was to either side of you?” the detective asked.

“Faith Stackdopole on my right, more up front, and Suzanne, I think, on my left. I’m not really sure about that. We were all just sort of moving around until the last minute.”

“Did you hear the shots when they happened?” Mr. Demarkian asked.

“Well, of course I heard them,” Janice said. “I mean, they were very loud. I’d have to have heard them.”

“Do you know what direction they came from?”

Janice shook her head. “No. No, they were just there. Just sort of everywhere, if you know what I mean. I thought they were close, but they would have to be close, so I don’t see that that’s any help. Really, it was just—well, we weren’t expecting it, were we? And then everybody starting yelling and running around, and somebody got off the couch—that Shari girl, I think. And she was jumping around and yelling, and so was everybody else.”

“There’s a police technician over there,” the detective said. “She’s set up to test your hands for gunshot residue. I’m obliged to tell you that you do not have to agree to take such a test without a lawyer, but—”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Janice said. “This really is exciting, isn’t it? Do you think they’ll do an episode of American Justice on this one? It would be so wonderful if they did. Then maybe I’d be on two television programs instead of one. They could interview me the way they do, you know, with a backdrop of justice scales or something, and then the person talks about what it felt like to be there.”

“Well,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“Oh, I know,” Janice said. “You have to solve it first. But you will solve it. I know all about you. So that’s all right. I just wish you’d do it soon, so that everybody could stop stressing about it. I mean, there’s one of us here who killed somebody, and we don’t even know why. Maybe they’ll kill somebody else.”

“That’s true,” Mr. Demarkian said.

“Nothing like this ever happens in South Dakota,” Janice said, “and nobody from Marshall ever gets famous, either, so this is going to be the biggest thing in years. Everybody in town’s going to want to talk to me when I get home, and they’d have wanted that even if I’d just gotten on the program.”

“I’m sure,” the detective said.

They weren’t very friendly, either of them, but Janice didn’t mind. She was just racing at the mouth, that was all. She’d like to be one of those people who could keep her cool no matter what, but she wasn’t, and that was that.

Afterward, she wandered around in the dining room and looked at the food on the “sideboard,” which seemed to her to be just the bottom half of a hutch, but people here used different words for everything. They ate different food, too.

She wondered if Coraline was going to come in to eat.





3


Grace Alsop was also wondering if Coraline was going to come in to eat, but she had more practical reasons in mind.

“They tested all of us,” she told Alida and Suzanne, “and they didn’t find gun residue or whatever it is they were looking for on any of us. They didn’t find it on Olivia Dahl, either.”