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said.
Her heart was beating so fast and so hard, she felt like it was making her rock back and forth.
“Look, I’m telling you,” she said, “none of my friends had anything to do with this, that’s crazy.”
“I’ll ask you one last time. Where do you get your drugs?”
She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself. “I don’t do drugs, ” she said.
“I saw the bong in your—”
“A friend left it here, okay? I’m just watching it for her.”
“Watching it, huh?” He smirked.
She was a shitty liar and knew she couldn’t keep this going, so she said, “It’s mine, okay? What’re you gonna do, arrest me for having a bong?” “Possession of marijuana is illegal.”
“It’s not mine,” she said desperately.
“This is the last time I’m going to ask you,” he said. “Where do you get your pot?”
“My friend Darren.”
“How do I get in touch with him?”
This guy was such an asshole.
“Why do you have to—”
“What’s his phone number?” he asked.
Darren was a guy she’d gone to Vassar with— an on- again, off- again boyfriend— who was now back living with his parents on the Upper West Side. If he got busted, he was going to fucking kill her.
She gave Clements Darren’s number and said, “But please don’t call him. I’m telling you, he has nothing to do with this.”
Clements ignored her and asked, “Have any of your friends committed any crimes or talked about committing crimes or served any time for a crime?”
Immediately she thought of Darren who’d once spent a night in jail in Poughkeepsie when he’d gotten pulled over and the cops had found a joint in his car, but how much trouble was she going to get the poor guy into?
“No,” Marissa said. “No one.”
“I know we’ve been through this already, but did you ever meet Carlos Sanchez?”
“Never.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just know, that’s why.”
He put a small plastic bag on the table with a driver’s license inside it. “Look familiar?” he asked.
She glanced at the picture— scruffy guy, kind of ugly, with cold, detached eyes. She’d never see him before in her life.
“No, never,” she said.
Clements didn’t seem satisfied. He asked, “Ever lend anyone a key to the house or—”
“No, I’ve never lent anyone a key, ever.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“What do you think, I gave somebody a key and said come rob my house?”
“Is that what happened?”
“No, of course not.”
She couldn’t believe this.
Then Clements stood and said, “Okay, you’re gonna have to come with me now.”
“Come with you where?”
“Out to the staircase for a second. I want you to take a look at Sanchez.”
Suddenly she felt sick. “You mean look at his body?”
“The driver’s license photo was several years old,” Clements said, “he’d gained a lot of weight. I want you to see if you recognize him.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes you have to.”
Although she’d never seen a dead body before— well, except at a few funerals she’d been to— she just wanted to get to sleep and didn’t really care one way or the other.
She went with Clements out to the foyer. The body was still at the bottom of the staircase, splayed the way it had been before, except now Marissa could see all of it. There were technicians working near the body, maybe collecting DNA evidence or looking for fingerprints or whatever, and there was blood— it looked purple— on the bottom stairs and on the floor in front of the staircase. There was much more blood than Marissa had expected to see, which made her queasy enough, but then as she got closer, she looked at the dead guy’s face. His eyes were half open, and there was blood leaking out of his nose. Something looked weird about his mouth, and then she realized that most of his jaw was missing.
“Oh my God,” she said.
Misunderstanding her response, Clements said, “You recognize him?”
Starting to back away, she said, “No, I have no idea who is. Can I go now? Can I just go?”
When she returned to the living room, Clements wanted to talk to her mom, so she and her dad were left