What We Saw at Night - By Jacquelyn Mitchard Page 0,71

occur at night, to ensure my comfort and safety. I wouldn’t be talking to Officer Sirocco, either. I’d be talking to another detective, Deputy Sheriff Sonny Larsen. She was built like a linebacker (six feet tall, all muscle, with blazing blond hair), and had the gruff voice to match. From Deputy Chief Larsen, I learned that Garrett Tabor had received an invitation too.

“He’ll be joining us momentarily,” she said as she showed my mom and me into a concrete block waiting room, well-stocked with magazines describing weddings of celebrities who had been divorced for years. From behind the room’s only other door (closed), I heard a voice I recognized too well, but couldn’t make out the words. Garrett Tabor didn’t sound stressed at all, though. He sounded calm.

A few moments later, Deputy Chief Larsen reappeared. “Hello, Miss Kim,” she said. She nodded towards my mother. “Mrs. Kim.”

“What’s Sonny short for?” I asked.

“Sonny,” Deputy Chief Larsen answered, without humor.

“Did your dad want a boy? Or did he think you were very optimistic?”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, turning her beady eyes on me.

My mother swatted my arm. “Alexis, stop.”

“I mean sunny. Like the sun. Optimistic. Did your dad think that?”

“You’d have to ask him,” Officer Larsen replied.

Are you alive? I wanted to ask. Or battery-operated? She asked me for a rundown of the night Juliet disappeared. I told her about Parkour. She asked me to elaborate on our plans (illegal, she pointed out) to jump the bridge to the bank. I gave her a timeline. She asked me about Juliet Sirocco and how I knew her. I described our friendship and its duration. I also added that I had a written statement.

I didn’t add that what I added next I’d learned from John Jay: as soon as the police call came, I detailed every moment of my very unpleasant encounter with Garrett Tabor at the cemetery, including the mysterious texts. Now that my mother knew everything, she was as outraged and terrified as I was.

Deputy Larsen examined my statement for several long minutes. She read it once, twice, three times. Then she glanced up. “Thank you for being so very thorough. Now, I think you and your mother and Mr. Tabor owe each other a conversation.” She stood and knocked softly on the door that adjoined the two offices. “You can come in now, Garrett. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“I’d rather talk to Allie alone,” Garrett replied.

My mother shook her head furiously. But I gripped her arm. “It’s fine, Mom. We’re in a police station. Nothing bad can happen.”

“Alexis Kim—”

“Trust me, okay?” I whispered. “You know how you hate the word ‘conventional’? Well, this is not a conventional situation. You understand?”

She nodded, seeing through my skull. He’d be less guarded if I were alone. He’d try to threaten me if it were just us and the police, somehow in some subtle way, even though he knew he’d be observed the entire time. He might even crack.

“Fine,” Mom said. She shot the cop a cold stare and headed back out to the waiting room. Deputy Larsen closed the door, and the other flew open.

Garrett Tabor looked surprisingly well-rested for someone who had just flown to and then flown back from Bolivia. He was even wearing a suit. Black: for fake mourning. “Hello Allie. I’m sorry you’re going through this,” he said.

Really? I almost laughed. He’d chosen the lamest possible script. I said nothing. I stared at Deputy Chief Larsen.

“I have nothing to say to this man,” I announced. “You can read my statement. If anything is wrong, I’ll point it out.”

So she did. She read it aloud. “The witness is Alexis Lin Kim, age seventeen, a resident of 1814 Oxford Street in Iron Harbor, Minnesota. The witness swears to a close relationship with the missing woman, Juliet Lee Sirocco, age seventeen, whom she has known since they were four years old. On October 31st, the witness, responding to an unidentified text, arrived at the Torch Mountain Cemetery.…” Deputy Chief Larsen didn’t even look at me. She read on and on, for at least five minutes: about the chase, Gideon and the gun, about Juliet and Rob, and finally about Juliet’s disappearance at Lost Warrior Bridge—all concise, incident-by-incident reportage.

“Are those the observations you want to present here today in this interview?” she concluded.

“More or less,” I said.

“Which is it?” she asked. “More or less?”

I felt like Alice in Wonderland. “It’s accurate!” I said, too loudly.

She glanced at Tabor, who nodded. “I have a statement I’ve