“Okay, Dr. Fox.” But she’s watching Little. “I’m going to—”
“His wife—” I begin, raising a hand, as Alistair moves toward us.
“Wait a moment.” Norelli steps forward, places her phone on the table in front me. “I’m going to play for you the 911 call you placed at ten thirty-three last night.”
“His wife—”
“I think it answers a lot of questions.” She slashes the screen with one long finger, and a voice blasts my ears, speakerphone-tinny: “911, what is—”
Norelli starts, thumbs the volume control, dials it down.
“—your emergency?”
“My neighbor.” Shrill. “She’s—stabbed. Oh, God. Help her.” It’s me, I know—my words, anyway—but not my voice; I sound slurred, melted.
“Ma’am, slow down.” That drawl. Maddening even now. “What’s your address?”
I look at Alistair, at Little. They’re watching Norelli’s phone.
Norelli is watching me.
“And you say your neighbor was stabbed?”
“Yes. Help. She’s bleeding.” I wince. Almost unintelligible.
“What?”
“I said help.” A cough, wet, spluttery. Near tears.
“Help is on the way, ma’am. I need you to calm down. Could you give me your name?”
“Anna Fox.”
“All right, Anna. What’s your neighbor’s name?”
“Jane Russell. Oh, God.” A croak.
“Are you with her now?”
“No. She’s across—she’s in the house across the park from me.”
I feel Alistair’s gaze on me. I return it, level.
“Anna, did you stab your neighbor?”
A pause. “What?”
“Did you stab your neighbor?”
“No.”
Now Little is watching me, too. All three of them, staring me down. I lean forward, look at Norelli’s cell. The screen fades to black as the voices continue.
“All right.”
“I looked through the window and saw her get stabbed.”
“All right. Do you know who stabbed her?”
Another pause, longer.
“Ma’am? Do you know who—”
A rasp and a rumble. The dropped phone. Up there on the study carpet—that’s where it must remain, like an abandoned body.
“Ma’am?”
Silence.
I crane my neck, look at Little. He isn’t watching me anymore.
Norelli bends over the table, drags a finger across her screen. “The dispatcher stayed on the line for six minutes,” she says, “until the EMTs confirmed they were on the scene.”
The scene. And what did they find at the scene? What’s happened to Jane?
“I don’t understand.” Suddenly I feel tired, hollowed-out tired. I cast a slow glance around the kitchen, at the cutlery bristling in the dishwasher, at the ruined bottles in the bin. “What’s happened to—”
“Nothing’s happened, Dr. Fox,” says Little, softly. “To anyone.”
I look at him. “What do you mean?”
He hitches his trousers at the thighs, squats beside me. “I think,” he tells me, “that with all that nice merlot you were drinking and the medication you were taking and the movie you were watching, you maybe got a little excited and saw something that wasn’t there.”
I stare at him.
He blinks at me.
“You think I imagined this?” My voice sounds pinched.
Shaking his massive head now: “No, ma’am, I think you were just overstimulated, and it all went to your head a little.”
My mouth has swung open.
“Does your medication have any side effects?” he presses me.
“Yes,” I say. “But—”
“Hallucinations, maybe?”
“I don’t know.” Even though I do know, I know it does.
“The doctor at the hospital said that hallucinations can be a side effect of the medication you’re taking.”
“I wasn’t hallucinating. I saw what I saw.” I struggle to my feet. The cat bolts from beneath the chair, streaks into the living room.
Little raises his hands, his worn palms broad and flat. “Now, you heard the phone call just now. You were having a pretty tough time talking.”
Norelli steps forward. “When the hospital checked, you had a blood-alcohol level of point two-two,” she tells me. “That’s almost three times the legal limit.”
“So?”
Behind her, Alistair’s eyes are ping-ponging between us.
“I wasn’t hallucinating,” I hiss. My words tumble as they flee my mouth, land on their sides. “I wasn’t imagining things. I’m not insane.”
“I understand your family doesn’t live here, ma’am?” Norelli says.
“Is that a question?”
“That’s a question.”
Alistair: “My son says you’re divorced.”
“Separated,” I correct him, automatically.
“And from what Mr. Russell tells us,” says Norelli, “no one in the neighborhood ever sees you. Seems you don’t go outside very often.”
I say nothing. I do nothing.
“So here’s another theory,” she continues. “You were looking for some attention.”
I step back, bump into the kitchen counter. My robe flaps open.
“No friends, family’s wherever, you have too much to drink and decide to raise a little ruckus.”
“You think I made this up?” I pitch forward, bellowing.
“That’s what I think,” she confirms.
Little clears his throat. “I think,” he says, his voice soft, “that you were maybe going a little stir-crazy in here, and—we’re not saying you did this on purpose .