true? Couldn’t Rick believe that, too?
Except Rick knew I had been sleepwalking outside yesterday. He knew, and he was covering now.
“Did you know he was dead?” she asked.
“I, I shook him.” Hands out in front of me, pushing at something that was no longer there. “I put my hands on his body. It was dark. I just shook him, and . . . he didn’t feel right. He was in the bushes. There was blood. Even in the dark, I could feel it.” Sticky, viscous, as I leaned against the tree. “I touched a tree out there, too.”
Her eyes drifted to my hands. I could smell the soap from here. “I washed my hands. I didn’t want to get it on Rick’s things.” The truth.
She nodded once, barely perceptible. “Did you feel for a pulse?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I just started running.”
“For here?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you run here?”
The open door behind me, in the dark. Instinct carrying me forward—“Something happened to that man, and I was scared.”
“There’ve been animals,” Rick said. “We’ve seen them. Heard them.”
Nina’s head turned swiftly, the first crack in the demeanor. “That was no animal, Mr. Aimes.”
In the silence of the room, I could hear the crackle of a walkietalkie in the distance; the low hum of voices outside; a car door closing. Nina inhaled sharply, turning to face me. “I’d like you to walk me through exactly how you found him.”
I looked to the window. Didn’t understand what she was asking. Hadn’t I just done that?
“From your house,” she added, standing. “Mr. Aimes, I’m going to have someone else come take your full statement. Ms. Meyer, I’d like you to walk me through where you were when you heard the phone. It could help us. Would be good to know whether he was closer to your house at first, or whether he was already incapacitated when you heard it.”
I pushed myself to standing, unable to stop the wince as my leg bent.
A tiny indentation formed in Nina’s forehead. “Are you okay?”
“My knee,” I said. “I cut it.”
“She tripped,” Rick said, and we both stared in his direction.
“Cut it on a root, I think. It’s fine, though. I’m fine.”
EVEN THOUGH OUR HOMES were close, Nina and I were prevented from walking through the border of the property line. “We’re not sure how far the crime scene extends right now,” Nina explained. She turned on her flashlight as we started walking down the long drive to the main road, where we could then cut back to my driveway.
But she immediately turned back, frowning at the way I was walking. “Let’s take my car,” she said. “These driveways are so dark, anyway.”
She led me to her unmarked car, held the passenger door open for me before walking around to the driver’s side.
Up close, Nina Rigby was captivating in her contradictions. Upturned nose and downturned mouth, giving her the simultaneous look of both aloofness and gravity. No makeup, as far as I could tell, but with her hands on the wheel, I saw that her short nails were painted a subtle pink.
Out on the main road, I couldn’t see any other cars—no sign of how another person had arrived. We made a sharp turn into my driveway. Our mailboxes were positioned side by side, the individual driveways diverging from there.
Just as we pulled in past my mailbox, bright lights lit up the space around the crime scene, white and unnatural. I could see gnats swarming in the glare.
There was no car in the driveway but my own.
She turned the car off, and without the headlights, the only glow was from the crime scene, the bushes lit up in an eerie glow between the properties. Shadows of men falling outward, stretching toward us.
“Your house is completely dark,” she said.
“Sorry, I need to get a new bulb for the porch light.”
The car door slammed shut behind her, and by the time I climbed out, she was standing in front of my porch, looking straight ahead.
But she wasn’t waiting for me to enter, I realized. She was staring at the open doorway. The darkness beckoning. She flicked on her flashlight, shining the beam over the front porch, lighting our way. “Did you leave the door that way?”
“I think so,” I said.
She led the way, and I gripped the banister, not wanting to bend my knee more than necessary.
Nina looked back once, frowning at my steps. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Fine. I just don’t want to make it any worse.” But my entire