Page 41 of Coram House

I’ve always thought of myself as good at interviews. So much of it is listening—to what someone is saying and what they’re not, guiding the conversation so you arrive at the destination you always intended, even if the interview subject isn’t sure why or how you got there. But I’m not used to being on the other end. I can’t seem to get comfortable in my chair. My story stutters and then bends back on itself because I’ve forgotten something. God, I really needed that cup of coffee.

With relief, I finally get to the part of the story where the EMTs arrive and take over. Garcia says nothing. The silence stretches out. I want to look at Parker, but I know I’m searching for reassurance and I’m afraid I won’t see it on his face. I haven’t done anything wrong. Why do I feel like I’ve done something wrong?

“Alex,” Garcia says finally, picking up a pen. “Let’s go back for a second. To the minutes right after the scream. Really focus on the scene—tell me what you saw.”

My throat feels scratchy from so much talking. “I’m not sure howmuch more I can add,” I say. “There wasn’t much to see. The lake. Trees. Snow.”

“Tell me about what you heard, then. The sounds. Close your eyes.”

So I do. But I hate it. I feel vulnerable sitting there with my eyes closed—like a predator might tear out my throat when I’m not looking. Maybe that’s the point.

“Okay, tell me what you hear,” Garcia says.

“The trees creaking.”

“It was windy?”

“Not in the woods but out on the water.”

I hear the pen scratching on paper.

“What else?”

“Something scraping against the rocks.”

The scratches of the pen stop. I open my eyes. “It was the rocks,” I say. “The sound of something dragging over the rocks. When I called out, the sound stopped. Like they heard me.”

In my head, it’s so clear, but my voice wavers. It sounds like uncertainty.

“And what came next?” Detective Garcia asks.

I try to go back there. To that moment after I called out. The intense act of standing in the woods and listening. The feeling that every part of my body was absorbing and sensing everything around me.

“Some thunks. I don’t know how to describe it exactly. Like something hard hitting something wooden—a drum sort of noise.”

Garcia makes ahmmnoise and writes something down. Then she lays down her pen and folds her hands together. There’s sympathy on her face. “You’re from New York City, right?” she asks.

I nod, unsure what this has to do with anything.

“How long have you been here? A week?”

“Two,” I say, but it sounds silly. Like a child insisting she’s not five, but five and a quarter.

“You know, it’s very common,” she says. “People who don’t spend a lot of time in the woods don’t understand how noisy they really are. The wind in the branches. Trees creaking. A log floating in the water, smashing against the rocks. Thunk thunk. Then you add in the adrenaline of that moment, and it’s completely normal to feel like someone was there.”

She smiles at me, gently. And then I understand. She doesn’t believe there was anyone else in the woods that morning. “They weren’t normal sounds,” I say. “They didn’t fit.”

I don’t know how else to describe it. How the sounds felt different from the creaking of branches or the scurrying of animals. How they were deliberate and foreign as a chainsaw. How I could feel myself being watched.

“There was someone else there,” I say.

The smile falls off Garcia’s face, a discarded mask. She leans forward across the table. “We’ve got a backlog of murders, you know. An eleven-month-old who was strangled by her mother’s boyfriend. Which got put on hold. For this.”

I feel a flash of anger. “I’m not trying—”

“Let’s review the facts, shall we? One set of footprints on fresh snow.” She starts ticking points off on her fingers. “A body discovered within thirty minutes of impact. Cause of death: blunt-force head trauma, likely after an accidental twenty-foot fall.”

“Do you know for sure it was accidental? She could have been pushed—”

---