Because while it’s true that I’ve got nothing to hide, after this past year, I have a whole hell of a lot to prove.
“Fine. Let’s go.” I grab my things and push to a stand, then with the entire shop watching, I follow the detective out the door.
The police station is bright and modern and rank with fear—or maybe that’s mine, the sickly, shaky aftermath of a body depleted of adrenaline. My head throbs with it, and from what’s shaping up to be an especially wicked hangover. My stomach churns as I follow the detective through the lobby and down a hallway of tired, gray linoleum, and I tell myself to breathe.
Now that he’s done hurling questions at me, Detective Boomsma is a man of few words.This way. Through here. Please have a seat.I sink onto one of two chairs, blinking around the plain white room. A table, a door, and little else.
The detective disappears, and my mind flashes to the last time I was alone in one of these rooms, white and bare, with cameras in the corners and a steel door that locks from the outside. At least this cop said please.
Not for the first time, I wonder about the wisdom of forking over my DNA, if it will clear me like the detective insinuated or come back to haunt me later. As an American, I should know better. The right to remain silent. The right to have an attorney present. Rights that, like my green eyes and the birthmark on my right shoulder, are ingrained in my DNA, which the detective wants me to willingly let someone swab from the inside of my cheek.
The woman who steps into the room looks more like a girl, her face scrubbed clean of any makeup, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail so severe it puckers the skin of her temples. She drops a single sheet of paper on the desk along with a pen.
“Read and sign at the bottom, please.”
I scan the form, a longwinded narrative in British English that the samples are mine, that I am giving them willingly. I pick up the pen and scribble my name and the date on two matching lines.
Why? Because I’ve lived here for all of two months. Because I don’t know a single attorney, or even how to go about finding a decent one who works for peanuts, because that’s about the only thing I can afford.
I tell myself I did nothing wrong. I called the police and reported the murder, as is my civic duty. I’ve been a willing participant in answering any questions they have. When the woman picks up the swab, I open my mouth wide. When she’s done, the detective appears like magic.
“I take it we’re done here?” I say, reaching for my bag, which I’d dropped on the floor. “I have to go. I have work.”
This isn’t exactly accurate. I have a two-thousand word fluff piece about a wellness center near Maastricht that could use some polishing and vague plans to scroll through the freelancing sites, Fiverr and Upwork and Guru and a dozen other smaller ones, praying that someone might be looking for an unknown, inexperienced travel writer willing to sling words for cheap. Other than that, and a mountain of laundry, and my afternoon run through the Vondelpark, there’s not a whole lot on today’s agenda.
Detective Boomsma steps aside to let the technician disappear out the door. “We’re done. You’re free to go.”
“And my phone?”
He leans a shoulder against the wall and folds his arms across his chest, looming above me, above the table. “Your phone was found at the crime scene, which unfortunately means that it’s evidence.”
“For how long?”
He gives me what I’ve come to refer to as a Dutch shrug, a gesture that can mean anything fromI don’t knowtoWho cares?
“I need a phone, Detective. If for no other reason than to call myself an Uber.”
Also, I’m not entirely sure where I am. The last thing I recognized on the drive here was a stretch of condo and office buildings that towers over the A-10, which means we’re outside the ring. I’m pretty sure there’s a Metro station nearby, but my pass is in the cardholder on the back of my phone, along with my debit card. Without those, I have no way to get home.
He pushes off the wall, holding out a business card he pulls from his pocket. “Please let me know if you have plans to leave Amsterdam.”
“I live here, remember? I’d show you my residency permit, but it’s in the card holder on the back of my phone.”
And then the rest of what he said hits me, the part about not leaving Amsterdam.
“Hang on, are you telling me I’m not allowed to leave at all? For how long?”
“Until I tell you otherwise.”
I think about Xander and his finger, about my DNA on his floor and headed to a petri dish somewhere at a police laboratory. About the Dutch judiciary system and the state of Dutch prisons. I hear they’re a lot nicer than their American counterparts, but I still don’t want to go to one.
“But I’m a travel writer. My job requires me to go to the places I’m writing about. Am I...” I hear it then, the catch in my voice, the way it’s shaking despite my every attempt to hold it level. Ipause to get myself under control. “Am I asuspect?”
“That’s not what I said. I’m merely asking you to let me know if you need to leave the country.”
“How am I supposed to let you know anything if I don’t have a phone?”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way.” When I don’t take his proffered card, he drops it to the table.