Page 91 of Riot House
Reality fractures, shatters to tiny pieces when he takes a deep breath and speaks again. “The one that was filed the night they found your mother’s body.”
33
ELODIE
THREE YEARS AGO
The metal chair creaks underneath me, the loud, abrasive sound cutting through the tense silence of the small, windowless room like a knife. The man on the other side of the scratched, wobbly table gives me a tight smile that doesn't come close to reaching his eyes. He looks like he feels sorry for me but he doesn't quite know what to do to comfort me. He probably doesn't have kids. Probably unmarried, too. There's no wedding band on his left hand, which means he's probably one of those cops who's dedicated his life to his work. When all you do is focus on the bad shit people do to one another, it stunts your heart's ability to feel anything other than contempt and mistrust.
“Won't be long now,” he says in a heavily accented voice. Someone must have told him that I only speak English. I nod, looking down at my hands, resting on top of the table; I was allowed to wash them after the photographs were taken and the forensic analysts had swabbed me, but I was so numb that I didn't do a good job. There's old blood, black now, still shored up beneath my nails—dark crescents of gore that keep on reminding me of the surreal scene I came home to from school.
Seconds pass.
Minutes.
The clock on the walltick, tick, ticks, its hands marking off the unbearable stretch of endless time that I sit here at this table in my stinking clothes, feeling the emotionless eyes of the detective crawl all over me. Eventually, the door opens and a beautiful woman wearing high waisted pants and a crisp white shirt whirls into the room, carrying a stack of paperwork. She smiles at me; she has one of those soft, warm smiles that instantly makes you feel at ease. Like she could be a friend. “Hello, Elodie. My name is Aimée. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am sorry it has to be under such painful circumstances.” Not Amy, like the Americanized name. Aimée, like the French verb 'to love.' Her accent's wonderful. You can always tell when someone's new to the English language. They don't use contractions. 'It is' instead of 'it's.' 'I am' instead of 'I'm.' They aren't comfortable enough with the language to get lazy with it yet.
She sits down next to her colleague, and a waft of jasmine water hits the back of my nose. I begin to piece together this woman's life as she flicks through the papers she's brought along with her. She's French, obviously. Early thirties. She takes excellent care of herself, working out every day in private behind closed doors but never talking about it, as is the way of all classically French women. She drinks her coffee black, dipping her croissant into the piping hot liquid at her desk each morning. She loves children, but she's never found the time to have them. She'll make a good mother one day if only she can settle down long enough to find someone and fall in love. She loves to be outside. She loves to live by the sea, and craves—
“Elodie? Yes, there you are. Good girl. Come back,” she says, her warm brown eyes full of emotion. “I know this is hard, but I need you to try and focus for a little while, okay?”
I jerk my head up and down.
“I was asking you if you could tell me what happened, please? The officer who found you at your house said you were not making any sense when he...”
She can't even say it. So I do it for her. My voice creaks and cracks as I push the words out of my mouth. “When he opened up the box.”
“Yes, Elodie. When he opened up the box.”
“I don't remember what I said to him,” I tell her.
“Yes. That is understandable.” She's perfunctory. She manages to hide her horror well. That could be why they chose her to come in to speak to me. Aside from the fact that she's a woman, and she has kind eyes, and she shares my mother's nationality—points that they probably figured would help me open up to her. “Do you think you could start at the beginning for me?”
Everything's so confused. My thoughts are all tangled together, like an unspooled ball of wool. I pull memories through my hands like I'm searching for the end of a string, but it just keeps going and going. “I don't—I can't really...”
“Okay. It is okay.” Aimée reaches across the table, touching her fingers to the back of my hand. The contact startles me so badly that I reel back, knocking over the glass of water they gave me. The spilled liquid spreads across the table, running off the edge of its surface, dripping down into my lap, but I don't move. I don't try to mop it up. I just sit there and let it happen.
“Merde!” Aimée hisses. She runs out of the room and comes back a moment later with a wad of paper towels. Between her and the silent guy sitting next to her, they clear up the mess quickly, drying off the table. Aimée gives me a bundle of napkins to pat my jeans dry, but I don't bother. I just hold onto them, my fingers rustling over the rough surface of the cheap paper. Round in circles. Round in circles.
“Elodie? Are you listening?”
I snap my head up. Aimée's back in her seat again. God knows how long she's been sitting there. “I cannot suggest what happened to you based on what we know at this stage, but I can read back what you told the officer. Do you think that would be okay? And then you can tell us if there is anything else you remember, or if there is anything you want to change? And don't worry. There is no right or wrong here. If you remember something differently, that is okay. You are allowed to tell us, and you are not going to get into any trouble.”
I blink to let her know that I've understood.
She cracks her neck, inhaling in and out a few times as though she's steeling herself before she starts reading. And then she begins.
“I came home at six. He was already there at the house. My father. He was supposed to be away on maneuvers, but he must have come back early. I realized he was drunk right away. At least, I thought he was drunk. He was acting weird, staggering around and walking into the furniture. He wouldn't talk to me. I called out for my mom, to tell her that there was something wrong with him, but she didn't answer, so I went looking for her.
“She likes to write letters to my grandmother in the back sunroom, so that's where I looked first. She was lying on the tiles there, covered in blood. She was on her stomach and her skirt was up around her waist. I didn't understand what had happened at first. But then I saw the blood on her underwear.” Aimée pauses. Swallows. Continues. “There was a hole in the side of her head.” Aimée looks up at me. “What kind of hole, Elodie? Like a bullet hole?”
Bile rises up the back of my throat. I'm apart from myself, outside my body, removed from this place and this situation. It's the only way I can give her the information she needs, but it means that I sound like a robot when I speak. “No. Bigger. About the size of a golf ball. And her skull was...it had caved in around the hole.”
Aimée taps her fingernail against the table in a staccato beat. She stops when she notices me flinch. She goes back to my statement. “I screamed for Dad to get an ambulance, but I knew it was already too late. Her lips were blue. I checked for a pulse, though. I turned her over and put her on her back. I tried to give her CPR, but she was already dead.”
I remember saying all of this. And the look on the officer's face, too. He looked shell-shocked by the things I was telling him. But I don't remember feeling this rising anguish, rushing toward me like the inevitable end of a Shakespearean tragedy, refusing to slow or change its course. I know what's coming, and there's no holding it back. I wish I could.
“That's when he came and grabbed me,” Aimée reads from the statement. “He grabbed me from behind. He was so strong. I couldn't fight him. And I didn't think he was going to do anything bad. Not at first. But then he carried me over to the steel lockbox where he keeps his uniforms and his equipment. He handcuffed my arms behind my back, and then he put me inside. I kicked and screamed, and I fought, but I couldn't get out. A long time passed. I thought I was going to die. He came back later, and he seemed normal again, but he wouldn't let me out. He wouldn't let me out of the box.”
