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‘Yes,’ I said emphatically. ‘The timelines don’t add up, and I barely knew her back then. It doesn’t make sense.’ I shook my head. It was absurd. ‘Brooke didn’t know anything about the Cr– I mean, Mitchell.’

Office Gale pounced. ‘What do you call him?’

I sighed. ‘The Creep. I don’t think that needs much unpacking, do you?’

She gave me a long, easy look. ‘Since his death, there have been some allegations of inappropriate behavior leveled against Mitchell Covier. Do you have any thoughts on that, Jessie?’

My heart sank. ‘I don’t know if he was hurting anyone else. That’s God’s honest truth.’

I knew they would want me to go into it at some point – how it had started, what exactly had happened to me, where and when. They were going to want to know why I hadn’t gone to my mom, or one of my teachers, or thepolice, and I didn’t know how I was going to explain any of that.

It was hard for me to look back at the girl I’d been when I found the Creep’s body and decided to run. That was classic fight-or-flight instinct kicking in, and I’d never had it in me to fight anyone.

Not then, anyway. Now, I knew what I was capable of.

I wondered if Officer Gale knew about Chris. About what I’d done. About what I’d been forced to do to get Brooke back – the knife through Chris’s hand. I was almost tempted to tell her. To brag. She knew what had happened with the Creep – or she thought she did – and that gave her an impression of me. One that was wrong. Telling her about Chris would get me in trouble, though, and, more than that, I’d have to explain what had happened to Brooke. She hadn’t wanted to go to the police before, and I wasn’t going to make that decision for her now.

‘He was hurting you, though?’ Officer Gale said.

‘Yes.’

I had an overwhelming desire to strip off and force her to look at all my scars, the same way I’d showed them to Brooke. I wanted her to face them, face the reality of what the Creep had done to me.

‘Do you want to see?’ I asked.

I’d gotten a lot worse at controlling my impulses recently.

‘We’ll get it documented,’ Lena said, stepping in. ‘Through the proper channels.’

‘I can do it now.’ I was already getting up and stripping off my shirt.

This was my body, and they were my scars that he’d given me. The man whose death Officer Gale was investigating. She deserved to know what type of man he was.

‘This,’ I said, yanking my T-shirt aside, ‘is where he used to grab my arm and put out his cigarettes on my skin. I learned not to scream when he did it because that just made him laugh.’

I stepped up onto the low coffee table, so I was looming over her, and thrust my hand toward her face.

‘This is from when he swung a beer bottle at my head, and I put my hand up to stop him and the bottle broke my finger.’

I shoved my shorts down to my knees, exposing the ugly red scar at the top of my thigh. ‘This is from when I didn’t make him a coffee one morning, so he took mine and threw it at me.’

Lena got up and gathered me in her arms, a brief, tight hug, then gently set my clothes straight again like I was a little kid.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said to Officer Gale while Lena buttoned my shirt, carefully, since her nails were still drying. ‘He was a sadistic psychopath, though, and I don’t blame whoever did.’

‘Did you tell anyone about what he was doing to you?’ Officer Gale asked, and I flinched hard. I’d known this would come back to haunt me.

‘I spoke to my youth pastor,’ I replied. ‘I said I wished he was dead. So she knew about it, but I don’t know if she told anyone else.’

Officer Gale nodded, and I realized she already knew that. She was testing me, to see if I’d tell the truth.

‘How about anyone else?’ she pressed. ‘Your mom?’

‘No,’ I said, feeling exhausted all of a sudden.

I sat back down on the couch. Lena pulled a bottle of water out of her purse and handed it to me. It was a silent message to calm down, though I got the impression it came from a good place – she wasn’t scolding me.

Officer Gale caught my eye again, looking deadly serious this time.