Page 6 of Savior
Twenty minutes later, she cracks open the door and thrusts a hand holding a cup inside through. The scent emanating from it is enough to make me groan aloud. “Thank you.”
Paige peeks her head in. “Thankyou. You’re a good person, you know that?”
“I’ll remind you of this conversation the next time I forget to do laundry or wash the dishes.”
She opens her mouth to speak, and then her eyes widen. I know without asking that whatever she had been about to say was about Carly. Even gone, her presence is still all over our apartment.
“I ordered a cab,” she says instead. “They should be here in about twenty minutes.”
I nod and she closes the door. When I hear her footsteps recede down the hall, I lean my forehead against the wood. I give myself a few minutes to surrender to my own tears and then I suck them back, get dressed, and find Paige.
* * *
The bus stop just outside our apartment is full of students and every single one of them glance over at Paige and I as we cross the sidewalk to the waiting Uber. The news spread much faster than I thought it would, which is silly. I should have known something like this would reach every inch of campus.
“Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Department, right?” the driver asks as we get in and buckle our seat belts.
“Yes, thanks,” Paige answers. She leans against the seat and closes her eyes.
I pull out my phone, hoping to lose myself in the mindless, banal updates on my social media. Then the page loads, and all I see are pictures of Carly’s face and posts from all of her other friends mourning her death.
I didn’t want to know the details.
I don’t want the last memory I have of Carly to be tainted with the bloody residue of her death, but social media has no conscience, and it only takes one swipe for me to see the gruesome reports of the last minutes of her life.
My eyes scan the words before I can tear myself away.
In the final hours of her life, Carly was raped repeatedly, sodomized, brutally beaten, and finally strangled. Her naked body was dumped like garbage near a dumpster by the venue where the party had been held. A place where we’d all gone for various get-togethers and parties. Her face was nearly unrecognizable and her hair had been hacked off.
A strangled sound escapes my throat, and Paige sits up in her seat. “Are you okay?” she asks.
I toss my phone into my purse, willing the images away. “I’m sorry.” I clear my throat, hoping I sound more convincing. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She takes my hand in hers. “It’ll be okay.”
“Hey, I thought I was supposed to be the strong one.”
Her hand squeezes mine. “You can’t be strong all the time. You have to break a little.”
“I’ll break after we find out who did this to Carly.”
The ride to the police station is a short one. The receptionist takes our name and information and we sit in a cramped little room until an officer with graying hair leads us to a freezing conference room with a battered table in the center and chipped filing cabinets lining the walls. We take a pair of seats and the officer, who introduces himself as Detective Manning, sits across from us.
He slaps a legal pad down on the table and uncaps a pen. “I’m sorry for the loss of your friend. I’ll do what I can to be as brief as possible.”
Paige smiles, but it’s a ghost of her normal cheerful expression. “Thank you.”
“How about we start with the last time you saw Carly?” he asks, pen poised over the legal pad.
“Um, Friday,” Paige answers but then looks to me for confirmation.
I nod. “She’d just got off work—she’s a receptionist at a doctor’s office—and she was going out to a friend’s birthday party.”
He asks for the name of the doctor’s office and notes it down. “Did you hear from her the rest of the night? Maybe a text letting you know when she was coming home?”
“Around ten or ten thirty,” I glance to Paige for confirmation and it’s her turn to nod. “She texted me to let me know she was going to be late. The party ran long.”
“Do you have the exact time?” Manning asks.