High Noon

several inches over Phoebe’s good shoulder.
    “What time was that?”
    “Just before ten. Just a few minutes before ten.”
    “You were aware the lieutenant intended to take the stairs down?”
    “Everyone knows Lieutenant Mac Namara uses the stairs.” Annie tugged on a heart-shaped button on her pajamas. “I really don’t feel well. I’m sorry.”
    “Lieutenant Mac Namara doesn’t feel very well either. Do you, Lieutenant?”
    “No.” Her sunglasses were back in her bag, where she’d tucked them on entering the building. Phoebe knew the bruised eyes, the scrapes, the bandages were a shocking and painful sight. Just as she knew how to wait, how to use the silence as a lever to pry Annie’s eyes to hers. “He pushed me down, after he’d cuffed my hands behind me so I couldn’t break my own fall.”
    Her gaze steady on Annie’s tearful one, Phoebe lifted her hands to show her bandaged wrists. “After he’d taped my mouth, put a hood over my head.” She brushed the hair back from her forehead so the livid bruises showed more clearly. “After he’d smashed my face into the wall.”
    Tears spilled, plump drops on pale cheeks. “I…I heard it was really just a bad accident. I heard that you fell. That you fell down the stairs.”
    “Was it an accident his fist rammed into her face?” Liz demanded. “That the cuffs snapped over her wrists?” She pulled up Phoebe’s arm, gestured to the wrists. “Did her clothes accidentally rip off her body so she had to crawl, half naked, for help?”
    “Things get exaggerated. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t feel well. Can you go? Can you just go?”
    “Did he tell you he just wanted to talk to me, Annie?” Phoebe kept her voice low, the tone even. “Just talk to me in private? Maybe scare me just a little, or push his point just a little, since I was being so unfair? I was being unfair to him, wasn’t I? Did he tell you that when he asked you to signal him I was heading down?”
    “I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t do anything. If you fell—”
    “I didn’t fall. Look at me, Annie!” Phoebe snapped the words out so that Annie jumped, then hunched her shoulders. “You know I didn’t fall. That’s why you’re sitting here, sick, scared, trying to convince yourself it was an accident. He told you that. He told you it was an accident and I—what?—lied to save face? I made up the attack so I wouldn’t be embarrassed about falling?”
    “How long have you been sleeping with Officer Arnold Meeks, Annie?” Liz demanded.
    “I didn’t! We didn’t. Not really. I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t do anything.” As the dam broke, Annie snatched up tissues from a flowered box of Kleenex and buried her face in them. “He said it was an accident, that you were going to make things up, maybe to try to get him in trouble. He told me how you came on to him, and then—”
    “Officer Meeks told you Lieutenant Mac Namara approached him sexually?”
    “He turned her down, and she’s been trying to ruin his reputation ever since.” Lowering the tissues, Annie turned a pleading face toward Liz. “He’d file sexual harassment charges, but he’s embarrassed to, and his wife’s not giving him any support at home. Plus she’s sleeping with Captain Mc Vee, so what good would it do?”
    “He told you all this, and you swallowed it?” Liz shook her head from side to side. “Maybe that’s excusable, maybe not. Maybe you thought, really thought, you were just doing Arnie a favor. Maybe you didn’t want to believe he was lying to you, again and again and again, leading you on. But you know he lied to you now, don’t you, Annie? You can’t look at Lieutenant Mac Namara and believe what he told you.”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
    “How about some pictures?” Liz pulled some out of her satchel. “There’s the lieutenant’s blood in the stairwell. Oh, here, here’s her clothes that accidentally tore off her body. How about the laundry bag he pulled over her head? Here’s a good one, of her blood on the cuffs he snapped on her. That’s some accident.”
    “Oh God.” The tissue shield went up again. “Oh God.”
    “What kind of person does this, Annie? Maybe the kind of person who’s thinking about doing it to you, or doing worse. Because you’re the one who can tie him to it.”
    “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Annie sobbed, yanked more tissues from the box. “I didn’t do anything wrong. He just needed a