Shame

car.”
    “What?”
    As her face showed its horror, he threw the leash around her neck, twisted the loose ends in opposite directions, and pulled tight.

10

    “A NOTHER C OKE , C AL ?” asked the taller of the two sheriff’s homicide investigators, Detective Holt.
    “Yes,” Caleb said. “Please.”
    Sheriff’s Homicide Detective Alvarez stood up. “I’ll get it,” he said. But before fetching the soft drink he made the observation, “Sweating a lot, aren’t you, Cal?”
    Alvarez didn’t wait for an answer, and Caleb didn’t offer one. Though the two detectives didn’t look anything alike, Caleb thought they could have been brothers. Holt was fair complexioned, with light, thinning brown hair, while Alvarez was Hispanic with a bushy head of black, curly hair. They both had mustaches, but that wasn’t what made them alike. It was their eyes. They looked at him with the same intensity, Holt with his blue eyes and Alvarez with his brown.
    “I’m beginning to think I should have a lawyer,” Caleb said.
    “That’s certainly your right, Cal,” said Holt, “but it seems to me when your writer friend talked with the sheriff she was adamant about keeping this talk out of the news. The fewer people we bring in, the fewer will know what’s going on. It’ll be hard to maintain your anonymity and keep your relationship with your father out of the news if you bring in a bunch of outsiders.”
    The threat was veiled but implicit. “You still okay with our talking, Cal?”
    “I suppose.”
    “Is that a yes or a no, Caleb?”
    “Yes.”
    But it wasn’t. The interview hadn’t been what he expected. At the best of times law enforcement frightened him. Now he was doubly scared. Caleb felt as if he had been ambushed. It was clear the Sheriff’s Office had worked all morning and early afternoon finding out all that they could about him. They knew things, personal things. He hadn’t expected that. Somehow he had thought he could just explain to them. He wished he’d taken Elizabeth’s advice about bringing a lawyer.
    The two detectives had taken turns asking him questions in the interview room. That had made Caleb feel trapped and claustrophobic. The interview room had a whiteboard that both of the detectives wrote on. Sometimes they’d take one of Caleb’s words, or a phrase he used, and write it up on the board as if it had special significance. The walls of the interview room were lined with blue carpeting, which not only absorbed the noise but gave the room the feel of a padded cell. Caleb suspected he was being filmed, though there was no camera visible.
    Lita Jennings’s name didn’t surface until well into the third hour of questioning. Both detectives had been upbeat and friendly the entire time, prefacing any tough questions with apologies, with phrases like “Just to clarify matters” and “I’m having a little trouble understanding.”
    Holt was the one who had said her name first. He was a nodder, always nodding at whatever Caleb had to say. “Do you watch the news, Cal? Or read the newspaper?”
    He waited for Caleb to nod, then gave him a triple return on that investment.
    “It’s enough to make you sick. Did you hear about that college girl who died about a month ago? She had her whole life ahead of her. She was pretty, too. What was her name?”
    Caleb didn’t offer it. His silence lost him a nod.
    “Lita something or other,” said Holt, then pretended suddenly to remember. “Lita Jennings. It probably sounds like a stupid question, but you wouldn’t happen to know her, would you, Cal?”
    Caleb opened his mouth. His hands tried to orchestrate his words, but there were a lot more hand movements than there were words. “My wife’s a nurse....”
    Holt was nodding nonstop, offering “Uh-huh” with every one of Caleb’s halting words.
    “She knew her. The girl’s father is a doctor.” Caleb’s hands kept trying to explain, trying to show the connection. “My wife’s at Scripps, and that’s the hospital her father works out of.”
    “Lita Jennings’s father?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you know him?”
    “Not really. I guess I’ve met him and his wife at a few parties.”
    “What about Lita?”
    “It’s possible I saw her a few times.”
    “Possible?”
    “Probable. I just don’t remember.”
    Lots more nodding and understanding. “But your wife knew her well?”
    “I don’t know if well is the right word.”
    “But she knows Dr. Jennings