Полина Саймонс – The Girl in Times Square (страница 14)
“In the evenings, I think.”
“Your evenings?”
“What? Yes. Yes, my evenings. Midnight Hawaii time. Before I went to bed, I’d call.”
O’Malley paused before he said, “Hawaii is six hours behind New York.”
Lily paused, too. “Yes.”
“So your midnight would be six in the morning New York time?”
“Yes.” Lily coughed. “I guess I should have been more considerate.”
“Maybe,” O’Malley said non-committally. “What I’m really interested in, though, is Amy not picking up the phone at six in the morning.”
“She could have been out.”
“Out where?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I? Perhaps she was sleeping.”
“Perhaps she could have called you back, Miss Quinn. Would you like to know how many times the caller ID showed your Hawaiian phone number on the display? Twenty-seven. Morning, noon and night is when you called her. The answering machine in your apartment had nine messages from you to Amy. The first one was on Sunday, May 16, the last one was after you and I spoke, on June third.”
Lily, flustered and confounded, sat silently. Was she caught in a lie? She did call a few times. And she did leave some messages. But nine? She recalled some of those messages. “
She was profoundly embarrassed. Strangers, police officers, detectives, these two men,
Harkman panted behind her, sneezed once, she hoped it wasn’t on her. Detective O’Malley at last said, as if speaking directly to her humiliations, “Okay, let’s move on.”
Yes, let’s. But Lily didn’t know what to say. Harkman’s gaze prickled the back of her neck. She felt intensely uncomfortable. O’Malley’s hands were pressed together at the fingertips, making the shape of a teepee as he continued to study her. Lily couldn’t take it anymore, she looked away from him and down at her own twitching hands and noticed that a small cut near her knuckle was oozing blood.
“Miss Quinn, are you bleeding? Chris, can you please get this young lady a tissue. Or would you prefer a first-aid kit? When did you cut yourself?”
Lily didn’t want to be evasive, considering the amount of fresh blood that was coming out of an old wound, but she couldn’t tell him when. “It’s an old thing,” she muttered. “It’s nothing.”
Harkman came back with cotton wool and a bandage. Lily dabbed at the cut, feeling ridiculous.
O’Malley said, “You might want to get that checked out.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Well, Miss Quinn, it may seem
“Yes, I’ve always been a little anemic.” She emitted a throaty laugh. “Never could donate blood.”
He wrote something down in his notebook, not paying attention to her. “I just have a couple more questions, if you think you’re all right to go on.”
“I’m fine.”
“Tell me, did Amy have any enemies?”
“Enemies? We’re college girls!”
“The answer is no then? You can just reply in the negative.”
“No.” In the smallest voice.
“What about a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Was she seeing anyone at all? Casually?”
Lily said, “What kind of a question is that?”
O’Malley stopped looking into his notebook and looked up at her. “I’m not interested in passing judgment. Now was she or wasn’t she?”
“Well, she’s single, so … yes.”
“Did she ever stay overnight somewhere else?”
“Once in a while.”
“How often?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know that either.”
O’Malley exchanged another look with Harkman. What, Lily wanted to exclaim, what are you looking at each other for? What am I not telling you? She glanced back at Harkman herself. She started to actively dislike his eyes, which she realized were like two small, round, ugly drill holes. They were lost on his big, round, double-chinned face, but boy did they manage to bore into the back of her friggin’ head.
“How did you meet Amy, Miss Quinn?” asked O’Malley.
“We met in an art class at college almost two years ago.”
“Did you become good friends?”
“We moved in together, didn’t we?”
“Don’t get testy with me. I know it’s been a long day. You could have moved in for financial reasons. You could have hated Amy’s guts. I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Yes, we became friends, then we found this apartment, and moved in together.” Just to make sure there was no wrong impression, Lily said, “My boyfriend lived with us for a few months.”
“Three of you in that tiny apartment?” O’Malley whistled. “Why did Amy get the larger bedroom then?”
“Why? Because when we were moving in, we drew for it, and I got the short straw.” She let that sink in—Lily never got the long straw, but sometimes she got the short straw.
“I see. And during your living together, has Amy had many boyfriends?”
“I don’t know. What do you consider many?”
O’Malley raised his eye brows. “What I consider to be many, how is that relevant, Miss Quinn?”
Why was he flustering her! “Like I said, she would see people sporadically, on and off. No one serious.”
“Not a single serious boyfriend?”
“No.” Why was that strange? It wasn’t strange. Amy was always looking for love. She just wasn’t lucky like good old Lily with good old Joshua. But there was a formless memory wedged in of something—Lily didn’t even know what. A sense of something that Lily could not then or now place. She didn’t know if it actually involved Amy, or love, but for some reason she thought so—and cold damp and flashing lights. What a strange thing to think of at a time like this. Lily shook her head to shake off the oddness of it.
“That’s interesting. Because while we were waiting for you to return from Maui, we interviewed a number of people, among them a girl named Rachel Ortiz. Do you know her?”
“Yes, I know Rachel.” Was her response too clipped? Judging from the look on the detective’s face, yes, it was.
“No love lost there?” he asked. “Well, Miss Ortiz stated flatly and for the record that Amy
Lily rubbed her eyes. “Detective, I apologize, I’m jetlagged and exhausted—but I just don’t see how this is relevant.”
“I will allow for your jetlag and tell you how it’s relevant. I see you’re not particularly worried about her disappearance for your own peculiar reasons. But it’s been over three weeks since Amy was last heard from or seen by anyone. It is no longer a simple mishap with dates and schedules, and little things like college graduations. This is a missing person investigation. Perhaps if we find the person she had been seeing, we’ll find out where she is.”
“I understand, detective, but I don’t know what to tell you—I just don’t know who she was seeing.”
They had been tape recording the whole conversation, though by the sharpshooter look in O’Malley’s eyes, Lily didn’t think an electromagnetic recording was necessary. She signed the missing person’s report, threw away her bloodied cotton wool, took his business card and stepped to the door. O’Malley remained sitting behind the table, his feet up on a chair.
“Still, though, doesn’t it niggle you a little bit, Miss Quinn,” said Detective O’Malley, placing his hands behind his head, “just a tiny bit, that your good friend wouldn’t tell you about her love life? I mean, why would she keep that a secret from you?”
Lily didn’t know what he was getting at, and so she didn’t reply. Did he think Amy wasn’t into boys? Did he think Amy was into her boyfriend Joshua? She didn’t want to think.