Морган Райс - Turned

And the only lead they had was sitting across the table from them. Jonah. Her guest for the evening.

Jonah sat wide-eyed, feeling the drops of sweat forming again on his forehead. This was his seventh hour in the room. During the first three hours he had continuously wiped the sweat from his hairline. Now he just let the sweat trickle down the side of his face. He slumped in his chair, defeated.

He just didn’t know what else to add. Cop after cop had entered the room, all asking the same questions. All variations on a theme. He had no answers. He couldn’t understand why they kept asking him the same thing, over and over. How long have you known her? Why did you bring her to this event? Why did she leave at intermission? Why didn’t you follow her?

How had it all come to his? She had showed up looking so beautiful. She was so sweet. He loved being with her, and talking to her. He was sure it was going to be a dream date.

Then she had started acting strangely. Shortly after the music began, he had felt a restlessness building in her. She had seemed…sick wasn’t the word. She had seemed…antsy. More than that: she had seemed like she was going to burst out of her skin. Like she had to get somewhere, and get somewhere fast.

At first he had thought it was just because she wasn’t liking the concert. He had wondered if taking her there was a bad idea. Then he’d wondered if maybe she just didn’t like him. But then it seemed to grow more intense, and he could almost feel the heat radiating out of her skin. He had then started to wonder if maybe she had some kind of sickness, maybe food poisoning.

When she actually burst out of the place, he’d wondered if she was running to the bathroom. He was puzzled, but he waited patiently by the doors, assuming she would come back after intermission. But after fifteen minutes, after the final bell rang, he had gone back to his seat alone, confused.

After another 15 minutes had gone by, the lights in the entire room had been raised. A man had come on stage and made an announcement that the concert would not continue. That refunds would be issued. He did not say why. The entire crowd had gasped, annoyed, but mostly puzzled. Jonah had been attending concerts his entire life, and had never seen one stopped at intermission. Had the vocalist taken sick?

“Jonah?” The detective snapped.

Jonah looked up at her, startled.

The detective stared back down, angrily. Grace was her name. She was the toughest cop he had ever met. And she was relentless.

“Did you not hear what I just asked you?”

Jonas shook his head.

“I want you to tell me again everything that you know about her,” she said. “Tell me again how you met.”

“I’ve answered that question a million times already,” Jonah answered, frustrated.

“I want to hear it again.”

“I met her in class. She was new. I gave her my seat.”

“Then what?”

“We got to talking a little bit, saw each other in the cafeteria. I asked her out. She said yes.”

“That was it?” The detective asked. “There are absolutely no other details, not one other thing to add?”

Jonah debated with himself over how much to tell them. Of course, there was more. There was his getting beat up by those bullies. There was her journal, lying mysteriously beside him. His suspicion that she had been there. That she had helped him. That she had even beat up those guys somehow. How, he had no idea.

But what was he supposed to tell these cops? That he had gotten himself beat up? That he thinks he remembered seeing her there? That he thinks he remembered seeing her beat up four guys twice her size? None of it made any sense, not even to him. It certainly wouldn’t make sense to them. They would just think he was lying, making stuff up. They were out for her. And he wasn’t going to help.

Despite everything, he felt protective of her. He couldn’t really understand what had happened. A part of him didn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it. Had she really killed that vocalist? Why? Were there really two holes in his neck, like the newspapers said? Had she bit him? Was she some kind of…

“Jonah,” Grace snapped. “I said, is there anything else?”

The detective stared down at him.

“No,” he said, finally. He hoped she couldn’t tell he was lying.

A new detective stepped forward. He leaned over, stared right into Jonah’s eyes. “Did anything she say that night indicate that she was mentally unstable?”

Jonah furrowed his brows.

“You mean, crazy? Why would I think that? She was great company. I really like her. She’s smart, and nice. I like talking to her.”

“Exactly what did you talk about?” It was that female detective again.

“Beethoven,” Jonah answered.

The detectives looked at each other. By the confused, unpleasant expression on their faces, one would have imagined he had said “pornography.”

“Beethoven?” one of the detectives, a beefy guy in his 50s, asked, in a mocking voice.

Jonah was exhausted, and felt like mocking him back.

“He’s a composer,” Jonah said.

“I know who Beethoven is, you little punk,” the detective snapped.

Another detective, a beefy man in his 60s with large, red cheeks, took three steps forward, put his meaty palms on the table, and leaned in close enough so that Jonas could smell his bad coffee breath. “Look pal, this isn’t a game. Four cops are dead because of your little girlfriend,” he said. “Now we know that you know where she’s hiding,” he said. “You better start opening up and –”

Jonah’s lawyer held up his hand. “That is conjecture, detective. You cannot accuse my client of–”

“I don’t give a damn about your client!” the detective screamed back.

A tense silence fell over the room.

Suddenly, the door opened, and in walked another detective, wearing latex gloves. He carried Jonah’s phone in one hand, and placed it on the table next to him. Jonah was happy to see it back.

“Anything?” one of the cops asked.

The cop with the gloves took them off and threw them in the wastebasket. He shook his head.

“Nothing. The kid’s phone is clean. He got a few texts from her before the show, but that was it. We tried her number. Dead. We’re pulling all her phone records now. Anyway, he’s telling the truth. Before yesterday, she’d never called or texted him once.”

“I told you,” Jonah snapped back at the cops.

“Detectives, are we through here?” Jonah’s lawyer asked.

The detectives turned and looked at each other.

“My client has committed no crime, and done nothing wrong. He has cooperated entirely with this investigation, answering all of your questions. He has no intention of leaving the state, or even the city. He is available for questioning any time. I ask now that he be excused. He is a student, and he does have school in the morning.” The lawyer looked down at his watch. “It is almost 1 AM, gentlemen.”

At just that moment, a loud bell rang in the room, accompanied by a strong vibration. All eyes in the room suddenly turned to Jonah’s phone, sitting there on the metal table. It vibrated again, and lit up. Before Jonah could reach for it, he saw who it was from. As did everyone else in the room.

It was from Caitlin.

She wanted to know where he was.

Caitlin checked her phone again. It was 1 AM, and she had just texted Jonah. No response. He was probably asleep. Or if awake, he probably wouldn’t even want to hear from her. But it was the only thing that she could think of doing.

As she walked away from the Cloisters, in the fresh, night air, her head started to clear. The further she got from that place, the better she felt. Caleb’s presence, his energy, slowly lifted from her, and she began to feel like she could think clearly again.