Two officers step toward me before I've finished processing, their presence deliberate and heavy.
"Ma'am. Can we ask you a few questions?"
"Sure, of course, what can I help y'all with?" My voice comes out bright and Southern and helpful and I want to bite my own tongue off.
"Your name?"
"Harvee Holland."
"How well did you know Mr. Turner?"
"I've been his legal assistant for about two years, but I wouldn't say I knew him personally." The words are tumbling out faster than I want them to. My pulse is loud in my ears. Why am I talking this much? Why am I sweating? I didn't do anything. So why does every word feel like evidence?
"What do you mean by that?"
"I honestly — I'm not sure, I'm sorry." A nervous laugh escapes before I can stop it and dies instantly in the silence they're offering me. "I'm just awkward sometimes."
One of them writes something down.
"Where were you this weekend?"
My stomach drops.
Images surface in fragments. Melanie laughing. Club lights. The alley. Cold gravel under my knees. The back of a patrol car, the windshield wipers scraping in the drizzle.
"I stayed home in bed after being dropped off early Saturday morning by one of your officers." I watch his pen move. "It's a long story. I wasn't in any trouble — I think I was with the wrong person and got slipped something. Your guys took care of me and brought me home and then I didn't leave all weekend."
Harvee. Stop talking. You sound guilty and you are not guilty. Close your mouth.
I can hear myself spiraling and I cannot stop.
"You stayed home the entire weekend," he repeats. Not a question.
"Yes." I hold his gaze and force myself to stop there.
"We may need to follow up. Can we get your contact information?"
I give them my number and address and watch the pen scratch across the page, each syllable feeling like something being recorded for a purpose I can't see yet. When they finally move away I exhale through my nose and stare at a fixed point on the wall until the lightheadedness passes.
The officers file out. The whole office breathes again, slowly, cautiously, the way a room does when it's not quite sure the danger has passed.
Donna finds me by my desk, voice low.
"Harvee. I heard them say your name earlier." She pauses. "They found his phone. Apparently there's an entire photo album. Of you."
I go still. "What kind of photos."
"Taken without you knowing, from what I could tell." Her expression does something careful and sympathetic that I don't have the capacity to receive right now.
The copy machine. My desk. The hallways. Every time I felt his eyes and looked up and found him already looking away. How many times was he not looking away?
"Fucking disgusting pig," I say, but my voice comes out thinner than I intend it to.
"We all knew it," Donna murmurs. No venom. Just exhaustion and something that looks, uncomfortably, like pity aimed at me.
"The police know about the photos?" I ask.
"I heard one of them say it." She drops her voice further. "They called it motive."