“Oh good. I’m glad you called back so quickly. I’m just at your apartment building. Are you home?”
Every warning bell in my head goes off at once. “You called me from a plumbing number. And now you’re saying you’re a detective? And that you’re where I live?”
He chuckles, as if this is some funny misunderstanding. “Yeah, I know. Someone’s told me that before. It must be some system glitch. A number I inherited. But, yeah, I’m legit. I should probably get that changed.”
A wave of nausea sweeps through me. Is this real, or am I being played? I can’t tell if this guy is just unprofessional, or if I’ve fallen into some twisted prank.
“Can you come meet me at your apartment?” he asks again.
I grip the edge of the counter, fighting the rising panic. Absolutely not. The last thing I’m doing is meeting a strange man—real detective or not—alone in my apartment.
“No, I’m… uh… I’m down the street at the Dock Bar having lunch.”
There’s a pause, and I hear papers rustling in the background. “Can I come meet you there?”
“...I guess?” I say reluctantly, my skin crawling. I just want this whole interaction to be over, and my instincts are on high alert. What the hell is going on?
“Great. I’ll be there in five to ten minutes,” he says before hanging up.
I sit at the bar, trying to sip my drink but failing miserably, my hands shaking each time I try to lift the glass. My heart pounds, my thoughts spinning out of control. My breath feels too shallow, too fast. What if this isn’t real? What if this is some kind of setup?
When he arrives, I spot him instantly. Total detective type—closely-cropped hair, business shirt, dark pants. He pulls out a badge and flashes it quickly. It looks real, but the whole ‘Bob’s Plumbing’ thing still has my paranoia gnawing at me. I stare at him, trying to read his expression, but his face is impassive. He gestures to a table out on the balcony. “Is it okay if we sit over there? It’s more private.”
I nod and follow reluctantly.
“Do you mind if we tape our conversation?” he asks.
“That’s fine,” I mutter, feeling like I’m floating outside of my body, watching myself agree to things out of habit and fear.
He pulls out a recorder and presses the button. “Okay, let’s walk through what happened last night.”
His tone is calm, almost clinical, but his questions are pointed. Too specific. Every word out of his mouth feels like a trap, something designed to catch me slipping up.
“When he shoved you to the ground—did he use his left hand or his right hand?”
“Um…” I pause, struggling to recall. “I think his left... but maybe both. He came at me really fast, and… kind of shoved me hard, and I was more focused on not hitting the floor face-first.”
He narrows his eyes. “So you don’t remember exactly which hand?”
“I was just trying to protect myself,” I say, my voice faltering. “I wasn’t keeping track of his hands.”
He clicks his tongue, clearly annoyed. “The more specific you can be, the more it helps.”
“I just don’t remember, and I don’t want to make up an answer.” I feel like I’m being pressed to answer something that I simply don’trecall, and I don’t want to lie to the police just to give them the answer he so clearly wants.
“Were you drinking?” His voice drips with judgment. “It would be helpful if you remember more than you do.”
“Yes,” I reply. “I’m sorry I can’t remember everything about it. I wasn’t expecting my fiancé to threaten, and try, to kill me.”
His next question makes my skin crawl. “When he used the deer antlers on you—did they fully penetrate your anus, or…?”
I freeze, my stomach flipping violently. My pulse roars in my ears. What the fuck is happening? I feel like I’ve been thrown back into that nightmare from years ago—my rape trial. The cold, detached way the lawyers dissected every bruise, every rip in my body, while I sat there on the witness stand, trying not to fall apart. My instinct, weirdly, is to protect Timmy. I know what he’s angling at, that penetration would take a domestic assault case into a full-on rape charge.
“They didn’t penetrate,” I whisper. “I had pants on.”
He nods, jotting something down in his notebook. “Okay. But just so you know, we may need to document this as a sexual assault if the intent was there.”
No. No. No.I feel like the walls are closing in. I can’t go through that again. I can’t survive another trial where my body becomes evidence, where every move I made is picked apart and questioned.