The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [41]
The dining hall staff, to their credit, had risen to the occasion and had cooked not only for us, but for the police outside. There were extra urns of hot coffee and tea, trays of muffins and sandwiches, as well as the usual offerings. Today, it was some kind of limp pasta with a pink sauce, a stewlike thing of lamb and peas, and a tray of hamburgers. I had no appetite at all, but I grabbed one just to have something on my tray. Andrew and Jerome were already there, and they waved me over to sit with them.
“Where’s Jazza?” Andrew asked.
“Talking to Claudia, or . . . someone. I’m not sure.”
Jerome looked at me. He had undoubtedly already done the “we crossed the square at the same time the murder happened” math, or maths as they insisted on calling it here. He looked at my untouched burger, and I think he knew—not exactly what had happened, but certainly that something wasn’t good.
Jazza joined us a few minutes later.
“All right?” Jerome asked.
“Fine,” she said, a fake breeziness in her voice. “It’s all fine.”
After a half hour, we were all herded up again, the girls first. Outside, the police parade was still going on. A third mobile forensics unit van had joined the two that had been here most of the morning, and there were police with plastic rain slickers on walking the green in a long line—about thirty of them—taking every step together, examining the ground as they went.
As we came up to Hawthorne, there was a policeman standing in the middle of the road outside. He was tall and very young-looking, with black glasses. His face was long and thin, with pronounced cheekbones and long hollows under them. Even though he had the fluorescent green police jacket and the signature high black helmet and all the stuff that said POLICE, he didn’t seem like a policeman. His black hair was just a little too long, his face a little too fresh, his bearing a little too self-conscious.
“Miss Deveaux?” He said my name elegantly, like someone who knew French and knew where the proper emphasis should be. He said my name way better than I did, that was for sure. And his voice was surprisingly deep.
“Um,” I said. I had gotten a lot less articulate since I woke up that morning. He didn’t seem to care what I replied. He knew exactly who I was, and he barreled right on.
“And you’re Julianne Benton? Her roommate?”
“Yes,” Jazza said, in her smallest of tiny voices.
“You were together last night at two A.M.?”
“Yes,” we said, at the same time.
“You saw a man?” he asked me.
“Yes. I told—”
“And you didn’t,” he said to Jazza. It wasn’t a question. “You’re sure?”
“No, I . . . no.”
“Even though he was directly in front of you?”
“I . . . No. I . . . No . . .”
Jazza was fumbling. The way this guy was saying it, it was like she had failed a test.
“Both of you,” he said. “Don’t speak to anyone from the press. If they approach you, walk away. Don’t give your name. Do not repeat anything you told the detective this morning. If you need assistance, phone this number.”
He handed me a small piece of paper with a phone number written on it.
“Phone it any time you need assistance, day or night,” he said. “And if you ever see that man again, even if you just think you see him, you call that number.”
He turned and walked away. Jazza and I wasted no time in running into the building, right up the stairs, and into our room. I slammed the door behind us.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They just took me and . . . they asked me about what we did . . . and I told them about how we went out and went to the roof . . . and they didn’t care about that, really . . . They wanted to know about the man . . . but I didn’t see the man . . . I don’t know how I didn’t see him, but I didn’t, and that’s all they wanted to know about, and I couldn’t tell them anything so . . . oh, God.”