Chapter Fifty-Six

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

EVAN IS ALONE; the detectives have to wait for his attorney to arrive. His mother and father are somewhere in the police station, in shock.

It's the first time he's been in an interview room, and he studies it with interest. The table is bolted to the floor. There's no two-way mirror on the wall so that whoever is in here can be watched unobserved. For that you probably had to be in a big city.

He would have loved to be on the other side of a two-way mirror, watching everyone who came into this room over these last few days to be questioned about Diana's death. They probably videotaped everything, and he has an overwhelming desire to see all those tapes. He wants to watch the interviews they'd done with Cameron, and Turner, and Prior. All writers have a bit of the voyeur in them, and an insatiable curiosity. It would be so helpful to him to have that material.

They have Diana's phone. He knows he's done for. He should have gotten rid of it. But he was never a suspect. He thought he was safe. He thought if they were ever growing suspicious of him, he would know it, and would have time to get rid of the phone. But he liked having it. He liked having something of Diana's, something so personal. Something that revealed to him so much of her life.

He waits for his attorney to arrive. He remembers that night so clearly; it will always stand out vividly in his mind, more vividly than anything before or since. He'd only walked over to Diana's to get his book back. She'd forgotten to return it, which was not at all like her. He hadn't meant to harm her. He was glad when she told him that she'd dumped Cameron. But he wishes now that she hadn't told him. Because in that moment, when she told him she was free, she looked so lovely, and he was filled with such longing for her, that he confessed his love for her on the spot. And she laughed.

Something came over him. It was something he was aware of, but it surprised him, nonetheless. He'd never shown that side of himself to anyone before. But she asked for it. She laughed at him. And then she asked him to leave. As she turned away to go to the door, he hit her with the only thing he had in his hands – his big, heavy, hardcover copy of Moby Dick – and she dropped to the floor. He thought he'd knocked her out. He stood there for a moment, staring down at her, slumped on the floor. Then she stirred and tried to crawl away, but it was a feeble attempt, and it made him feel powerful. He grabbed the jump rope dangling on the doorknob. He pulled her into the centre of the living room, turned her over, and straddled her. Her arms and legs were limp; she was still barely conscious from the blow. He wrapped the jump rope around her neck and squeezed.

It took a long time for her to die. She stared at him with wide open, bulging eyes; her eyes were screaming, though she could not. He grimaced back at her with the effort of killing her. The only sounds were his rasping, laboured breath and her gurgling death rattle. Her phone pinged with a text. It startled him, but he didn't let up on the pressure of the jump rope.

Finally, she was gone.

He rolled off her and caught his breath. He made sure there was no pulse. Her phone pinged again. He picked it up off the living room floor and looked at it. It was Cameron.

I'm outside, in the truck. Can we talk?

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Evan's heart was pounding with effort, adrenaline, and now, alarm. The living room lights were on, so Cameron would know she was still up. Should he answer the text? He decided not to. She'd broken up with him. She'd ignore him. Evan stayed down on the floor, below the window, even though the curtains were drawn. He must not be seen. He lay beside Diana, trying to think of what to do next.

Cameron kept texting.

Diana, I'm sorry. Please, can we talk?

I love you.

Please answer me.

I was an idiot. I just want to apologize. I just want to talk to you.

Then, to Evan's relief, the pinging finally stopped. Evan thought he'd given up. He waited for the sound of the truck leaving. What he heard instead was a truck door slamming and then Cameron knocking on the front door. Evan froze in fear. The knocking came again. And again. Evan remained rigid on the floor. He heard Cameron trying the doorknob, but remembered with relief that Diana had locked it after him. Eventually he heard Cameron leave the front door and walk down the side of the house. Evan's heart pounded furiously. He heard Cameron calling Diana's name from the backyard. He was terrified that Cameron might come inside the house. Was the back door locked? Jesus, what was he going to do? He didn't think he could overpower Cameron.

He lay on the floor beside Diana's body, waiting, afraid. Finally, he heard the sound of footsteps at the side of the house again, the truck door opening, and Cameron driving away. He had to wait another few minutes before his heart rate went back down to anything near normal. Then he made a plan.

First, he held Diana's phone up to her face, and fortunately it recognized her, even though her face was now a more grotesque version of itself, her eyes wide and flecked with blood. He changed her password to a number code, so that he'd be able to get into her phone.

He eventually got up and turned off the light in the living room. He unlocked the back door and slipped out, leaving it unlocked for his return, and crept across the field to the lane. He walked home from there carrying his book – not bloodied at all – and returned it to his bookshelf. He waited until both of his parents were fast asleep. Then he grabbed a pair of gloves, went into the garage, and put a shovel in his mother's boot. He drove back out to the unused road, parked, and entered Diana's house through the back door that he'd left unlocked. He didn't want to leave Diana in the house, because what if someone had seen him knock on her door? Better if she was found somewhere else. He took the jump rope with him and carried her out the back door, and across the field. She was heavier than he expected, and he'd had to stop a couple of times and put her down, but he knew no one could see him there. He was sweating with the effort.

He got her into the trunk of his mother's car and drove out of town. He found a quiet road, parked behind a clump of trees, and carried her out to the middle of a farmer's field. He wanted her to be found, but he didn't want to throw her in a ditch. He stripped all her clothes off her, to get rid of evidence and to make it look like a sex killing. He took a good look at her, lying naked in the moonlight.

He left her there and drove twenty minutes in another direction and used the shovel to bury her clothes and the jump rope deep in a secluded wood. But he kept her phone.

Evan hears a sound outside the room and looks up. His attorney has arrived. His parents shuffle in, unable to look at him. He ignores them. Evan tries to listen, but his mind drifts. It's turned out quite differently than he expected. He never thought he'd be caught. When Turner was arrested, that was perfect. What a great book this will make, he'd thought. But now they have her phone, found hidden in his bedroom, with his fingerprints all over it.

Someone is repeating his name, and he looks up and tries to focus on the detective. Stone is suggesting he confess. Asking if he really wants to go to trial for murder in the first degree as an adult, and face life in prison, or if he would like to plead guilty to second-degree murder and get twenty years, or quite possibly less, given the mitigating factors of a guilty plea, his young age, and his previously clean record.

Maybe he should plead guilty, Evan thinks. He's only seventeen. He'll have time to get a degree and to write in prison. He knows he's not allowed to profit from committing a crime, so he can't make money from anything he writes about Diana's death. But does it matter? He'll have time to perfect his craft. He'll have notoriety and fame as a confessed murderer. He'll have a name. He'll have life experience. It's not the worst way to launch a writing career these days.

His journal is basically a lie. He'd never expected to be caught, never intended to reveal himself as the murderer – either they would get the wrong person, or it would remain tantalizingly unsolved.

But now he realizes that his journal is one kind of truth; it reflects the Evan he has been most of the time – earnest, decent, good. The Evan who loved Diana, in his way. That's who he wants to be. The journal was a kind of pretending, of self-soothing, of lying to himself, because he doesn't really want to be this other Evan. The one who murdered Diana in an unguarded moment.

He knows this other Evan has always been there, threatening to surface. He just doesn't know whether he'll surface again. Or how much of this he will reveal in his book. It will be interesting to write.

He enjoyed writing that journal. It's fun to play with the truth.

Isn't that what writers do?