Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn Page B

down his pen and leans across the table. His breath still smells like coffee. "Don't play dumb. You know why we're questioning you. You know what you did, you cocky little bastard."
    The other one starts talking and I have to turn my head back to him. "You took your rifle with you this morning," he says in that flat, grim voice. "You went into the park and hid near the footbridge. You waited for Cheryl Miller. When she and Bobbi Jo Boyd came in sight, you shot them both."
    At first what he says makes no sense. You shot them both, you both them shot, shot you them both. The words roll round and round, like cannonballs. Them you both shot, both you shot, you shot them, you shot them both.
    I grab the edge of the table to keep myself from sliding off the chair. No, no, no, what kind of lie is this? Cheryl and Bobbi Jo shot? Dead, are they both dead? The piss yellow walls close in on me. They're dead. Dead. It can't be true.
    It's like the cop has kicked me in the guts, knocked the breath out of me, killed me. I shake my head, I say, "No, no, no, they can't be dead, no no no I didn't do it, I'd never never never—"
    The cop in the chair, the one I can never see right, jumps up and grabs me, shakes me, shoves his big red face into mine. "You lying piece of shit," he yells. "She busted up with you, she had a new boyfriend, you made a scene in the park last night. This morning you got your rifle and you went to the park and you shot them."
    I shake my head, I struggle to get myself together, I'm scared I'll piss my pants. He's twisting my arm, he's pulling me off the chair, he's threatening to hit me. All I can do is shake my head. I didn't didn't didn't. I didn't didn't didn't.
    "You were seen on the footbridge," the cop shouts. "What did you do with the rifle?"
    "Nothing! I didn't have it with me, it's at my house."
    "We searched your house," he says. "The rifle's not there. What did you do with it?"
    "I didn't do anything with it," I say.
    "It's in your car, in the trunk, wrapped up in a blanket," the cop says. "Where you hid it after you killed Cheryl and Bobbi Jo."
    "No," I say. "No."
    "Tell the truth, son," the one sitting across from me says. His voice is soft now, his face calm. "Admit it. It'll be easier for you."
    "I
am
telling the truth." I'm trying so hard to convince them but they don't believe me, they're sure I did it, they're so sure I begin thinking maybe I did do it, maybe I have amnesia, maybe I'm crazy, maybe they'll send me to Spring Grove.
    Then I remember something. I lean across the table toward the cop sitting there. I do my best to look him in the goddamn eye. "Wait, wait," I say. "I saw this guy in the woods while I was sitting on the bridge. I didn't think anything of it, it was just a glimpse, but I saw him. Maybe he—maybe, I mean, you know, it could of been him. The one who did it." Even to me it sounds like a lie, something I made up.
    The cops look at each other and laugh. "Oh, yeah," the one who sits where I can hardly see him says.
    I try to tell them more, but there really isn't any more. I glimpsed a guy in the woods. I couldn't see his face. He was there and then gone like some goddamn Robin Hood. No wonder they don't believe me.
    After a lot of yelling and a lot of threats, they take me into a small room with the same piss-colored walls to give me a lie detector test. A guy who looks more like a biology teacher than a cop is in charge now. He puts rubber tubes across my chest and belly to check my breathing, then he attaches little metal plates to my fingers to record how much I sweat, and then he straps something around my arm to record my blood pressure. I keep telling myself he's not going to electrocute me, but I don't trust him. Even though he talks in a soft voice, I know he's not my friend.
    First he asks me if I like pizza. Really. That's what he asks. "Yes," I say kind of uncertainly, maybe it's a trick question.
    "Is your nickname Buddy?" I answer yes, still suspicious.
    "Did