Chapter 35: The Interrogation
The blue paper crinkled under her whenever she shifted, a sound like distant fire. Mia stared at a point on the ceiling where a fluorescent light flickered once, then held steady. The examiner, Sharon, had been everything she promised: gentle, quiet, giving Mia control over every step. But the clinical nature of it—the bright lights, the swabs, the cold speculum—had carved a hollow space inside her. It was a procedure to document a violation she couldn’t remember. Her body felt like a crime scene, and she was just the tenant, confused and evicted.
She was dressed now in a fresh hospital gown, the thin cotton doing nothing to stop the chill. Ethan hadn’t left. He sat in a chair against the wall, his forearms resting on his knees, head bowed. He looked like he was carrying the weight of the room on his shoulders. The knuckles of his clasped hands were white.
Dr. Sharma returned, followed by a man in a plain button-down and slacks. He had a weary face and sharp eyes that took in everything at once—Ethan’s posture, the space between him and the bed, the way Mia’s gaze darted away.
“Mia, Ethan,” Dr. Sharma began, her voice softer than before. “This is Detective Ruiz from the Violent Crimes Unit. He needs to ask a few questions, if you’re feeling up to it.”
The detective gave a slight, professional nod. “I know this is difficult. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Ethan straightened up, his green eyes meeting the detective’s. A silent understanding passed between them—Ethan was her protector, the gatekeeper. Ruiz accepted it, for now.
Dr. Sharma looked at her tablet. “The findings from the SANE exam are conclusive, Mia. I’m so sorry.” She took a breath. “There is clear evidence of recent, forced sexual intercourse. Ligature marks on your wrists that weren’t visible before due to swelling are now more apparent. There’s also a residual particulate matter under your fingernails that’s been collected.”
The words hung in the air, sharp and clinical. Forced sexual intercourse. Not an assault, not an attack. A specific, violent act. Mia felt her stomach plummet. A whimper escaped her, unbidden, a small, wounded animal sound. She brought her hands up, staring at her short, paint-stained nails. Had she fought? Had she scratched him? She couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything.
“Who did this to you?” The question ripped from Ethan, raw and desperate. His voice cracked. He wasn’t asking Mia. He was asking the universe.
Detective Ruiz’s eyes snapped to him, a silent warning. “That’s what we need to establish.” He turned back to Mia, pulling a small notebook from his pocket. “Mia, the last thing you remember before waking up in the ambulance. Tell me.”
She tried to swallow. Her throat was sand. “I was… I was at work. The art supply store on Linden. I closed up. It was just after nine. I walked to my car. I was thinking about… about groceries.” The crushed apples flashed in her mind. “I had a bag. I dropped it. Then… nothing. Nothing until the paramedics were putting me on the stretcher. Lights were so bright.”
Ruiz wrote it down. “Did you see anyone? Hear anything unusual? A car idling, someone walking behind you?”
“No. It was quiet. Normal.” Each admission felt like a failure.
“You live alone?”
“Yes.”
“And you have no memory of anyone approaching you, of being forced into a vehicle, of any struggle?”
“No.” The word was a whisper.
Ruiz sighed, not with frustration, but with a heavy kind of resolve. He looked at Ethan. “And you, Mr. Bellweather. You’re the boyfriend?”
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me where you were last night between nine PM and one AM?”
The room went very still. The hum of the lights was suddenly a roar. Ethan blinked, his expression shifting from protective confusion to slow-dawning disbelief. “You’re… you’re asking for my alibi?”
“It’s a routine question. We have to account for everyone close to the victim.”
“The victim is my best friend,” Ethan said, his voice low and dangerous. “I found her. I called 911.”
“And we appreciate that. It also puts you at the scene. So. Your whereabouts?”
Ethan looked gutted. He ran a hand through his dark curls, making them wilder. “I was home. Working. I’m a writer. I was at my desk all night.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. Alone.”
“Can anyone verify that? Phone calls? Texts? Online activity timestamped?”
“I… I was drafting in a word processor, not online. I didn’t call anyone.” He sounded defeated, even to himself. The writer, alone with his thoughts. It was his normal. Now it was a liability.
Ruiz wrote it down. “We’ll need your fingerprints, for elimination purposes. The particulates under Mia’s nails… we need to rule you out.”
Mia finally found her voice. It was scraped thin. “Stop it. It wasn’t him.” She looked at Ethan, her one good eye blazing with a sudden, clear fury. “He would never. He’s… he’s Ethan.”
The way she said his name, with such fundamental certainty, almost broke him.
“It’s procedure, Mia,” Ruiz said, not unkindly. “It helps us. If we can eliminate Ethan, we can focus our resources elsewhere.” He closed his notebook. “The lot where you were found has no security cameras. We’re checking traffic cams on the surrounding streets. We’ll process the evidence from the kit. It can take time. In the meantime,” he looked pointedly at Ethan, “don’t leave town.”
Ethan just stared at the floor, his mind reeling. The hollow feeling in Mia’s stomach was now in his, too, but filled with a cold, spreading dread. The world had not just tilted; it had inverted. He was no longer just the protector. He was a variable in an equation. A person of interest.
Ruiz handed Mia a card. “Call me if you remember anything. Anything at all.” He nodded to Dr. Sharma and left, the curtain swishing shut behind him.
The silence he left was different from before. It was charged, polluted with new and terrible possibilities.
Dr. Sharma spoke about moving Mia to a private room for overnight observation, about speaking with a hospital counselor. Mia nodded numbly. Ethan didn’t hear most of it. He was stuck on the detective’s flat, professional tone. For elimination purposes.
Mia’s hand slid out from under the blanket, reaching towards him. Her fingers trembled.
He took it, holding on tightly, an anchor in a sea that was suddenly full of hidden currents. He met her gaze. Her blue eye was wide, scared, but clear.
“They’re wrong,” she whispered.
He wanted to believe her absolute faith in him. He clung to it. But in the deepest, most secret part of his mind, the part that spun narratives out of shadows, a single, treacherous thought uncoiled: if he couldn’t prove where he was, how could anyone else believe it?
He was a writer. He knew better than anyone that the simplest story was often the most believable. Boyfriend finds girlfriend. No witnesses. He pushed the thought down, ashamed it had even surfaced. He squeezed her hand.
“I know,” he said, and the words tasted like a lie on his tongue.
“I know,” he said, and the words tasted like a lie on his tongue.
The sterile quiet of the room pressed in on him, suffocating. He could feel the detective’s suspicion clinging to the air like a chemical smell. His mind scrambled, retracing the cold logic of the examination. Evidence of recent, forced sexual intercourse. The words echoed, cold and clinical. His thoughts snagged, tripped over a raw, desperate hope.
Ethan pondered in silence for a second before speaking. “Should we…tell them we’ve been having sex?” The sentence tumbled out, hushed and frantic. “Like, a lot of it? We had sex that morning. Wouldn’t that show up?” He was panicking, to himself, to Mia.
Mia stared at him. Her one visible eye, already wide with pain, now flickered with pure, unvarnished shock. The heart monitor tracked a sudden, sharp increase in rhythm. “What?” The word was a breath, a disbelieving exhale.
“The evidence they collected,” Ethan rushed on, his voice low and urgent. He leaned closer, his words tumbling over each other. “If there’s…me…that’s already there, from us, from this morning, then they’d know, right? They’d know it was consensual first, that I’m not the one who…after.” He was grasping at it, a logical lifeline in illogical sea.
He was grasping at it, a logical lifeline in an illogical sea.
Mia stared at him. Her eye, already wide with pain, now flickered with pure, unvarnished shock. The heart monitor chirped a faster, anxious rhythm. “What?” she breathed out, the word thin and cracked. Her hand pulled back from his, a reflexive retreat into the stiff hospital sheets.
“We had sex yesterday morning, Mia. At your place.” The words felt clumsy, too loud for this sterile room. He leaned in, lowering his voice to a frantic whisper. “I’m on you. My DNA is… it’s on you. They’re going to find it and think it’s from last night. They’ll think it’s from the attack.”
A harsh, disbelieving laugh escaped her, a sound that turned into a wince as it tugged at her bruised face. “Ethan, we’re not… we haven’t…” She shook her head, confusion battling the pain medication swimming in her system. “We’re friends. Just friends.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath his chair. A cold clarity washed over him, sharper and more terrifying than the detective’s questions. The head trauma. The concussion. It hadn’t just stolen the attack. It had stolen them. It had stolen the last six months.
“No, Mia,” he said, his voice soft with a kind of helpless dread. “We’ve been together. For half a year.” He watched her face, seeing no recognition, only a growing alarm. “You keep a sketchbook in your nightstand. The one with the purple cover. The first page is a drawing of my hands.”
Her brow furrowed. She was searching, digging through a fog that wouldn’t part. A sketchbook. Purple cover. His hands. Nothing connected. A wave of nausea twisted her stomach, unrelated to the medication.
“You’re remembering it wrong,” she whispered, but her voice lacked conviction. It was a plea, not a statement.
“The morning of the attack,” he pressed on, desperate to anchor her, to anchor himself. “You made coffee. You burnt the toast. We laughed about it in your kitchen.” He could see it, the sunlight cutting across her linoleum floor, the smell of scorched bread, her head thrown back in laughter. The memory was so vivid it hurt.
He was tearing pieces out of their shared life and holding them up to a stranger who wore her face. A stranger who looked terrified of him.
A new thought, icy and absolute, seized him. He pictured the careful, gloved hands of the SANE nurse. The swabs. The collection kits. His own skin cells, his sweat, his scent, mixed irrevocably with a stranger’s violence. The police would find a reservoir of him inside her. How could they not see it as proof of guilt?
He stood up abruptly, the chair legs scraping against the floor. He paced two steps, running his hands through his hair until the curls stood in wild disarray. “They’re going to think it was me.” The statement hung in the air, ugly and real.
“Stop it,” Mia said, but her voice was weaker now. A pressure was building behind her eyes, a headache different from the throbbing in her skull. It was a pressure of something trying to get in, or out.
“The detective asked for my alibi. I don’t have one. They found your stuff scattered everywhere. They know you were grabbed from that lot.” He was talking fast, logic spiraling into panic. “If they think we’re just friends, and then they find evidence of sex… it’s the simplest story. The boyfriend did it.”
“You didn’t,” she insisted, but she was staring past him, through him. Her gaze had gone glassy, fixed on the speckled ceiling tiles.
He saw her retreat and it felt like a physical blow. “Mia?”
A smell flooded her senses, sudden and overwhelming. Not antiseptic. Not hospital. Cheap cologne, thick and sweet, mixed with the oily scent of leather. It was so vivid she gagged.
Her fingers, lying on the blanket, twitched. They remembered. A rough, pebbled texture. The grip of a steering wheel? A jacket sleeve?
A sound followed the smell. Not a voice. A click. Metallic, precise. The sound of a seatbelt unfastening. But from the wrong side. The passenger side.
“Ethan,” she whispered, but it was a different tone. Distant. She was gone from the room.
“What is it?” He was at the bedside again, not touching her, afraid to break whatever was happening.
A fragment, sharp as a shard of glass. Darkness, but not the kind you see with your eyes. A suffocating, close darkness, lined with the faint green glow of dashboard lights. The groan of car suspension. The smell of that cologne, everywhere, choking her.
And a voice. Low, grating. A sneer wrapped around words she couldn’t yet make out.
Her breath hitched, coming in short, sharp gasps that beeped an alarm on the monitor. “A car,” she choked out. “I was in a car.”
She turned her head slowly on the pillow, her one clear eye finding his. The confusion was still there, but beneath it swam a new, raw horror. A memory had breached the dam. It was incomplete, senseless, but it was real.
“It wasn’t you,” she said, and this time it was solid, born of a returning shard of truth. “The smell… it was all wrong. The voice…” She shuddered, a full-body convulsion that shook the bed. “It wasn’t you.”
But the relief that should have washed over Ethan was thin and cold. Because the terror in her eyes was now complete. She was remembering. And the man she was remembering, the man with the cheap cologne and the grating voice in the dark car, was still out there.