At least I haven’t seen any cops. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I did. Could they make a positive ID of me? They couldn’t with that body in the basement; how could they identify a living person? Especially if that person’s changed since the police started searching?
Not that they have any reason for stopping or questioning me. Not really. Then again, the cops, especially the ones around here, know how to extract confessions from mouths that never had to hold secrets. Vivian used to talk about the “highway blues,” when an officer could tail you, pull up alongside you and pull you over even though you hadn’t gone over the speed limit or in the wrong lane, and somehow you’d do something—you couldn’t deny it—and the officer would write a summons. Really, officer, I didn’t kill anyone. Especially not mother. Of course not. I hadn’t even been on the block at the time she died—or when the body in the basement gave up its last. Everybody—at least the woman whose name I never knew—knows that. I hadn’t been here in years. How many? Well, gee, officer, I’m not quite sure. So much has happened and well, you know how time flies.
But they’re not here now. Just me, Mrs. Litttington, the woman whose name I never knew—and mother’s body, in the casket.
