Worship You

Chapter Fifteen - The Door

They didn't arrest us right away. They paid no attention to us at all. We parked a couple of blocks away and walked over to where they had strung the yellow tape from tree to tree, blocking access to Cassie's house. The tape had the words Caution and Police printed on it in black. Over and over again. I kept reading the words, hearing them in my head. Cassie and I were standing near a police car with the blue and olive drab stripes of our county's police department. A light rain was falling and all the cops had plastic rain coats except for the ones doing the CSI scientific thing. They had white coveralls with hoods and big blue booties over their shoes. This is to keep the crime scene clean but I saw one of them come out of the house and walk to a van to get some plastic bags and stuff for the "evidence." He walked down the front path along the street to the van and back inside the house. He didn't change his booties so he tracked gunk all over the crime scene. There were a couple of reporters waiting around and one of them came over to Cassie. 

"Aren't you Cassie Cioukowsky?" he said. I don't know how he knew. Cassie didn't say anything. She was staring at her house, at the cops. That made the reporter excited and he started waving his arm saying, "Dick! Dick!" 

Dick was a young guy in a suit just standing around holding an umbrella. He didn't have a plastic raincoat. He must have forgotten it because it turned out he was a cop, a detective, and the head of the investigation. I guess that's why he had nothing to do. He walked over to the reporter who pointed at Cassie. Then they both walked over to us. 

Dick said, "I'm Sgt. Dick Wallace. Are you Cassie Cioukowsky?" 

Cassie kept looking at her house but she nodded. 

"What's going on?" I said.  

Dick said to me, "Who are you?" 

I told him. Dick said that there had been "some trouble" and that he wanted to talk to us. First, he wanted to talk to Cassie. He lifted the yellow tape and told Cassie to duck under, that she couldn't go into her house yet but that he would find a place to talk out of the rain. 

Cassie said, "What happened?" She said it in a funny dead toned way, like she was sleep walking.  

I guess we were both a little strange, which, later in court, they made it sound very sinister. But we had been driving and hadn't slept much in New York anyway, so we were bound to sound a little weird. But they presented the way we acted as proof that we were acting guilty already before anybody even told us Stan was dead. 

This cop Dick said, "Come on with me, Cassie, I'll tell you everything I know." Which was a lie. He already thought we were guilty from the moment somebody told him that they couldn't find Cassie or her "boyfriend."  

That was the first time anybody had said I was Cassie's boyfriend and as scary as things were getting, even then, I was happy whenever anybody called me that. 

Cassie was still staring at the house, not moving, rain running down her face and dripping off her eyebrow. Dick the detective was holding the yellow tape up, making these little gestures with his hand and saying happily, "Come on. Come on"  

Cassie turned and looked at him, like, "Who are you?" She stared at him for a long time and finally Dick straightened up and dropped the Smilin' Dick act he'd been putting on and scowled. 

"Miss Cioukowsky. Come with me please. Now." Then he lifted the tape again and jerked his arm hard: Now! Cassie seemed to wake up and smiled slightly. They made a lot out of that smile too but I could see that Cassie was just acknowledging him now that he had stopped being such a phony with his smiles and stuff. She was smiling because she knew him for what he was. 

Cassie ducked under the tape and went past him toward the house. I started to follow and Dick threw up his hand. "Not now, son! We'll get to you in a moment."