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13. "Remember To Make Eye Contact in America"

Maki was taken to a police station nearby. She wasn't sure what had happened to her belongings. It was a Saturday morning, so the place was rather quiet. She sat in the holding area for more than hour or so before she could talk to someone.

     When she was taken back to a small room with a table and two chairs, she was more than ready to tell them everything. And she did. The two detectives were a little taken aback by her intensity. One of the detectives was sitting directly across from her and the other one was standing by the door with folded arms as if that was a perfunctory thing to do. She had learned, as an exchange student, that if you didn't maintain eye contact, a person might think you're lying. In Japanese culture, you acknowledge someone with brief eye contact, but keeping up that eye contact is considered rude. You might even appear aggressive, so you're supposed to keep your eye level to about someone's chest. To consciously maintain eye contact with the detective sitting across her made her feel tired and not right, but she persevered. She felt as though she was in the longest Kendo match she had ever been in, staring at her opponent, waiting for the next move.

"So, you were attacked near Seligman on Route 66. Why were you driving so late at night or should I say early in the morning?" asked the detective with the horn rimmed glasses. He looked tired, but at the same time curious about her situation because she didn't fit the type who usually got arrested. Listening to her, she seemed truly sincere. He had thought to himself, if he were to ask her the same questions the next day, the exact same answers would have been returned. He knew that when a person lied, they had to remember that they'd lied and overtime their story became inconsistent because in memory, a lie isn't as solid as the truth and things you never experienced don't stick as well unless he or she is a trained sociopath who could store their lies neatly in a memory palace.

Maki replied, "Well, I was told by one of the locals that driving at night was faster, but I didn't mean to stay on Route 66, I was ready to get back on the highway, but then the tire blew up and..."

"So you stole your attacker's car and drove here without knowing that there were two dead dogs and marijuana in the trunk?"

"Yes, the car smelt really bad, but I just kept driving because I was afraid they were going to catch up to me anytime..."

"Do you think you can identify the attackers if you saw them?"

"I think so."

"I'm going to make some calls to see if any of the patrol cars saw your car...What was your car again?"

"It's a yellow 1976 Honda Civic..."

     After making several calls, the detective was able to confirm her story. The two attackers had been picked up by a patrol car earlier that morning. They'd been trying to recover from the pepper spray Maki had used, unable to drive and loitering by Maki's car. Nothing the two attackers had said made any sense to the officer, so they had been taken to the police station to be questioned where they'd confessed. Her car was towed away by some of the locals she'd met and taken to a service station to be checked out.

It was close to 6 p.m when Maki was released. She was glad to be reunited with her things. It looked like they had gone through her suitcase and backpack. Everything was out of place, which irritated her, but she wasn't going to rearrange her things in front of the police station. She missed her car.

"Maki!" she heard a familiar voice calling to her in Japanese.
She looked up to see Kotomi standing in front of her, much to Maki's confusion.

"What?...Kotomi? How did you know I was here?"