“After stabbing him.” The man interjects.

“I moved him after stabbing him?”

They look at each other, then at me. “Pretty much,” Brenda says.

Pretty much. No, I wanted to say, not pretty at all.

Throughout the questions I was strong. Cool. Collected. And there was a moment when I thought I might survive the interrogation. Then they pull out the photos and I break.

I recognize the Dumpster. That is my first thought. The green slope of its front. The black lids of its top. I once stood, hands on hips, chest heaving, before this Dumpster and analyzed its feasibility as a body dump site. The funny thing is that I had discarded it. Deemed it too high in its top for me to heft a body over the side. Thought that its location, stuck behind the twenty-four-hour Quik Mart, at the end of an alley, was too public, the chance of a discovery before pickup too high. So I’d stretched before it, savored one last what-if fantasy, then jogged away. And now, here it is. In a glossy four-by-six, the photo pushed forward by one of Brenda’s chewed-to-the-quick nails. I lean forward, look at the photo, and nod. “I know it.”

“Here is where Jeremy was found.” She pushes forward a second photo and I keep my position, expecting to see the lid open, a bird’s-eye view looking down, an imprint in the pile of trash. I am surprised when I see the back of the Dumpster, in the space between it and the concrete wall. I am surprised when I see Jeremy’s hat, lying on its side, the Sooners S half-hidden, the curve of its brim squashed.

When I pulled off the wall, he smiled at me from under the brim of his baseball cap.

He’d been wearing that cap, that day. I remember pulling it off his head and onto my own, when the whip of wind in the convertible had been too strong, my hair everywhere, my hair tie lost to the wind. At some point he’d gotten it back. I stare at the photo. “I was driving,” I mumble. “So…”

What had been our plan? For him to stay the night? For him to take my car home? Had we discussed that? I didn’t remember doing so. But he could have taken my car; it wasn’t like I was driving it. And I feel, in that afternoon, that perfect Sunday we shared… that we hadn’t wanted to part, not even for the short half hour it would have taken to follow each other to my house. We had ridden together, and then… I look up and they are both staring at me. Waiting.

“Where’s his truck?” I ask.

“At his house,” Brenda supplies.

At his house. And my car was at my apartment, the three of us, just hours ago, standing next to it. So he didn’t get home. He couldn’t have. He was too busy falling, breaking, bleeding, and lying behind the Dumpster, waiting to be found.

Brenda pushes forward a final photo, and my world goes a little blacker.

When blood dries, it darkens. Not to black, that would have been more fitting, for Jeremy’s face to be the color of my soul. But its loss of oxygen produces a darker hue, not the bright red cheer of fresh carnage. When this photo was taken of J, his eyes were closed, his cheeks bruised, his nose unnatural, blood caked and dried in rivers along and over his lips. He looks, in this photo, dead. And I feel, as it slides toward me, as if I am looking into his future.

One day, if something doesn’t change, I will kill him. Maybe not intentionally, maybe it will be a side effect of my other actions, but he will, as a result of our union, die. It is a fact I am almost certain of, a truth I have run from since the first moment that I allowed him to kiss my lips and bring joy. I stare down at the photo and let reality fully sink in.

He deserves better. He deserves life.

She pushes another photo forward, this one showing more of his surroundings, I can see the white of a hospital bed, bandages and stitches, the blur of a hand as it attends to him. I see the places the knife went in, six clear points of attack. The photo must have been snapped in haste, for no other purpose than to document. I glance back at the initial photo and wonder how long the blood sat before it was wiped clean. I wonder how long his eyes were closed, and if he gasped for breath or lay still as if he was dead. I wonder if, before the coma, he spoke.

I look away from the photos and up into her eyes.

He deserves better. He deserves life. I deserve containment. I deserve punishment. It doesn’t matter if I don’t remember it. Either way, innocent or guilty, I am dangerous—for this man and for everyone else.

I swallow and squeeze my hands together behind my back. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if you did it.”

I stare at her chapped lips because her eyes are too sharp. “Yes.”

“You did?” She sounds surprised and the man coughs, and I force my stare back to her pupils.

“Yes.”

“You stabbed him?”

“And pushed him out the window.” I filled in the blank.

“Hmm.” I don’t know why she doesn’t like that. Doesn’t every cop love a confession?

The man steps forward, his thigh resting against the table. “How’d you get him to the Dumpster?”

I look up. “Would you believe I carried him?” I smile; he doesn’t. A shame. He smiled once during the invasive search of my property. It was a nice smile. I sigh and buy myself a few seconds. How did I get him to the Dumpster? I have no idea. I sigh again. Look down, like I am hesitant to say. “Someone helped me.”

She leans forward and her breasts brush against the top of my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Definitely. Relationships don’t survive this. “Who?”

Yes, Deanna. Indeed. Who? “A black guy. I don’t know his name. He was there, I offered money, he took it.”

“A stranger?” David doesn’t sound all that surprised, and he shouldn’t. Not in my neighborhood. In my neighborhood it’d be odd for someone to walk from any cash, for any reason. In my neighborhood it’d be just as likely for them to help me carry the body to the Dumpster, then rape me behind it.

“Yes. I paid him five hundred bucks to help me carry him to the Dumpster.”

“And no one stopped you guys?”

I look up with an expression that I hope accurately embodies my opinion of their intelligence. Brenda laughs. “Okay, ignore that. So this helpful black stranger shows up, carts away this body, and takes your cash. Then what?”

When I come to, the apartment is dark and I am on the floor.

“Then I went home and went to bed.”

“Why’d you let him live?” David pulls out the ignored second chair and sits down.

“I didn’t know he was alive. I stabbed until he stopped moving, then stopped.” A rookie mistake I would never make. Or did I?

Brenda moves her chest off of Jeremy’s face and sits back. Taps her pen tip against the desk in an irritating fashion. “Anything else?”

I look at the photos. “Not that I can think of.”

“So we can go ahead,” she says slowly, “and charge you with the attempted murder of Jeremy Pacer?”

I lift my wrists and put my hands on the desk, the cuffs clanking loudly in the now-quiet room. “Go for it.”

Jeremy deserves better. He deserves life. A life away from me. I deserve punishment.

I killed him. Or rather, I attempted to. I pushed him to his death from my window. I stabbed him six times in the chest with my favorite knife. I dragged his body behind the Quik Mart’s Dumpster and left it there. Then I washed down my apartment with bleach to hide any evidence.

I understand that I have broken the law.

I have not, nor have I ever been, mentally unstable. I was acting on my own accord and had full knowledge of my actions.