Free Blame by Nicole Trope Page A

she knows that if Lex hadn’t fought with her about it, then she wouldn’t have needed a drink this morning.
    ‘That’s not true,’ she hears someone say and looks around to see only the silent detectives.
    ‘It was a very . . . very bad night,’ she stumbles on, ‘and it’s been an awful couple of weeks. Geoff blames me and Lex blames me, and I know Anna blames me, I know she does, but no one understands, no one knows Anna like I do, and I know, I know, that the accident wasn’t my fault. I know it.’
    ‘If you weren’t drunk, Caro, can you explain to me why you refused to take a roadside breath test?’
    ‘I was upset. I didn’t refuse to take it, I just couldn’t concentrate long enough to do it. I didn’t understand what he was saying. Everything was crazy. There was so much noise, and Anna was just screaming and screaming. I couldn’t . . . I said I’d go to the hospital for a blood test with the policeman who was there and I did.’
    ‘Perhaps you did that in the hope that by the time the test was administered, your blood alcohol level would have dropped? It’s not the case, you know. If you were over the limit at the time of the accident, then it will show up in the blood test. Your blood was taken pretty quickly after the accident.’
    Caro stands up and pushes her chair back with her foot. ‘You know, I don’t have to take this crap from you. I know my rights. I can get up and walk out of here right now and you can just bloody wait for those results, which will, by the way, show that I was not over the limit. I am certain of that.’
    ‘Okay, Caro, okay; let’s just all calm down a little,’ says Susan. She has raised her hands and motions for Caro to sit down again. ‘I’m not trying to upset you. Please sit down, please. Have another sip of water.’ Caro picks up the glass and swallows the rest of the water in one gulp as Susan keeps talking. We will do this your way, okay? I want you to have the time to explain what happened. You’re right, I have no idea what the tests are going to say. I’m sorryI upset you. We’re going to take this one step at a time. If you need to tell us the story from the beginning, then that’s what you’ll do. Will you be all right without a drink?’
    Caro knows she is being handled. She can almost see Detective Sappington mentally flipping through the pages of her procedural manual and finding the page that says: ‘What to do when your suspect gets aggressive’. Caro knows what’s happening, but the detective’s voice is even and she speaks slowly and, without meaning to, Caro relaxes a little. She understands that she doesn’t actually have any choice about being there; knows that if she storms out of the interview room now, then the next time she’s here it will be because she has been placed under arrest. The only real hope she has of staying out of jail is to give her side of the story and hope that it trumps Anna’s side of the story. She doesn’t think about the possibility of her blood test coming back with the wrong reading. It is not something she can let herself think about.
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ she says as she returns to her chair, ‘just fine but I’d like some more water; a lot more water.’
    ‘That’s fine, Brian . . . can you?’
    ‘No problem, I’ll be right back.’
    ‘Just breathe, Caro. Just relax and breathe, and we’ll get through this,’ says Susan.
    Susan slumps a little in her chair while Caro watches her warily, waiting for the detective to say something that’s going to piss her off again. She is jittery and her eyes feel like they have small specks of dirt in them. She wants adrink. She wants to lie down. She wants to get out of this room shaped like a box. Susan takes a deep breath and then another, letting the air out slowly. Caro finds herself breathing in with her.
    Susan rests her hands in her lap and breathes deeply, and watches as Caro, unthinkingly, does the same. They breathe in sync for a moment