“You don’t understand,” I said.

“What do I not understand?” he said.

“She’s not a junkie or some stripper whore. That’s bullshit.”

“Ms. Ford, take it easy. I’m trying—”

“Leave her alone. You can’t assume, because she went to prison—you don’t know anything about her!”

I hadn’t meant to stand up, or to talk so loud. The muscles in my legs tensed and trembled. I wanted to kick something, to run and run.

“Okay,” the detective said. He stood, too. He didn’t look friendly anymore. “Come with me,” he said.

“Where? Why?”

“To the station.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“Not unless I have to.”

He took my arm and pushed me to the door, waited while I closed and locked it. We went to his car, a green SUV parked in the middle of the street, alongside the deep gutter. I stepped in a puddle and water leaked into my boots. He opened the passenger-side door and stood there until I got in. He silently steered to a strip mall on Richmond and parked in a lot full of cop cars. Inside he guided me past a cluster of uniformed guys and a roomful of desks. Benches lined one wall. A black kid, about fifteen years old, sat at one end, wrists cuffed, looking at the floor, at his untied shoes. Loud and ugly, the place banged against my eyes. The detective showed me into a dank windowless room with a table and a chair and a camera mounted inside a steel cage. The lights buzzed from the ceiling.

“Wait here,” he said.

He left, closing the door behind him. The molded plastic chair was missing one of the bolts that attached it to the metal legs, and it rocked and bent as I shifted my weight. The walls were green concrete blocks, interrupted only by the door and a dark mirror across from it. I glanced at my reflection once—my face pale and bedraggled, strands of wet hair stuck to my cheek—and didn’t look again. I kept thinking, I shouldn’t be here. There’s been a mistake. I got out my phone and tried to call Michael, my boyfriend. I wished I were with him in his cozy apartment, or back at home, or anywhere else, really. But it was no good, I couldn’t get any cell reception.

A crack in the cement floor showed where the foundation had shifted. Damp seeped in and I remembered the rain outside. The ceiling lights hummed, muting the distant voices and ringing phones. No way could Danielle be dead. She was the most alive person I knew.

The detective came in with a chair and a manila file folder.

“I’m not interested in judging your friend. I’m not making any assumptions about her,” he said. “You’re wrong about that.”

He opened his folder and slid some photographs across the table. One fell on the floor and I bent to pick it up. He watched me, his arms crossed, his foot tapping the floor.