Somebody I Used to Know Read Online Free

ex-girlfriend or girlfriend. Whatever she was. What was her last name and where was she from?”
    “Her name was Marissa Minor. Her family lived in Hanfort, Ohio. It’s about an hour from here.”
    “I know it.” Reece wrote something down in a little notebook he had pulled from his jacket pocket. His fingers were stubby, the nails bitten. “And you thought maybe this girl in the grocery store was related to your ex-girlfriend, and so you wanted to talk to her? But instead, you spooked her.”
    “It all sounds far-fetched and ridiculous, I know. At least, you’re making it sound that way.”
    “I’m not making it sound any way. It sounds the way it sounds.”
    “Look, Detective, I have to get to work. I had a shitty, embarrassing night last night. And I’m sorry if I bothered that girl in the store. If you just give me her name or something, I’ll apologize. I know you’ve checked my record, and you know I’ve never been arrested and never hurt anybody. I’d just like to make this go away if I can.”
    “And you think an apology will make it go away?” Reece asked.
    “It seems like the gentlemanly thing to do,” I said. “I apologized to Gina after she called you.”
    Reece put his notebook away. He looked around the apartment again, his eyes passing over the clutter, the beer cans, even the impassive officers who still stood by the door. One of their radios crackled, but the officer ignored it. He pressed a button, silencing the sound.
    “You can’t apologize to this girl,” Reece said, staring at me with more intensity. “This girl from the grocery store.”
    “What do you want me to do, then?” I asked. “You can’t charge me with anything. It’s not a crime to talk to someone in a store.”
    Reece kept his eyes on me. “You can’t apologize to her because she’s dead. Her body was found in a shitty motel out on Highway Six last night.”
    I studied Reece’s face, looking for some sign that he was joking, that he was trying to scare me by saying something so patently ridiculous and absurd. But he wasn’t joking. I could tell by the stony, stolid expression on his face. And the news hit me like a blast of cold air. My body tensed, locked up. I felt a pain at the base of my skull and realized I was clenching my teeth as tightly as I could.
    That girl, that beautiful young girl couldn’t just be gone. Extinguished like a snuffed candle.
    “What happened to her?” I asked. The question sounded dumb to my own ears, insufficient to the gravity of the situation. But there was nothing else I wanted to know. What happened?
    Reece continued to study me, as though I were a specimen in his lab. He reached up and rubbed his chin, his thumb and forefinger easing over his freshly shaved skin. He seemed to have decided something.
    “She was murdered,” he said. “Most likely strangled, although we’ll wait to hear from the medical examiner’s office for the official word.”
    Then I felt cold inside, as though the bitter wind that had first buffeted me had been internalized. I shivered, my torso shaking involuntarily.
    “Murdered?” I said, sounding dumb again.
    Reece nodded. “Are you sure you don’t know this girl? I mean, outside of chatting her up in the grocery store.”
    “I don’t know her,” I said. “I’d never seen her before yesterday. Never.” But then some things started to come together in my mind. I was telling the truth—I had never seen the girl before. And when I spoke to her, I didn’t say my name or identify myself in any way. So if I didn’t know who she was, how had the police ended up at my apartment—
    “You didn’t know her,” Reece said. “But she seemed to know you.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
    “This young woman you talked to in the grocery store, this woman you say you didn’t know? She had a slip of paper in her pocket when she died, a slip of paper with your name and address written on it.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    D