His certainty knocked me off my stride.
Here was a guy much closer to the situation than I was, a person who knew Jennifer and her relationship with Blake in ways I didn’t. He sounded like someone who had seen behind the curtain of these events and had formed harder, more durable opinions.
Since the police seemed to be barking up the same tree, it made it all seem bad for Blake.
Very, very bad.
“I admit Blake might know more than he’s let on,” I said. “But he’s never hurt anyone. Not like that.”
“So he has hurt people?”
“We’ve all hurt people, Kyle, haven’t we?”
I thought of the accident from college, the one I caused. Maggie and Emily Steiner.
If the memory of them ever slipped away, Dawn Steiner or Blake would be there to bring it back.
Once again Kyle leaned against the counter, his fingers splayed against the granite surface. “See, he came on all strong with her and then just dropped her when he went back to this other woman he’d already been involved with. He was careless with Jen’s feelings.”
I nodded, picturing Samantha in my mind. Did Sam even know Jennifer had ever existed?
“But he wouldn’t stop,” Kyle said.
“Stop what?”
“Calling her. Texting her. He kept her on the line, almost like he was afraid something wouldn’t work out and he’d need a backup plan.” He straightened up, lifting his hands from the counter.
I thought he was going to pour another drink, but he didn’t. He ran both of his hands back and forth across his face, pulling against the skin until it stretched, his mouth forming a wide O. When he spoke again, he wasn’t looking at me. He stared at the kitchen cabinets as though something important was being reflected back at him from their surface.
“Jennifer is strong. She worked with prisoners, ex-cons. She always said she was a sucker for a hard-luck case. She liked to help people who needed it. Give them second and third chances. Maybe that’s why she liked me. But even strong people get hurt and feel vulnerable. You have to understand that.” His voice became lower. “She’s like anyone else. She wanted someone to care for her. We all do.”
When I first showed up, I’d hoped to find Blake or, short of that, some idea about where he was. When I found Kyle instead, I hoped he’d have something useful to share with me. But here stood a man with a broken heart, a man who seemed less tethered to reality than even Blake. He said he’d just gone by Jennifer’s house and driven away when he saw the police and the coroner. But did I really know what he might have had to do with her death?
Her murder, I reminded myself, trying to get used to the fact that word had become a part of my life.
Murder.
“I think I need to move on,” I said. “I’m going to see if I can talk to some friends. Maybe someone else has heard from Blake.”
“Do the cops suspect you?” Kyle asked, still not looking over at me. Still staring at the cabinets.
His question hit me with the force of a hurricane.
Did they? Was I a suspect?
Kyle went on. “You said they talked to you because you knew Jennifer. You had business dealings or whatever. Do they suspect you? Did you have to give an alibi and all that?”
“I did. I kind of assume cops think everyone is a suspect until they find out who the guilty party really is. They start with the people closest to the . . . victim and work their way out.”
“Nobody had broken into her house,” Kyle said. “The cops mentioned that to me.”
I knew what I knew—Blake had the door code. It surprised me the cops would tell Kyle something like that if he was a suspect. But as if he had read my mind, he provided more information.
“See,” he said, “they figure somebody knew her door code. That’s what they kept talking about. That door code. They think that’s how the killer got in without breaking and entering or whatever. And I knew that code. Jennifer just gave it to me recently. It’s silly, but it felt like a step forward for us. You know?” He almost smiled at some private, happier memory. “We’d had some rocky times lately because of Blake. He kept trying to contact her, and I didn’t like it. I don’t know what he wanted, but he kept reaching out to her. But she told me she was really done with him. Absolutely. Sometimes she went to yoga late, and I’d meet her afterward. That’s what we were doing last night. Or, I guess, trying to do before . . . Well, I went over there to surprise her.”
“Surprise her? She didn’t know you were coming?”
Kyle’s eyes flashed. “Sure. Don’t you ever surprise your wife? Chocolates? Flowers? A surprise. That’s what it was.”
I wasn’t reassured, but I nodded. “Sure. Okay. Well, let’s hope the police figure it all out soon.” I took a step back, heading for the door.
“Where is he?” Kyle asked. “Blake. Where is he?”
The temperature in the room dropped. A cold sensation passed across my skin. Kyle’s voice had taken on a different timbre. Something edgier. More desperate. More angry.
“I told you—I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I’m looking as well.”
Involuntarily, I took another step backward.
Kyle turned to face me. Finally. I saw his face. Pale. But something hot burned in his eyes.
“They’re going to hang this on me, you know,” he said. “We’d been dating. They always look at the boyfriend. And I knew the code. . . .”
“Maybe it was one of those convicts she worked with. That’s something for the cops to look into.”
“Maybe. Or maybe your friend.”
“If I find him, I’m going to make him go to the police.”
“I’m a suspect,” Kyle said. “They told me not to leave town. They want to keep talking to me. They want me to give hair samples . . . DNA. . . . She really drove me crazy, you know. How much I wanted her . . .”
“I have to go,” I said. “I have some other problems to solve in addition to whatever is going on with Blake.”
But Kyle was shaking his head. And then he moved toward me before I could get away.
“I can’t let you leave.”