“Who’d he call?” I asked.
“Deputy Tripple for one,” the sheriff said drily. “Apparently he had complaints about how Tripple handled things earlier, but he framed it as wanting to ‘add something to the incident report.’ Jaklin put him through to Tripple’s phone, and he read Tripple the riot act. After that, JT called over to the Bay Bridge Suites. Apparently he knew, or he guessed, that’s where Channelle would be staying. He kept asking the front desk to connect him to different rooms, hoping he’d get lucky. After a while, May—the woman working the desk—told him to stop bothering people and hung up on him.”
Then something I hadn’t really thought about occurred to me. “He lived in the park office?”
“Yeah, it’s got living quarters attached to the back.”
“Where was he found?”
“In the garage.”
“And he was killed with a blunt object.”
The sheriff nodded. “The garage is half storage unit and half tool shed, so there were plenty of things lying around. It’s possible the killer planned this and came prepared, but it feels spontaneous to me—an argument escalated, and someone grabbed whatever was at hand and hit him with it.”
On the other side of the smoky glass, Keme’s face was stone.
“He didn’t do this,” I said quietly.
“Dash, I’ve got a shirt, shorts, and slides covered in blood. We already typed it, and it matches JT. The DNA results will come back as a match too, I’m sure. And I know you want to be a loyal friend, so I’m not going to ask you to confirm this, but I know those clothes belong to Keme.”
“Did Bobby—” I regretted the question as soon as I began to ask, and I mumbled, “Never mind.”
The silence drew out between us until the sheriff said, “No, Dash. It wasn’t Bobby.”
After a deep breath, I said as firmly as I could, “Keme didn’t do this.”
Sheriff Acosta nodded, but she said, “You understand I can’t take your word for it, though.”
“I know. But I want you to know he didn’t do it. What about the wife? What about the other man who got into a fight with JT yesterday? Nobody actually saw the killer go into the house, right?” The sheriff didn’t answer, so I continued, “They had to have entered from the back. They walked through the trees and got inside the office that way. I mean, the front of the office is practically a fishbowl—someone would have seen the killer.” She still hadn’t said anything, so I said, “You knew that. That’s why you had Dahlberg searching the tree line.”
“And that’s where she found the only physical evidence in this investigation,” the sheriff said. “Do you see my problem?”
I wanted to say again,Keme didn’t do this. But I didn’t.
“Right now,” Acosta said, “I need you to convince Keme to help himself.” At my glance, she continued, “He won’t talk, Dash. To anyone. He just stares us down.”
“He’ll talk to Bobby.”
“He won’t, actually. Bobby was in there for almost an hour, and Keme didn’t so much as look at him. I thought maybe his mom…”
The trailed-off sentence seemed like an invitation, so I shook my head. “I don’t know how much help she’d be. I can’t figure out their relationship.”
“Turns out, it’s a moot point; when I finally got her on the phone, she said she wouldn’t be coming down to the station because, quote, ‘Keme’s an adult now, and we raised him tobe independent.’” The sheriff snorted. “‘We raised him to be independent’ is pretty big talk for a woman who lives off a trust her dad left her, with a sponge of a boyfriend who spends half his time catting around.”
I’d never heard the sheriff editorialize like that.
Clearing her throat, she gave an embarrassed shake of her head that was almost lost in the dim light. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Uh, no, that was amazing.”
For some reason, she put her hands on her hips—likeIwas the problem. “I’d like you to see if you could get Keme to tell us where he was last night. Even if he thinks it won’t help because he was on his own, there’s a chance we could verify the alibi. If we can verify it, Keme’s in the clear, bloody clothes or no bloody clothes.”
“If he won’t talk to Bobby, he won’t talk to me, but I guess I can try.” I took a step toward the door, and then I stopped. “Sheriff, do you think Keme’s bad? I mean, do you honestly believe he’s capable of something like this?”
She was nothing more than a silhouette, hands on her hips, like a darker spot in all the darkness. Finally, she cleared her throat again. “He’s had a rough life, Dash. He has a temper, and a history of fights, and—and I don’t know how to put this. I know you and your friends care about him. But you’ve got to understand, to a lot of the town, Keme is…strange. He doesn’t talk to most people. He’s closed-off. And frankly, he’s downright rude sometimes. He doesn’t act like a normal kid, so people don’t know what to make of him. And people are afraid of things they don’t understand.”
I waited for more. And then I said, “I didn’t think you did.”
