“When we were in school, Ken always struggled,” he said. “He wasn’t… I don’t know. Academically minded. I was good at studying, he wasn’t. People thought that meant he was stupid, but… he just couldn’t take the tests well. Anyway, these friends, I think they clung onto him because he made them feel superior. Like they were better than him.”
“And that changed, since school?” Laura said, picking up on the undercurrent of what he was saying.
“It changed massively,” Kevin agreed. “After we got out of that whole studying thing, and Ken got a job, it was like he was on fire. He got promotion after promotion, already. He really started to come into himself. He wasn’t a loser anymore. I don’t think they liked that—or the fact that he had new friends.”
“You mentioned some enemies?” Laura asked. “Do you mean those friends you mentioned, or someone else?”
Kevin bit his lip slightly. “I don’t know. No one in particular, except that manager guy. Just… people everywhere. He would walk into a bar and end up getting into a fight. It could be someone I didn’t even know. The last few years especially, you know? We have different jobs. More and more of our friends were different people. We still spent a lot of time together, but there was time apart, too.”
“What were the names of those friends?” Nate asked, jotting them down as Kevin recited them and spelled them out for him. Laura was already thinking ahead, ignoring the names themselves. She could read them later. What she needed to do now was think. To figure out how anything he’d said—anything at all—could be a clue toward the killer himself.
“All right,” Nate sai
d. “Thank you, Kevin. Anything else, you just let us know—or ask the officers you’re with to call us. We’re going to work hard to bring this killer to justice.”
“Catch him quick,” Kevin said, looking at them both in a way that chilled Laura to the bone.
His gaze was cold, angry. Full of grief.
And without them even agreeing, it felt like they’d made a solemn vow—one they couldn’t break.
***
“I don’t know about any of these leads,” Laura said, shaking her head as they went over Nate’s notes. “It just sounds like he’s grieving. Angry. Looking for someone to blame, no matter how tenuous.”
“We still have to look into them,” Nate said. He glanced her way and must have caught something in her expression. “I don’t mean I disagree. It’s just, we have to check. That’s part of the job, after all.”
Laura nodded. “We should start tracking people down and interviewing them.”
“No,” Nate said. “It’s a waste of our resources for us both to cover the same ground. We should split up.”
Laura blinked at him. He wasn’t looking at her. Did he really think that this was a good suggestion for the case, so they could work more leads between them? Or was this his way of getting rid of her, getting to spend some time alone? Normally they would do the interviews as a team so that they were both up to date on any possible clues.
Not to mention the fact that they each saw things in their own unique way, which meant they could pick up different things from the interviews when they were there in person. A lot harder to do when you were being given a biased report from another person.
“What leads am I following, while you’re interviewing these people?” Laura asked carefully. She was ready to object, especially given that she didn’t know they even had anything else for her to do.
“Family,” Nate said, looking right at her. “You need to talk with Kenneth and Kevin’s parents. See if they’ve got any leads they can give us.”
Laura swallowed. He had it figured out already. It was almost like she’d walked into a trap, except that was a stupid way to think about an entirely logical move for the good of the case.
This was for the good of the case.
She just had to remember that, and pretend it didn’t hurt that he wanted her away from him.
“I’ll get right on that, then,” Laura said, getting up. “Send me a message if you find anything—or if you don’t. I guess we’ll meet back here after.”
Nate nodded silently, turning back to look over his notes again as if they were totally engrossing. Laura turned to leave, feeling something bubbling up inside her in response to his obvious dismissal.
Anger.
Which was a relief, because anger was the energy she would need to power through on this case and get the answers they so badly needed.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
If dealing with grieving brothers was hard, a grieving mother was so much worse.
Laura passed frizzy-haired and red-eyed Mrs. Wurz a tissue from a box that lay open on the table, allowing her a pause so that she could blow her nose and wipe her eyes for what had to be the sixth time since Laura had arrived. Not that she could blame her. The poor woman had lost her son.