Whisper to Me(106)

“Uh-huh,” said Brian. “When dispatch put the call through, I was already on the scene. I just had to drive up. That’s how come I was so fast.”

“You were there already,” I said. “So you could have killed her.” It was such a lame thing to say. So direct and unsubtle. But this is real life, where you don’t have time to think through everything you say before you say it. This isn’t some Nancy Drew story. That much is going to become rapidly obvious.

“I loved her!” said Brian. “She was everything to me. And what are you thinking anyway? That I, like, murdered her in the house and then somehow hid her body and got back to my police car, and then drove up?”

Put like that, it did sound kind of dumb.

“I mean, how does that even work?” he continued. “We searched that house. What would I have done with the body?”

“Maybe you hid her in the trunk,” I said, without much conviction.

“Of my squad car? Yeah.”

We sat there in silence for a moment.

“How did you meet her anyway?” I asked.

Brian blushed.

“Oh,” I said, figuring out right away what the blush meant.

“Yeah,” said Brian. “It was a party. She … did her thing.”

“She took her clothes off,” said Julie, with a little acid in her voice.

“But … it was more than that,” said Brian. “I mean, for me. She was … she was an incredible person. That sounds cheesy. But … she was, like, lit up, you know? Like neon.”

“I know,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Julie.

There was another long moment where no one said anything. I got the sense Julie would very much have liked Brian to leave the apartment but was too polite to say so.

“Okay,” I said finally. “So assuming you’re telling the truth, Brian, who do you think did kill Paris?”

“Why?” he said. “Because you’re going to solve the case? Like some Nancy Drew ****?”

“Maybe,” I said.

He stared at me for a moment, the smile slowly dying from his lips. “You’re serious?”

“What are we going to do? Just forget about her?” I said.

Brian turned to Julie. “You’re involved in this?”

Julie shook her head.

Oh great, thanks, Julie.

“You should leave it to the agents,” said Brian to me. “That guy Horowitz is good. He blew my timeline in, like, a day. Confronted me about it. I mean, he knew I got there too fast. I had to tell him … what I just told you.”

“But he doesn’t know who the killer is,” I said.

“He doesn’t talk much. But I think he has a theory. I think he maybe has a suspect.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“And you don’t know who this suspect might be?”

The most fractional hesitation. “No.”

“Then we’ll keep looking,” I said.

“I would say that it’s dangerous and that you totally should not do that,” said Brian. “But I don’t think it would make much difference, would it?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Okay. What’s your next move?”

I shook my head. I had no clue. “You have any ideas?” I said.

“You’re … what? You’re recruiting me to your little Nancy Drew gang?”

“Will you stop talking about Nancy Drew?” I said.

“And it’s not a gang,” said Julie. She cut me a look, a sort of angry look. Like she didn’t like me wanting to find the killer.

“Anyway,” said Brian to me. “You want me to help you? This is crazy. I’m a cop.”

“Exactly.”

He sighed again. “I’m not going to help you get yourself killed.”

Another awkward, quiet moment.

“Hey, Cass,” said the voice.

Oh, yes. Just what I needed. Come back after— I started saying, silently, inside my head.

“No, wait,” said the voice. “Ask him why he thinks Horowitz has a theory.”

“What?” I said. I realized I had said this out loud when I saw the others looking at me. “I mean … ,” I said to them, “… what am I supposed to do, abandon my friend?”

Brian shrugged.

“He hesitated,” continued the voice. “He hesitated when you asked if he knew who the suspect was.”

I rewound my mental tape. The voice was right.

You’re helping me now? I asked, silently this time.

“I’m not allowed to help you?” said the voice.

No, of course. Of course you can.

“Good. So ask him.”

“Why do you think Horowitz has a theory?” I asked.

“I don’t know, he doesn’t talk much, he just—”

“No. I don’t mean, what makes him have this theory? I mean, what makes you think that he has a theory?”

“Oh.” Brian thought for a moment. I could see that he was weighing up the risks of talking to me. He seemed uncomfortable with the whole situation actually, and I figured that was good for me. It might make him talk, just to get out of there. “It was something he said about an alibi.”