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I opened a drawer by my legs and pulled out a simple manila folder. Inside it were the few things I’d been able to compile on Jesse, Sam, and Hazel since yesterday’s incident. It was mostly notes I’d written down from sifting through their social media accounts, but there were also a couple of other golden nuggets of information that I thought could be helpful.
Example number one: the article I’d discovered on Jesse’s parents winning the lottery in their small Texas hometown. They’d taken out the total lump sum of seven million dollars, and from what I could tell, they picked up and moved to a beach house in central Florida. The win had happened six months ago, and yet Jesse still lived in a three-bedroom apartment without so much as a bread crumb thrown his way.
Why was that? Did his parents know something about Jesse? Something that stopped them from supporting him?
Then there were the photos I discovered of Jesse and a friend appearing to be mocking Hazel. The photos seemed to have been taken without Hazel knowing. One photo had Hazel coming up the stairs to her apartment, Nick at the bottom holding up a middle finger and aiming it directly at Hazel, another hand holding his crotch. It made me sick. I wondered how the photo hadn’t been reported yet. I screenshotted it and set it aside, finding another photo with Nick inside the apartment. He was up against Hazel’s door, and he seemed to be spitting on the handle. Jesse must have been the one taking the photo.
Fucking shithead. I wanted to knock both of them out.
And clearly Jesse had an obsession with Hazel. I wondered what other photos he had that didn’t make it online. My stomach twisted.
There were also some questionable comments left on Jesse’s wall, most of them by two girls who both wore big silver chains and wifebeaters in their profile pics. Kendra Fernandez and Monica Silverman. I found one photo of them kissing, Jesse giving a thumbs-up off to the side of the photo. They seemed like they were good friends, up until Nick came into Jesse’s life. There were photos and comments by Kendra and Monica pretty much posted every day on Jesse’s wall, until there was a notification about two months ago that said Nick and Jesse became friends. After that, Monica and Kendra seem to disappear.
I jotted their names down, along with where they both worked. Monica was a bartender and Kendra was a bouncer, both at the same dive bar in Downtown. If they’d had a falling-out with Jesse, then they might be willing to divulge his dirty secrets.
I glanced at the round white clock on the wall. Ten minutes until Jesse arrived for the meeting. I leaned back in my chair, letting my head fall on the cushioned headrest. I stared up at the ceiling, and, as my mind had been (annoyingly) doing recently, I started to think about Sam Clark. Not for any reason in particular, just… well, I didn’t really know why. I couldn’t understand why I kept thinking about that damn smile of his or the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he squinted, or how he smelled like cedar and ocean spray. I caught myself wondering how he’d taste. Would it be just as intoxicating as his scent?
My dick pulsed between my thighs. I squeezed them together, only making the problem more pronounced.
Sam, without even being in the room, could somehow make me rock hard in seconds flat.
Christ on a fucking saltine cracker.
I adjusted my boner, sitting it on my thigh, my black pants straining to hold it down.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened. And frankly, it wasn’t even the worst thing that’s happened since Sam infiltrated my every waking thought.
No, that happened on the day I met him. Even though I briefly suspected him of stealing his best friend’s underwear, for some reason, I still couldn’t stop fantasizing about his underwear.
Sam had dropped to the absolute bottom of my list of suspects. Not that there were many to begin with, but I could say with 90 percent certainty that Sam was innocent. Not only did I have a chat with Hazel, who assured me that Sam must have been framed, but I also spent hours looking through Sam’s internet footprint and one thing was very clear:
Sam loved Hazel with all his heart. He always threw her big parties for every birthday, and he always wrote long and sappy status updates on the day of their “friendaversary.” They had hundreds of pictures together, and they constantly commented back and forth on each other’s posts. They truly seemed like best friends.
And, aside from that, I genuinely didn’t believe Sam was the kind of guy who’d do something like that. I barely knew him, but after years working this job and talking to guilty people face-to-face, I’d developed a good sense of character. Sam didn’t send up any red flags. He spoke with conviction and emotion, the kind of emotion that only comes from someone who’s innocent, scared they’d be accused of an act they’d never commit.
