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“Hey man, I never actually said that. I never said I saw them fighting or anything. It looked like it was good on the surface. I’m just saying maybe things aren’t like they looked like on the surface.”
Remi leans in towards Jacob. “Did you get on with Rachel? What is the relationship between you and her like?” She says it in a relaxed confiding kind of way, as if she is only mildly curious. She is trying to put Jacob at ease.
“There was no relationship between me and Rachel. She was a nice girl, but I wasn’t into her.”
Jacob leans back in his chair, and rolls his shoulders. As if to draw Remi’s attention to his body. He has a slight smile on his face now. Clearly he likes her. Clearly he thinks he looks impressive in his city-slicker suit that costs probably as much as Remi’s monthly salary.
“Come on,” encourages Remi. “I think you knew Rachel better than your other friends. I bet she talked to you in ways she didn’t talk to them. You said she was foxy. Foxy like a fox. But fox’s are sly. Did you think Rachel was sly?”
“She was alright. You couldn’t really tell with her. She didn’t want you to know it. But, if she was sly maybe she wouldn’t be dead. That girl did not know how to look out for herself.”
I notice that he avoids Remi’s eyes when he says it. He isn’t telling her what he really thinks. He knows something about Rachel, but she is dead now, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. Remi senses it too.
“She was really pretty,” Remi says. “And it was her birthday and she must’ve been excited, and she was wearing that smoking hot red dress. A guy like you isn’t going to sit back and watch the other men make their move. You seriously telling me you didn’t try it on with her?”
“Sure I did,” he says with a grin. “But she wasn’t interested in me.”
“Maybe you were interested in her?” says Remi. “Are you sure you didn’t follow the girls out of the bar, hoping to get Rachel alone?”
“Come on,” he protests impatiently. “I told you I left the bar with Charlie.”
“Sure. You said you left the bar and went for a walk for a bit before you flagged down a cab.”
“Exactly.”
“Actually your friends said you left the bar alone. That you left the bar five minutes after the girls did. Alone.”
“Really? I thought I left with Charlie. I was blackout drunk. Maybe I got confused.”
“So you could have followed the girls?”
“No. Why would I? I said Rachel wasn't interested in me, didn't I?”
“You said you walked around before catching a cab. That means there is a period of time you were unaccounted for,” says Storm.
Jacob looks flustered and angry. He crosses his muscular arms over his broad chest.
It carries on like this for a while and my tiredness starts to get the better of me. I try not to yawn at all the back and forth. I feel like they are going around in circles. It is frustrating for me that I don’t have a single clue if Jacob is lying or not. I subtly shift about in my chair, trying not to make any distracting noise.
Remi moves in toward Jacob, her tone persuasive. “Take us back to the last thing you remember at the bar. When the girls left, what were you doing?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. They left the bar by themselves. I didn’t even see them go.”
“You seriously expect us to believe that?” says Storm. “You’ve as good as admitted that you had your eye on Rachel. You must have seen everything she did that night. I bet she spent time chatting with you, dancing with you, flirting with you. I bet she liked it. I bet you wondered if she might be planning on going home with you. Is that what you were thinking when she left the bar?”
“So what?” says Jacob hotly. “But she must’ve drunk too much because she got all upset towards the end of the night and she wanted to leave. And India must’ve followed her out. You know what girls are like. They’re always fussing about each other.”
“What was she upset about?”
He gets a look on his face like something has occurred to him. He leans forward towards Storm and Remi. “Maybe it was her landlord. Yeah. He was there. And she went over to talk to him and she wasn’t happy to see him. It was really strange.”
“Her landlord?” says Remi. “Are you sure? He was at the bar? How did you know it was her landlord?
“She told me.”
“Did you think it was odd?”
