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“He is if you’re a friend.”
Michael’s lips thinned at that.
Kylie nodded and said, “Well, come on inside.”
She led them into an apartment that was as sparsely appointed on the inside as it was on the outside, save for a massive flatscreen TV that dominated an entire wall of the living room.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Sure,” Faith said. “Thank you.”
Kylie looked at Michael, and he nodded. Kylie walked to the kitchen and fetched two mugs. Hers was already on the table. “Pot’s fresh,” she said. “Good stuff too. Our boss splurges on that heirloom stuff from South America. I’ve gotten so addicted I can’t handle the chain stuff anymore.”
“I’m sure it’s wonderful,” Faith said.
“Lucky me,” Kylie replied tonelessly.
She returned with the mugs and sat down. Faith took a satisfying gulp of her coffee and sighed with pleasure and relief. “Miss Bonaparte,” she began.
“Kylie’s fine.”
“Kylie,” Faith said with a smile, “can you tell us what happened yesterday? From your point of view?”
Kylie took a sip of her own coffee, then sighed. “I started work at six that morning, which means I arrived at fifteen ‘til to set up. I’m the opener, so I have to start the first batch of coffee and warm up the espresso machine, count the till, and all of that stuff.”
“Do you like your job?” Faith asked.
Kylie nodded. “I do, actually. Most days, anyway. It’s not too hard, and I don’t have a boss breathing down my neck. It’s busy as hell, but I don’t mind that.”
Faith asked a few other conversational questions to calm Kylie down before getting to the meat of things. The calmer Kylie was, the easier it would be for her to focus on what she witnessed and possibly remember details she would forget otherwise.
Turk was a great help in calming her down as well. As he had with so many witnesses, he immediately comforted Kylie, sitting next to her and resting his head on her lap for her to stroke.
“When did you notice Mr. McIlhenny?” Faith asked.
“Is that the … the …”
“The victim, yes,” Faith said.
Kylie sighed. “Well, he was there when I arrived at work. I remember thinking that was unusual since the terminal doesn’t open until six, or at least it didn’t until today, but I just assumed he was one of the homeless people we get sometimes. He was dressed unusually, so I thought maybe he was a street performer.”
“At what point did you suspect he might have been in trouble?”
“Um,” Kylie said, “not at all, really. Not until I left and realized he was sitting in the same place for hours. It was strange, too, the way he was sitting. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have thought to check him otherwise.”
“Strange?” Faith asked, her ears pricking up. “How so?”
“He was sitting kind of like this.” She leaned back in her chair with one arm lifted at the elbow and bent backward at the wrist, the fingers splayed. “Kind of like he was drinking a martini or something. I remember noticing that around my lunch break, and when I left and his hand was in the same position, I—well, I guess I thought he might be dead. I wish I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Faith said.
Kylie offered a slight smile that disappeared almost instantly. “It makes me scared to go to work, you know? I don’t know what happened with Mr. McIlhenny, but I work early in the morning. I guess I won’t be alone now that the terminal’s open for twenty-four hours, but still, it kind of sucks to know that stuff like this happens.”
“I know,” Faith said. “People can be terrible.”
Kylie offered another slight, transient smile.
“When you discovered Mr. McIlhenny’s true condition,” Faith continued, “what happened immediately after that?”
