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“Yes he was, but it was pretty new. I think they’d only been together for a few months before he passed.”
That was news to me. Apparently, the cops didn’t even dig far enough to see that Grayson was in a relationship at the time of his death. I wondered if the relationship was open or if Grayson was going behind his partner’s back when he found the Midnight Chemist online.
Or maybe…
“What’s his name? The boyfriend?”
She started to bite her nails, chewing pretty vigorously on her pinky. I could hear the clacking of teeth against nail. “Mason Martinez. He’s probably still working there. But don’t even mention my name. I don’t want to get involved in this, not with whoever did it still being out there.”
I wanted to point out that “getting involved” could mean the difference between saving more lives or sacrificing them like scared lambs. Instead, I nodded and decided to continue down this track. There’d be time for moral lessons later.
AfterI got what I needed. “Did you and Mason ever meet in person?”
“We did, a few times, yes.” She spoke from behind her fingers, her words twisting as her lips tried to form shapes around the nail biting. “He seemed cool. They were happy together, which I figure is all that matters. If I’m honest, I never got the best vibe from Mason, though. It sometimes felt like his attention was elsewhere but… well, what do I know? I didn’t want to get too involved.”
“Now, this might seem a little intrusive, but any bit of information could help crack this open. Do you know if Grayson and Mason had an open relationship?”
Amoura let out a stiff breath. The sound of simmering meat and potatoes became fainter but still present, while the smell of dirty cat litter only seemed to intensify. Maybe one of them took a spite shit to try and get me out of here.
“He’s had open relationships in the past,” Amoura said after a short pause. Her hands were under her legs now. I didn’t really clock any of her behavior as off or suspicious in any way. She was likely just an anxious person being put in the difficult situation of talking about her murdered brother. That wasn’t easy for anyone to handle.
But I didn’t want her getting so emotional that she shut down. I needed to shift gears.
I looked up at the clock on the wall and realized I also needed to speed things up. The longer away I was from Tristan, the worse I felt. Like an invisible tether pulled taut between the miles that separated us, getting tighter and tighter with every passing minute.
“Did your brother ever say he was meeting someone else? For coffee or drinks?”
She shook her head. Her shoulders were stiff, same as her neck. Were those tears in her eyes? Whywasshe so tense? It had been a little under a year since Grayson died. Everyone grieved on their own timelines, but she seemed to still be in the early stages of it.
“Amoura, it’s okay, you can talk to me.” I put on my therapist hat, sitting back and making myself as unimposing as I possibly could. I wanted to give her the space to talk because it looked like she really needed to.
She went back to chewing her nails before looking at me and letting out a heavy breath. She stood, holding her elbow tight against her body, her eyes looking everywhere but at me. For a moment, I thought that was all I would get, but she sat back down again, apologizing before explaining. “I’m just going through a hard time right now, and, well, it’s my husband. Ex-husband. And you just, you look like him. That’s all.”
Oh. That wasn’t where I thought this would go. It was never about Grayson at all.
“That’s unfortunate, I’m sorry,” I said, unsure of how else to handle this. It really was just an unfortunate chance that I’d walk in looking just like the man who had walked out. But I definitely wasn’t going to let that be what derailed this, not when I felt like I was finally getting somewhere.
“But your brother, Amoura, did he ever mention dating someone else?”
She looked up at the ceiling, a dark yellow spot stained by an ancient leak. “He did say he was going to someone’s place the day he went missing. He joked it was a little creepy over text, that the roof needed some serious work. We were supposed to go play tennis that day, but he canceled last minute.”
I didn’t care about how imposing or not I looked; I sat up straight and honed in on what Amoura was saying. It felt like she had been digging in the dirt and her shovel just struck gold, a loud clang sounding off to start the celebrations.
“Did he say where this house was?” I asked. It must be where the Midnight Chemist took his victims. They were never found in the same spot, but it was always in either their own homes or random Airbnb. Those places were always bare of any forensic evidence, which would be difficult to do if he were actually murdering his victims in those locations.
That led me to believe he was taking them somewhere first—somewhere secluded—where he could drug and kill them once the clock struck midnight. He’d then take them to his “stage” and set them up, where he knew they’d be found days, if not hours, later.
Grayson may have gone to that house.
“I don’t know,” Amoura said.
“Any address, any identifier? A town, even?”
“No, I can’t remember him ever mentioning exactly where. Just that the place had a busted-up red roof. He mentioned it because he said it looked like the one we used to live under as kids. I told him to get the hell out. He should have listened to me.” A somber sigh left her lips.
“Those photos are of our old family house, actually. Grayson took them. He was an amazing photographer, really.”
I had to agree. I looked over to the framed black-and-white shots of their childhood home. I thought they were professional prints picked up at a museum, but hearing they were done by Grayson made me feel emotional, and I admired the way the photo was composed to show half of the home, broken but clean angles in the tilted roof and the dents in the wall, while the other half showed a large lake that glimmered and glowed even through the monochromatic pallet.
