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He laughed, a little more relaxed now. “No. My student loans pay the rent. The T.A. gig feeds me. Also, I help out with cleaning down at the bar—after hours—and the owner takes some off my rent. It’s already pretty cheap because of the noise.”
“I guess the English major helped when you were editing Kayleigh’s stories.”
He hesitated, looking to Noah as if for help.
Josie said, “The longer you deny your relationship with her, the worse it looks for you, Ash.”
No response.
Abruptly, Josie stood, her chair scraping the tile. She looked at Noah. “Lieutenant, I’ll go prepare those warrants now.”
She didn’t look back, letting the door slam behind her. Slipping into the CCTV room next door, she watched as Noah sat in the chair she had just vacated.Crack, crack, crackwent Asher’s knuckles. He lifted his chin toward the door. “Is she serious?”
Noah gave a slow nod. “I’m afraid so. That’s the job. Listen, I don’t want to be here any more than you do but I don’t have a choice. She’s right. We’ve got your messages from StoryJot, and even though there’s nothing criminal about them—I mean, they’re pretty benign, and even if they weren’t, the age of consent in PA is sixteen, so you’re all good there—we’ve still got to do our due diligence. Pretty young teenage girl goes missing? They’ve got us turning this whole city upside down. Gotta cross all of our ‘T’s and dot all of our ‘I’s, you know what I mean?”
Asher studied Noah, whose personality had transformed in a matter of seconds. From where Josie sat, he no longer resembled her husband. A smirk twitched on his lips. He spread his limbs, legs splayed—manspreading, Gretchen called it—one elbow over the back of his chair while his other arm rested on the table, spinning a pen around. He let a few seconds go by and then he said, “You remember that crazy case a while back? All those girls? Oh, maybe not. You were, what? Twelve at the time?”
“You mean, Murder Mountain?”
Noah nodded, kept the pen spinning. “Yeah, that’s the one. Ever since that case, our boss is insane about missing persons, and you know, some other teenage girl was found dead in the woods Tuesday morning. Shit’s been crazy lately.”
Crack, crack.“So you guys are really going to look at all my stuff? My apartment? My car?”
“They’ll probably start with your phone and any other devices you have—laptop, tablet, whatever. Go from there. But yeah, eventually they’ll want a look at your apartment and car and all that. The whole city’s on high alert, you know? We gotta check out everyone. It’s like the process of elimination, you know? We talk to parents, neighbors, friends, classmates, teachers, anyone Kayleigh was dating. Find out what everyone knows, hope it will give us some direction. Now with this other girl getting killed…”
Noah sighed heavily and pulled his phone from his pocket. It appeared to be a monumental effort for him to punch in his passcode and pull up the photo of Felicia Evans. “You recognize her?”
Asher studied the photo and shook his head. “No.”
Noah nodded and took his phone back. “She’s the one who stole Kayleigh’s story. Felicia.”
No response.
“Must have been rough when that went down. Kayleigh seemed like she was pretty upset. She bend your ear a lot? My wife goes nonstop when something pisses her off.”
Josie laughed. It was a lie but still, Noah’s new persona was convincing.
“Listen,” Asher said, lowering his voice, “I did help Kayleigh with her stuff, okay? She’s actually a really good writer. Really advanced for her age. But we weren’t dating. Kayleigh had a crush on me, I’ll admit that, but we never crossed a line.”
Josie thought back to the messages. If they were presented in a courtroom, could a defense attorney make the case that they didn’t point to a sexual relationship? It would likely never come to that, since the age of consent was sixteen, except that Kayleigh had been fifteen when they started seeing one another. If a prosecutor wanted to make an issue out of that, they could, but the messages were too vague to prove anything.
“Oh, come on. Pretty girl like that?” Noah said, without missing a beat. “You’re only what? Four years apart? That’s nothing. Hell, I’m three years younger than my wife.”
“But you’re what? In your forties?”
Noah laughed. “Thirties! Damn, man. I didn’t think I looked that bad.”
Asher shook his head. “Sorry. Your thirties. My point is that you’re an adult. Yeah, Kayleigh and I aren’t that far apart in age and legally she can consent to a relationship but she’s still in high school, you know? It doesn’t look good for me.”
“Okay,” Noah said. “I get it. You don’t want people to know you’re dating a high-schooler.”
Asher cracked his knuckles again, but he didn’t deny it.
Noah kept spinning his pen as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “All right. Well, like I said, due diligence and all. I’ve still got to ask you some questions. You okay with that?”
“Your crazy partner out there? Is she still gonna look at my shit?”
“Nothing I can do about that, my friend,” Noah said with a sigh. “My advice? With these things, it’s always best to answer everything truthfully the first time. Don’t give us a reason to come back and knock on your door again.” He waggled an eyebrow and gave a subtle nod toward the door. “You understand?”
