“And why didn’t you bring this evidence to us when you found it?”
“I tried,” I say. “But the next morning, it was gone. My fiancé took it—I have a video of him holding it, on my phone—and that’s when I started to believe that he may have had something to do with it. But even if I did have it, during our last conversation, you made it pretty clear that you didn’t believe anything I said. You practically told me to fuck off.”
He stares at me from across the room, shifting uncomfortably. I stare back.
“Anyway, there’s more than that. He’s been visiting my father in prison. I found Diazepam in his briefcase. His own sister went missing, twenty years ago, and when I visited his mother, she told me that she actually thought he might have had something to do with it—”
“Okay,” the detective interrupts, holding up a hand, fingers outstretched. “One thing at a time. What brought you to Breaux Bridge tonight? How did you know Riley Tack would be here?”
The image of Riley, ghostly pale, is still etched into my mind. Of the ambulance as it came flying down my driveway—of me, standing in the front yard, the phone I had retrieved from my car clutched in my hand as I waited, my body rigid and eyes unfocused. Unable to go back into that house, unable to face the dead body on the floor. The paramedics loading her into the back, tied to a stretcher, bags of fluids rushing into her veins.
“Daniel left me a voice mail, telling me he was leaving,” I say. “I was trying to figure out where he might have been going, where he could have been bringing the girls. I just had a feeling that he was bringing them here. I don’t know.”
“Okay.” Detective Thomas nods. “And where is Daniel now?”
I look up at him, my eyes stinging from the harsh lights, the bitter coffee, the lack of sleep. Everything.
“I don’t know,” I say again. “He’s gone.”
The room is quiet except for the buzzing of the lights overhead, like a single fly trapped inside of a tin can. Aaron killed those girls. He tried to kill Riley. Finally, I have my answers—but there is still so much that I don’t understand. So much that doesn’t make sense.
“I know you don’t believe me,” I say, looking up. “I know this sounds crazy, but I’m telling you the truth. I had no idea—”
“I believe you, Chloe,” Detective Thomas interrupts. “I do.”
I nod, trying not to show the relief that I feel flowing over me. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t this. I was expecting an argument, a demand for proof that I can’t produce. And then I realize: He must know something that I don’t.
“You know who he is,” I say, understanding dawning on me slowly. “Aaron, I mean. You know who he really is.”
The detective looks back at me, his expression unreadable.
“You have to tell me. I deserve to know.”
“His name was Tyler Price,” he says at last, leaning over as he pulls his briefcase onto the table. He opens it up, pulls out a mug shot, and places it between us. I stare at Aaron’s face—no, Tyler’s face. He looks like a Tyler, different without the glasses magnifying his eyes, the snugly fit button-ups, his hair buzzed short. He has one of those generic faces that seems recognizable to everybody—bland features, no easily identifiable marks—but there is a vague resemblance to that headshot I had seen online, to the real Aaron Jansen. He could pass as a second cousin, maybe. An older brother. The kind who buys liquor for high-schoolers then shows up to the party, slinking off to the corner. Sipping a beer in silence, observing.
I swallow, my eyes drilling into the table. Tyler Price. I scold myself for falling for it, for so easily seeing what he had wanted me to see—but at the same time, maybe I had seen what I had wanted to see. I had needed an ally, after all. Someone on my side. But it had only been a game to him. All of it, a game. And Aaron Jansen had been nothing more than a character.
“We were able to ID him almost immediately,” Detective Thomas continues. “He’s from Breaux Bridge.”
My head snaps up, eyes wide.
“What?”
“He was already in their system for some smaller stuff a while back. Possession of marijuana, trespassing. Dropped out of school just before the ninth grade.”
I look back down at his picture, trying to conjure up a memory. Any memory of Tyler Price. Breaux Bridge is a small town, after all—then again, I never had many friends.