Blood was soaking into the forest floor.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“A name,” I said. “And an explanation.”
Matt closed his eyes.
I began to unlace my boot. “What do you say? I was thinking there, for a minute, that it was Norman, but now I’m not so sure. You want to clear that up for me?”
Matt swallowed, whispered, “Not Norman.”
I had the bootlace half out of the eyelets. “That’s good to know, I guess. So if it wasn’t Norman, who, then?”
Matt was weighing his options. I didn’t see where he had much to lose here by giving up a name, but everything to gain. He was fucked, plain and simple. He could be fucked and die, or he could be fucked and live.
I almost had the bootlace out. The blood was draining out of Matt like oil from the Exxon Valdez. I didn’t give him much longer without the tourniquet.
“What’s it going to be, Matt?”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said.
Matt gave me a name.
I shuddered. “Now a few details. Convince me.”
Matt gave me a few details. I was convinced, if a little shaken.
I started lacing up my boot.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You gotta tie it off.”
I continued threading the laces through the eyelets until I had them back in place. I gave them a good tug, then knotted them.
“Wouldn’t want to trip on the way back to my car,” I said.
Fifty-One
Detective Hardy: How are you doing now, Tyler?
Tyler: I didn’t do anything. I know it might look like it, but I didn’t.
Detective Hardy: We’ll get to that.
Tyler: And I want my sister to be here.
Detective Hardy: She’s probably waiting for you, but right now it’s just the two of us. I understand you’ve come to live with your sister recently, but she has not applied for legal guardianship.
Tyler: Yeah, but she’s my sister.
Detective Hardy: There’s a process to these things, Tyler. Your rights were explained, right?
Tyler: Yeah, but I didn’t do anything.
Detective Hardy: Then I guess we’re good to go. Why don’t we start with you telling me what you were doing at Candace DiCarlo’s house?
Tyler: I don’t even know who that is.
Detective Hardy: That’s the woman who was murdered.
Tyler: I didn’t murder anybody. And I knew her as somebody else.
Detective Hardy: Who would that be?
Tyler: You already know this.
Detective Hardy: Tell me anyway.
Tyler: I figured she was Brie Mason, that woman you were asking about when you came to the house on Saturday. Like I said, I saw her at the store and recognized her and wanted to ask her some questions.
Detective Hardy: What sort of questions?
Tyler: Like, what the hell was going on, basically. Was she going to come back and still be married to Andy, you know, my sister’s boyfriend? Because then everything would go to shit.
Detective Hardy: So you followed her home. How’d you do that?
Tyler: On my bike.
Detective Hardy: You must be pretty fast.
Tyler: She hit a lot of red lights, so that’s kinda how I kept up.
Detective Hardy: And you followed her into her house. What happened, Tyler? Did she get scared when you confronted her? Did she fight back? Is that what happened?
Tyler: I didn’t go in her house. She told me to go away. She went inside and locked the door. And so then I left.
Detective Hardy: Okay. But you went back, didn’t you?
Tyler: (unintelligible)
Detective Hardy: I didn’t hear that.
Tyler: Like, maybe half an hour or so later. Yeah.
Detective Hardy: Why’d you do that?
Tyler: It was Cam’s idea.
Detective Hardy: Your friend. So Cam told you to go back and kill Ms. DiCarlo?
Tyler: Fuck, no. He just said I should go back there and not leave until I got her to answer my questions. So that’s when I went back the second time.
Detective Hardy: And what happened then?
Tyler: I knocked on the door again and she didn’t answer. But her car was there, so I figured she was home and, like, ignoring me.
Detective Hardy: Then how did you get into the house, Tyler?
Tyler: I kinda... I tried the door to see if it was still locked, and it wasn’t. So I opened it.
Detective Hardy: Go on.
Tyler: And, like, as soon as I stepped in it felt weird in there.
Detective Hardy: Weird how?
Tyler: I don’t know. It was really quiet. The only noise was the fridge humming. I took another step in, to the kitchen, and then I saw her.
Detective Hardy: What did you see?
Tyler: She was on the floor, on her back, and at first I thought, shit, maybe she had a heart attack or some kind of seizure or something, and so I bent down real fast to check on her and didn’t even see all the blood. It got on my hands and my knees and...
Detective Hardy: And?
Tyler: I just need a second.
Detective Hardy: Take your time.
Tyler: I sort of freaked out. All this blood was coming from the back of her head.
Detective Hardy: Did you say anything?
Tyler: Like what?
Detective Hardy: Did you start shouting?
Tyler: I might have. I was in shock, I guess. I was totally freaked out. I’ve only ever seen one other dead person.
Detective Hardy: Who would that be?
Tyler: My dad. He had a heart attack shoveling snow.
Detective Hardy: So, is that when you called the police?
Tyler: What? I didn’t call the police.
Detective Hardy: I know. Why didn’t you?
Tyler: Well, I mean, she was... there wasn’t anything anybody could do. She was pretty obviously dead.
Detective Hardy: Still, just about anybody would have called 911. Get an ambulance there, just in case there was something they could do.
Tyler: I guess I didn’t think of that.
Detective Hardy: Why do you think that was?
Tyler: I don’t know. I guess I should’ve done that. But at the time, I wasn’t really thinking that straight.
Detective Hardy: I see. You know that doesn’t look good, don’t you, Tyler? Fleeing a crime scene like that?
Tyler: Maybe it wasn’t. You know, a crime scene. Maybe she just fell.
Detective Hardy: Is that how it looked to you, when you saw all that blood?
Tyler: I wanted to get home. I needed to think about what I should do. I wanted to talk to my sister.