Chapter 28
Noah pressed his back against the cinder block wall of the State Police interview room, the bitter coffee in his paper cup doing little to cut through the fatigue that had settled into his bones. He watched McKenzie lean forward across the metal table.
Marcus sat opposite him, his expensive button-down shirt wrinkled from a night in holding, dark circles under his eyes betraying the stress of being the prime suspect in his business partner's murder.
The podcast producer's hands were clasped tightly in front of him, knuckles white with tension as McKenzie continued his line of questioning.
"Look, let's go through this again," McKenzie said.
"There have been public arguments about business decisions, creative control, and profit-sharing.
You had legitimate grievances that could serve as motive.
Hell, you were already positioned as the 'disgruntled producer' who felt overshadowed by Pierce's success. "
Marcus shook his head, his jaw clenched with frustration. "This is insane. Someone has set me up. I did not murder Pierce."
"And yet you have no solid alibi for where you were beyond your word," McKenzie replied, consulting his notes with the deliberate care of a man building a case brick by brick.
"I told you, we butted heads from time to time, but that's normal when you're producing a major crime podcast. Pierce was ambitious, sometimes reckless. That doesn't mean I wanted him dead."
Noah studied Marcus, noting the micro-expressions that years of law enforcement had taught him to read.
The man was hiding something—that much was clear—but whether it was murder or something else entirely remained to be seen.
The evidence was circumstantial at best, but in small-town investigations, circumstantial evidence sometimes had to be enough.
The interview room door opened with a sharp click, and Noah turned to see his sister Maddie stride into the room with the confident bearing that had made her one of the most respected defense attorneys in the region.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a professional bun, her navy blazer immaculate despite the drive from Elizabethtown.
"All right, say no more, Mr. Greer," she announced, setting her leather briefcase on the table with authority that immediately shifted the room's dynamic.
Noah felt his stomach tighten. "Maddie? What are you doing here?"
"I'm his legal representation."
"Since when?"
"Since I was retained by Sienna from the Cold Trail team. Right now you have nothing but circumstantial evidence at best on him."
McKenzie's thick Scottish accent carried a note of irritation as he responded.
"Lassie, our guy here has no alibi. He has a known antagonistic history with Landry, cigarette butts of his brand at the scene, a witness that places a second person with Pierce before the murder, a burner phone in his room that was used to call a local realtor who spoke with a man by the name of Marcus, and we're currently testing his blood against the blood found at the scene.
So forgive me if you think we're blowing this out of proportion, but I think we have a little more than—"
"You mean this blood evidence?" Maddie interrupted, taking a sheet of paper from her folder and handing it to McKenzie.
McKenzie put his reading glasses on and peered at the document. Noah leaned in to see over his shoulder, noting the official letterhead from Dr. Chambers' office.
"Adelaide completed the analysis. It's not a match. It's not his blood. And the DNA on the cigarette butts wasn't a match either, which places him not there."
McKenzie glanced at Noah, who could only shrug in response. "Can't argue with that."
"Aye, but we can argue about what we do have," McKenzie continued, his Scottish brogue thickening with frustration.
"Just because it's not his cigarettes or blood doesn't mean he wasn't there.
You're overlooking the calls made to Pierce from the burner phone in his room, a call to Mike Torres who confirmed only hours ago it was his voice he heard on the phone.
And then we still have no alibi for his whereabouts.
Or at least he refuses to say he was anywhere but in his room, yet we know that's not true because we checked with the front desk who confirmed he wasn't in his room when they do the turndown service at night.
When is that turndown service, you ask? Between 7:30 and 10.
The maid went back there twice to fill the minibar as well. "
"I told you the camera was broken," Marcus said, his voice cracking with frustration.
"Convenient. But that doesn't prove where you were."
Maddie looked at her client with the assessing gaze of an attorney who'd seen every possible variation of guilt and innocence. "You mind if I have a conversation with my client alone?"
"Be my guest," McKenzie said, standing and motioning for Noah to follow him out of the room.
As they stepped into the corridor, Noah glanced at his sister with annoyance.
Maddie had always been brilliant. She had worked for a law office in Albany, and had joined the local district attorney's office by twenty-eight.
She had gained a reputation for turning weak cases into dismissed charges.
As much as he admired her work as an attorney, and how useful her legal expertise had been in their professional relationship over the years, there were moments like this that added friction to their family dynamic.
McKenzie headed for the water cooler, his expression full of irritation. "If your sister thinks she's going to walk him out of here, she has another thing coming."
Noah was already pulling out his phone, opening Google Maps to follow a new lead. The interview had revealed gaps in their investigation, holes that needed filling before they could make any case stick.
"The guy is a total tool," McKenzie continued, filling his paper cup with lukewarm water. "He's showing all the signs of avoidance."
Noah scrolled through his contacts, looking for a specific number.
“Who are you calling?" McKenzie asked.
"Someone else."
"Why?"
"No blood or DNA at the scene or on Pierce's body, McKenzie.
I mean, I get it, all roads appear to lead to Marcus in terms of evidence.
But it's circumstantial at best. Would it hold up in court?
His voice? Yes, no, maybe. We need something concrete.
Something that truly places him there or at least confirms he wasn't."
McKenzie stared at him. "Sutherland, I think you've lost your marbles too. The video doesn't show him enter his room or leave it. And a maid clearly said she entered there twice and he wasn't in there. So either he never returned—"
"Or he did but exited through the window."
"But we already checked with the hotel about internal and external cameras. They weren't operational."
Noah held up a finger as his call connected. "This is Investigator Noah Sutherland from State Police. Can you confirm if you have recordings from your surveillance cameras for the past three days?"
He listened, nodding a couple of times while McKenzie watched with growing curiosity. "Uh-huh. Right. Yes, if you could phone me back and then send that to my email—" He rattled off his address. "I would appreciate it. Thank you."
He hung up and turned to McKenzie's expectant stare.
"Want to clue me in?"
"There's a church across the street facing the back side of the hotel. The hotel cameras may not be working, but theirs are, and they have a clear shot of anyone who exited through those rear windows."
They paced the corridor, nervous energy keeping them in motion. Noah went to the vending machine and fed it crumpled dollar bills, watching it dispense something that vaguely resembled coffee. The machine groaned and kicked out a cup of sludge that passed for caffeine, bitter and lukewarm.
Twenty minutes passed in tense silence before Noah's phone rang. He answered on the second ring.
"Investigator Sutherland? This is Pastor Williams returning your call. I've sent the file to your email. You might want to take a look."
Noah opened his email and loaded the video file, fast-forwarding to the time frame between 7:30 and 9:30 PM. The black-and-white surveillance footage showed the rear of the hotel with stark clarity.
"Sure enough. There we go," he said, pointing at the screen as a figure appeared, climbing out of a window and making his way along the back of the hotel before being assisted by two arms to climb into another room.
No sooner had he spoken than Maddie opened the interview room door. "My client wishes to speak to you."
"Hold on, Sutherland," McKenzie said, but Noah was already heading back into the room. Once the door clicked shut, Marcus, whose head had been dropped in defeat, spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.
"I was at the hotel. But I wasn't in my room. I was with Pierce's fiancée."
"Sienna?" McKenzie said, his eyebrows rising.
Marcus nodded, still unable to meet their eyes.
"I know you were," Noah said, showing him the surveillance video on his phone, which clearly showed Marcus exiting his hotel room through a window and making his way along the back of the building before being assisted into another room.
"You were having an affair with her?" McKenzie asked, his tone carrying more curiosity than judgment.
"That explains why she hired my sister," Noah added, pieces of the puzzle finally clicking into place.
Marcus nodded miserably. "I told you I didn’t do it."
"Why didn't you just tell us about Sienna?" McKenzie asked.
"Like I said, the cameras weren't working, so you wouldn't have believed me, anyway.
And would you tell someone this? I figured because Pierce was missing that night, that he might still be alive and show up again.
If I announced I was with Sienna and having an affair, and then he showed up alive, that would have gotten Sienna and myself in.
.." He paused, struggling with the words.
"And then when he showed up dead, telling you anything different than what I told you earlier about being in my room would have—"
"Made you look guilty," Noah finished.
Marcus nodded, relief evident in his posture.
"Well, I think you have your alibi now," Maddie said with professional satisfaction.
"But I don't understand," McKenzie interjected. "What about the phone? What about what Mike Torres said?"
Maddie leaned back in her chair with the confidence of someone about to dismantle a prosecution's case. "Wasn't Mike Torres the prime suspect in the Hale murders ten years ago? I think it would be convenient for him to say that."
"The carrier has a record of the calls made," McKenzie protested.
"Maybe so, but try convincing a judge that Marcus made them based on his voice alone.
A witness saying, 'I think that was his voice' is circumstantial evidence, it does not directly prove guilt.
People misidentify voices frequently, even under normal circumstances.
A judge would require phone records, location data, motive, opportunity, and other circumstantial facts, along with physical evidence like DNA, fingerprints, surveillance videos, and a recording of a voice to be analyzed by experts to compare his voice to the one that was heard.
" She paused, letting her words sink in before continuing.
"Even then, a good defense attorney like myself would argue multiple possibilities such as voice cloning or mistaken identification.
Voice identification alone is rarely enough for a conviction.
At most, it might be probable cause to investigate or issue a search warrant, but that's it. You know that, Noah."
Noah looked at the evidence spread across the table, witness statements, phone records, timeline analyses—all of it pointing toward a case that wouldn't survive first contact with a competent defense attorney.
The blood and DNA evidence had cleared Marcus, the surveillance footage provided an alibi, and the voice identification was questionable at best.
He reached for his keys and uncuffed Marcus. "You're free to go."
After Maddie and Marcus left, McKenzie leaned back against the wall and groaned. "Some days I wonder why we bother."
He walked out, leaving Noah alone to collect the paperwork they'd accumulated.
Case files, witness statements, evidence logs, all of it representing hours of work that had led to another dead end.
Noah stacked the documents, his mind already moving to the next lead, the next possibility, the next chance to find Landry's real killer.
The interview room felt smaller now, its cinder block walls closing in like the narrowing possibilities in their investigation.
Somewhere out there, a murderer was walking free while they chased shadows and alibis.
But that was police work, following every lead, eliminating every suspect, building cases one piece of evidence at a time until the truth finally emerged from the darkness.