Seven #3
Rainer’s eyes grew wary before he smothered it and put his glasses back on. “I did hear she’d been killed. This morning just. Tragic. Kendra was a good student. Quiet. That’s really all I know.”
Trevor cocked his head. “Was she a thief?”
Rainer’s mouth fell open. “A thief? I seriously doubt it. Why would you ask me that?”
“Well…” Trevor said. “We found your tie clip—the one with your initials and the school crest on it—in the back seat of her car. So, you were either in her car, or she stole it. And since you just said she wasn’t a thief, I’d like to know how it got there.”
Panic flashed in his eyes. “I—I must have dropped it. I’m a professor. She must have picked it up and meant to return it.”
Trevor held his gaze, waiting for the professor to trip over his own words.
He’d seen it a hundred times before. That subtle shift from defiance to desperation.
“You’re saying a student you weren’t involved with just happened to have your tie clip in her car instead of coming directly to your office to hand it over? ”
Rainer’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, his hand drifting to the smooth fabric of his tie with no clip. “This is absurd.”
“Is it?” Helena’s voice cut through the stale air. “Because we also found burned fabric in the remains of that car. Fabric that matches a tie you’ve worn in school photos before.”
That wasn’t accurate, but it was within their legal bounds to fudge, so he didn’t correct her.
Rainer’s face paled, a grayish sheen creeping across his skin. He leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight. “All right,” he said finally, his voice strained. “Yes, I was involved with Kendra. We had a…a brief relationship. She was…spirited. Ambitious. It just happened.”
Affairs never just happened. Trevor could practically see the man rewriting the past, minimizing, rationalizing. He’d seen the same routine a thousand times before, and it never failed to set his teeth on edge.
“And Mindy?” Trevor persisted, leaning forward now, closing the gap. Lark’s ears perked up, sensing the shift in her handler’s energy.
Rainer’s eyes flicked to Helena then back to Trevor.
His fingers tightened on the armrests, blanching at the knuckles.
“Yes,” he whispered, almost as if the word pained him.
“I was involved with her, too. But I didn’t kill her.
I—I was with her the night she disappeared.
We argued. She left. I thought that was the end of it.
When the news came of her disappearance, I… I panicked.”
Trevor’s pulse ticked in his jaw. “Panicked enough to stay silent about it all this time? Even when it might have cleared you?”
Rainer’s mouth opened and closed, his gaze dropping to the scuffed floor. “My wife… Camille and I…patched things up. I didn’t want to ruin that. And, yes, I knew how it would look. Two girls…one dead, the other missing. I thought staying quiet was the safer choice in regard to Kendra, too.”
“Does your wife know about Kendra?”
“No. Another reason I didn’t come forward after hearing the news she’d been burned alive by that serial killer. We’ve patched things up.”
“I don’t think having yet another affair is patching anything up,” Helena said. “You were scared. End of story. Or…maybe not. Maybe you have a more sinister reason not to come forward.”
“I do not!” he said and yanked his glasses from his face.
“I don’t want to lose my wife. I love her but sometimes…
I just can’t help myself. Look, Kendra and I went to a motel.
Rocky Mountain Inn. We had room service and spent some time together.
She must have picked up my tie clip by mistake.
I thought I’d left it at the motel. I even called and asked them to check the room. You can verify that.”
Oh, they would.
“We left in separate cars, like we arrived. She told me she was going home—she lived with her parents. I thought she’d gone home.”
“What time did you leave the motel?”
“Around eight thirty. Camille doesn’t like me out past nine.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Helena quipped, her voice full of disgust.
“I promise I’m telling the truth. I arrived home at eight forty-five. Camille was there, but please don’t ask her. I don’t want her to know.”
“We have to ask,” Trevor said. “Unless you can provide us another way of knowing you’re telling the truth. And how do we know you didn’t go back out? She died between three and four a.m. The metal was still hot when we arrived at her death scene, Percy.”
Rainer hung his head. “I have no other way to prove it. I went home. I stayed home. We watched the ten o’clock news and then she read and I fell asleep. I never went back out.”
If his wife was asleep, she wouldn’t be able to tell them he was home all night. He could have sneaked out.
Trevor met Helena’s eyes, reading the same simmering distrust he felt in his own bones. Silence might have felt like a refuge to Rainer, but to Trevor, it was the first nail in a coffin. They had their liar, but whether he was a killer was another matter.