“I’d heard something like that.” He shrugs.
“Do you think she did it?”
“Nah. She’s too….”
I wait for more, but he’s just sitting there, so I ask, “What? She’s too what?”
“Prissy. She’d never do something like that. It’d be too messy.”
Of all the reasons to think someone wouldn’t kill another person, that’s a first. “Too messy?”
“Yeah, you know, blood. Tayler wouldn’t be able to handle the mess.”
Funny thing about a crime of passion, people don’t think about the mess. Not until it’s too late. “What irons did Kara Becker have in the fire?”
From the expression on his face, I’d say he knows things that he’s not sure he should tell me.
“She’s gone, Dylan. This information could help us find her killer.” Assuming you’re not it, dickface.
“She… she needed money.”
I arch my brow. “Wasn’t her father helping her anymore?”
He shrugs. “She needed more money.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to get out of here. You know, head to California or some shit.”
And what was the source of this additional money?”
“I… I think she was using information she had on people to—”
“Blackmail?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Not really. She just knew stuff. People would pay her for the info.”
That’s blackmail, idiot. This makes no sense. “Give me an example.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Come on, Dylan. You know something.” I know he does.
“The only thing I remember was about some dude having an affair. She was going to tell if he didn’t pay.” Adding a little snort, he says, “And the dude had bank.”
Jesus. So the guy was loaded. “That’s called blackmail, Dylan.” And it breaks this case wide open. “Do you have a name?”
He shakes his head. “No. I had nothing to do with that shit.”
Deciding to change directions, I ask him, “When did you meet Kara?” He just stares at me quietly. Still thinking about the blackmail, perhaps. “Dylan?”
“I don’t remember.”
That’s not going to fly. “Was it last semester? Last year?”
Still nothing.
“Let’s try this. Where did you meet her?”
“Cy’s.” He pauses. “I think.”
Cy’s is Cy’s Roost, a popular college bar and hangout right next to the Iowa State University campus. The same place Robbi spotted Kara. It’s also owned by Tayler Sorenson’s boyfriend, Luke Green. “You met at Luke’s bar?”
He growls at my question, so I rephrase it. “Was this before Tayler began seeing Luke Green?”
“Yes. No.” Dylan shakes his head and replies angrily, “I don’t fucking remember.”
“Would you say you’ve known the victim for a year?” I wait for a reaction from him but get nothing. “Six months?”
“Jesus.” He starts fidgeting in his seat, clearly agitated. “Something like that. Yeah, about six or seven months.”
“So, around the time you were stalking Tayler, you met Kara?”
“I wasn’t fucking stalking her,” he growls, angrily.
Ignoring his false claim, I rephrase. “You met at Cy’s Roost around the time you were trying to get back together with Tayler?”
He leans forward in his chair, runs a hand into his hair, and pulls at it. Hard. “What the hell… fuck, man. Yes. What’s the big deal?”
He’s getting more and more twitchy. Interesting. “Just want to be sure I’ve got all the information I need.”
“For what?” Dylan’s out of his seat and pounding on the table now.
Finch races to the other side of the table and places a hand on Dylan’s shoulder and neck, shouting, “Sit the fuck down.”
Dylan flops back into his chair and does that thing with his hair again. “Man, I don’t get it. What’d I do wrong?”
“You entered an apartment that’s considered a crime scene.”
“I told you. Jesus. I needed my shit.”
“Uh-huh.” I look down at the inventory sheet from Kara Becker’s apartment. “What were you looking for exactly?”
“My shit.”
“So you’ve said.” I push the sheet in front of him. “Which of these items were you looking for?”
I bet Finch a hundred bucks I knew what he was after. I’m just waiting for him to tell me he needed his bag of weed and pot paraphernalia that was sitting on Kara’s coffee table. While it’s legal in some states, Iowa isn’t one of them. Not yet, anyway.
He leans over and reads through the list. When he gets to the alphabetized M section, he looks up at me. “It’s for medicinal purposes.”
“Iowa doesn’t have medical marijuana.” We’ve got cannabidiol, but it’s only for specific diagnoses.
“Shit.” Dylan drags his hand through his hair again. Then, like a lightbulb just flashed in his head, he looks up at me and smiles. Pointing at the page, he says, “The weed wasn’t mine. It was Kara’s.”
Wow, that’s a shitty thing to do. Blame the victim. “Well, if that wasn’t it, then what ‘shit’ were you looking for?”
He glances down at the list of items from Kara Becker’s apartment. “My toiletries.”
“Uh-huh.” I push my chair back and stand. Looking at the rookie, I say, “Finch, take him back to the holding cell.”
“What!” Dylan screeches. “Why can’t I leave? I was just getting my shit.”
Ignoring him, I step out of the room and spot the captain drinking a cup of coffee and staring at the two-way glass. Once the door shuts, he smiles. “Nice job, Golden.”
I’m not sure what was so ‘nice’ about that. “I didn’t get much.”
“We now know he and Becker were friends for longer than a couple of weeks.”
Which is odd. How and why did the two of them decide to be friends? One hated Quinn, the other was obsessed with Tayler.
The captain makes a humming noise before he asks, “What would Becker get out of befriending someone like that dipshit Forrester?”
That’s an interesting question. “She hated Quinn. Quinn and Tayler are best friends. My guess? She had more plans to make Quinn’s life uncomfortable.”
“You should have asked him about that.” The captain is right.
I turn and peer through the glass, watching as Finch escorts Dylan from the room. Before I have the chance to think it through, I open the door back up. “Dylan?”
He stops and turns, anger written all over his face. “What?”
“Did Kara approach you first, or was it the other way around?”
He blinks at me.
“When
