“Cruel how?” the detective on the left asked.
Before I could answer, the door to the interrogation room opened and a man in an expensive suit strode in. He had the air of a person who was used to making an entrance.
“Tyson.” Ivy greeted him, a slight narrowing of her eyes my only clue that she wasn’t pleased to see him.
“Ivy,” he returned smoothly before turning to the detectives. “Brewer Tyson,” he said, introducing himself like his name held the strength of an argument in and of itself. “I’m representing Ms. Keyes.”
Without waiting for an invitation, Tyson took a seat next to Ivy.
“I was under the impression that you had not hired counsel,” one of the detectives told Ivy.
She’d discussed this with me. She had a law degree. She could serve as my guardian and my attorney—and use the fact that we hadn’t hired someone to send the message that I had nothing whatsoever to hide.
“I didn’t,” Ivy said, eyes on Tyson, “hire an attorney.”
“I work for Ms. Keyes’s grandfather,” the lawyer volunteered. “I’m merely here to ensure that things go smoothly for everyone involved.” Brewer Tyson folded his hands on the table. “Shall we proceed?”
There was a second or two of silence, during which I thought Ivy might actually kick the kingmaker’s lawyer out of the room, but instead she turned, closemouthed, back to the detectives.
“You were getting ready to tell us why you considered John Thomas Wilcox to be a cruel person,” one of the detectives said.
“Was she?” Tyson asked. “I’ll advise my client,” he said, his gaze going briefly to me before returning to my interrogators, “that she is under no obligation to answer that question.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll answer. John Thomas liked to hurt people.” I stuck to simple, declarative sentences. “He picked on younger kids, anyone he saw as weak. He especially liked playing games with girls.”
“What kind of games?” the detective on the right asked.
I measured my reply. “He liked pictures. Taking them. Sharing them. He made a lot of innuendos. He’d get in your personal space, touch you when you didn’t want to be touched.”
“Did he ever lay hands on you?” the officer on the left asked. “Did he play games with you?”
Maybe they were just trying to establish the facts—or maybe they were trying to establish motive. Either way, I stayed calm as I replied. “He grabbed my arm a few times when I wasn’t appropriately cowed by who he was and what his father did. But that was it.”
The detective laid a picture on the table. Emilia, slumped against the bathroom wall. “We were able to trace this picture to a disposable cell phone in John Thomas Wilcox’s possession.”
That wasn’t a question, so I didn’t reply.
“Would you consider this girl to be one of John Thomas’s targets?”
This girl. Emilia didn’t even get a name.
“I understand that this picture was distributed to the whole school,” the detective continued. “Was that why Asher Rhodes attacked John Thomas?”
For the first time, I had to work to stay calm. “You’d have to ask Asher,” I said.
The detective who’d asked the question leaned forward. “I understand that you witnessed the attack.”
The attack. The way he referred to it set my teeth on edge.
“John Thomas incited that fight on purpose,” I said. “He baited Asher.”
“And why would John Thomas Wilcox do that?” the detective pressed.
“To prove that he could.”
There was a beat of silence. “If that’s all you have to ask my client,” Tyson put in, “let’s wrap this up.”
The last thing the detectives wanted was to “wrap this up” so soon.
“Would you say that Asher Rhodes has a temper?” the one who’d asked me about the fight said. “Is he easy to provoke into violence?”
“No.” The response came out sharper than I’d meant it to, so I forced myself to tone it back a notch before continuing. “Asher is very easygoing. A little goofy.” I searched for a better way to describe Asher. “Kind.”
“Then why rise to the bait?” the officer asked. “What could our victim have possibly said that could justify—”
I snapped. “John Thomas told Asher that he’d slept with his sister. He said that if Emilia claimed she didn’t want it, that was a lie.” Those words hung in the air. My tone was low and deadly. “Like I said, John Thomas liked to hurt people.” I paused. “I despised him. He was a bully and a coward and I didn’t think he was worth the breath it took to say his name. But—” I held fast against the memories that wanted to come. “I tried to save him. I tried to stop the bleeding. I yelled for help. I called 911.” I never broke eye contact, never slowed or sped up my speech. “I didn’t have anything to do with John Thomas’s murder. And neither did Asher. He was suspended yesterday. He wasn’t even on campus when John Thomas was shot.”