“What do you mean Felyne is innocent?” Javier paced, his face red, his hands constantly running through what was left of his hair.
“More importantly, HOW DID YOU ACCESS MY ACCOUNT?” Dayna’s face turned three shades of red. She was pissed off, but I didn’t care.
“You left your password on your desk,” I said. “Look at the video! Whoever killed Angie waited until Felyne left. She’s literally the only person we can rule out for sure.”
“I didn’t—” Dayna clenched her fists. “You are so frustrating sometimes.”
Still, Dayna and Javier watched over my shoulder as I brought up the video clip in question on the laptop I brought with me to the station.
Javier shook his head. “There’s no way to know if that’s the murderer!”
“You can literally see this person wait across the street, and then they cross the driveway in an angle that is towards Angie’s back yard gate. It’s totally the murderer!”
“Kate, look at the evidence. Felyne was trying to kill Angie because she found out about her under the table money-making scheme. Her gravy train was ending. We have a clear motive. We have opportunity, because we know she was there once that day already, and she had no alibi for the time of the murder. We couldn’t verify what time she arrived at that bar, only the time she paid her bill. We have one murder weapon - the jelly. When she worried that wouldn’t work fast enough, she went back and killed her. It’s very clear!”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would she plan for days, make the jelly, deliver the jelly, and then not wait for it to work? And she was right. There wasn’t enough poison in the jelly to kill Angie unless she ate the entire jar in one night, which seems highly unlikely.”
“BECAUSE SHE PANICKED!” Javier’s face was so red I was worried he was going to have an aneurysm.
I looked to Dayna, who had taken the laptop and was playing the clip over and over, a frown on her face.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Kate. I have to agree with Javier. I do think this is something, but we just can’t be sure what. It still looks like Felyne did it.”
AAAUUUGGGHHH! How do these two not get it?
I respected the hell out of Javier. He didn’t get to be Chief of Police in Palm Hills for nothing. He was smart, street savvy, and good at his job. He inspired the people who worked for him to put in a solid day’s work and not to take any shortcuts, and he emphasized ethical practices in every aspect of the law enforcement system, which made Palm Hills’s police department one of the best small-town PD’s I knew.
But the city of Palm Hills had never seen a crime like this, and Javier simply was not an out-of-the box thinker.