CHAPTER 35

"H ello, Theo. Thank you for coming in," Dylan said as she sat down in front of Theodore Samuel at the table.

Carina and Kieran were standing behind the two-way mirror with Kevin, who was a little skeptical of them both being there, but they'd promised him that they wouldn't interfere, and he'd agreed, citing his respect for Carina. Carina knew that it was really only because he'd gotten her in trouble, and she would probably be his boss soon.

Jason had decided against any kind of suspension or disciplinary action, which meant nothing would go on her record the same year she'd be announcing her candidacy for district attorney, thankfully. He'd given her a strong warning to be careful, which she'd taken, but she'd also used that meeting as an opportunity to tell him that she and Kieran had a new theory of the crime and had some evidence to back it up. Jason had been skeptical at first, but Carina had shown him the footage, told him the story, and had at least earned the chance to repeat it to Kevin and let him take it from there. Kevin had been more than interested to hear all about it once he'd watched the video himself. He'd even reached out to Miami PD to talk about Cory's case. Carina hadn't been all that surprised, though, because it had turned out that Kieran really was a good detective.

"Dylan has to play this right," Kevin stated. "If she spooks him, he'll lawyer up, and we won't get anything out of him." He turned to Kieran then. "Have you ever thought about being a cop? You'd make a great detective. No one else put this together. It was too far out there."

"Tell me about it," Kieran said.

"But you believed her this whole time?"

"I did, yes. She's my twin sister," Kieran replied.

"You know this isn't a slam dunk, right? We have to question him because he's a possible suspect that Frank could use against us at trial, so we have to cover our asses here, but it might not go anywhere," he said.

"I know."

"Still, though, you found his travel records. That's very helpful for Frank." Kevin shrugged.

Kieran hadn't found travel records exactly. What she had was the tickets and loitering charge on Theo's record, so she'd cross-referenced that with what she'd known of Marin's movements and asked Marin the questions that she hadn't known the answers to already. He'd had parking tickets around Marin's place of work, wherever that was at the time, and speeding tickets in the same cities where she'd lived. The loitering charge was from when she'd worked at the grocery store in Tampa. He'd been following Marin around the country since the moment she'd moved out of the house they'd shared in foster care, and her sister had had no idea.

That information, when given to Frank, had been enough to make him add Kieran as an official outside investigator on the case so he could avoid any kind of trouble sharing information with her. Kieran hadn't needed any particular license to act as a consultant, and she'd volunteered, so Frank's boss hadn't had a problem with it.

"Did you really have to read me my rights out there?" Theo asked Dylan.

"We do that with everyone we talk to. Wouldn't want to get in trouble with the lawyers later," Dylan replied nonchalantly.

"I already gave my statement," Theo told her. "You need me to say it again?"

"Actually, yes. If you don't mind, it would be good to start with the time you knew Marin May back in foster care," Dylan confirmed.

"Her name isn't May," he returned.

Carina smirked and said, "She's already got him."

"Oh, I know," Dylan said. "Not when you knew her. That's her married name, though."

"Her name was Smith."

"Yeah, it was. But it's May now, just like Nick. She didn't change her name when she married Cory, but she got a job and left him not long after they got married, so that makes sense."

"Whatever," he said. "What do you need me to say here?"

"Why don't we start back at the beginning," Dylan suggested. "When did you first meet Marin May?"

"Marin Smith ," he corrected.

"He hates that she took someone else's name," Kieran said.

"Clearly," Kevin replied.

"I met her when I was seventeen."

"At your foster home?" Dylan asked.

"Yes, like I said before." Theo shifted uncomfortably a little. "And she was obsessed with me; wanted me to fuck her all over the house. Even with the foster parents around, she was all about me and would try to touch me, and you know…"

"No, I don't," Dylan said, shaking her head.

"Grab my dick and stuff. She wanted it, is what I'm saying. In public. In private. Wherever." He looked proud then.

"And you didn't want to be with her?"

Theo looked away from Dylan and replied, "Nah. She was too young."

"Not much younger than you."

"I was into older girls then, but Marin was all over me, I'm telling you. One night, I was in the shower, and she just walked into the bathroom. I was…" He looked up. "Jerking off. I mean, we didn't exactly get any privacy, so I had to make do with the shower, but she saw me and just wanted it. She tried to take off her clothes. I kicked her out."

"And then what?" Dylan asked.

"Then what what ?"

"Did you finish?" Dylan asked, catching him off guard.

"Jerking off?"

"Yeah."

"You really need to know that for your investigation?"

"Yes," Dylan lied.

"Well, yeah," he said. "You're not a guy, so you don't understand, but yeah."

"After the girl you were repulsed by walked in on you in the shower?"

"I wasn't repulsed by Marin," Theo argued and did so quickly. Then, he seemed to realize his mistake and added, "She just wasn't my thing."

"Was this before or after you got a girlfriend?"

"Before."

"So, I want to make sure I understand," Dylan said. "Because attorneys will ask all these personal questions to prove their cases. They're a real pain in the ass."

"Hey," Kevin said, laughing as they all looked on through the mirror.

"You were a teenage boy with an active sex drive?"

"Yeah, obviously."

"And you had a girl you were not biologically related to living in the bedroom next door, who was ready and willing to give you sex probably whenever you wanted it, including in that shower, but you resisted because Marin May was what? If not repulsive; was she just ugly to you? Not pretty enough?"

"I never said that. Marin Smith was pretty," he replied. "And I was… getting it elsewhere at the time, so I was good."

"You said this was all before your girlfriend."

"It was. But I had dates and stuff. Other girls put out. I was cool."

" Other girls?" Dylan caught on.

"Shit. She is good," Kieran said.

"What?" Theo asked.

"You said other girls put out. Other than who?"

"No, I just meant that other girls than Marin."

"So, Marin didn't put out?"

"No, she did. I told you."

"Then, why did you say girls other than Marin were willing to have sex with you, Theo? I'm just trying to understand because it sounds like Marin May was pretty twisted. She wanted to sleep with you, and when she didn't get it, she burned you with cigarettes."

"Yeah, she did. Fucked up, huh?"

"Yes," Dylan said. "And she was so fucked up that she killed your girlfriend."

"Yeah."

"And you knew she did it?"

"I saw the clothes in the garbage, yeah."

"And you never said anything until now? That's close to twenty years you've been holding on to this. And Marin May moved away. She was long gone and out of your life. No danger to you, right? I mean, you look like a strong guy. I'm pretty sure if she tried something, you'd be able to handle yourself."

"Smith," he said softly.

"Sorry?" Dylan asked as she leaned in a little.

"Her name is Marin Smith. Stop calling her Marin May."

"No, Theo, her name is Marin May." Dylan opened the file folder on the table. "I have it right here, on her booking form, and–"

"She shouldn't have taken his last name," Theo retorted.

"Here we go," Carina said as she took Kieran's hand.

"Why not? She clearly loved him enough to marry him. Lots of women change their last names to their husband's, and Nick May was her husband. You know what it means that he was her husband, right? He and she…"

"Nick May hit her! He beat her!" Theo's face went red.

"How did you know that, Theo? I never told you that. Nothing's hit the news yet about details in this case, and the ADA who took your statement didn't tell you."

"Marin was the type to go for someone like that asshole."

"But not you?" Dylan asked.

"What?"

"Marin went for Nick May, but not you; that's what you're saying."

"No, I told you that she wanted to be all over me. All the girls did."

"All the other girls, but not Marin."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Theo, I'm just trying to understand here because you never told anyone about Marin murdering your girlfriend, and you had evidence back then. You could've gotten justice for that poor girl who got stabbed and put Marin away, punishing her forever, but you didn't. You're saying Marin was all over you and that you were getting it from other girls, but when I went to check on your old friends from school and talk to your foster parents at the time, they all told me that you were a loner who didn't have friends and that your girlfriend was really a friend who pitied you."

"Dylan went to talk to the foster parents and kids from the school?" Kevin asked Carina.

"Hell, no. Not yet, anyway." Carina shrugged.

"Yeah, well, fuck them," Theo retorted. "I had plenty of friends, and girls were all over me."

"Your foster mother actually told me that you were always trying to sit next to Marin at the dinner table, and it was Marin who would try to get away from you ."

"That's bullshit! And what the hell am I still doing here? Why are you bringing this shit up?"

"Hold on to him, Dylan," Kieran said softly.

Carina squeezed her hand.

"I'm sorry," Dylan said. "I know this is uncomfortable. But the defense attorney will be worse than me."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Do you want to go? I'd understand."

"Good. Give him an out," Kevin said.

"Why? We don't want that," Kieran added.

"It's good for us if she offers. We don't want him to take it," Carina replied.

"No, I'm fine. How long is this going to take, though, because I've got to go soon."

"Not long," Dylan said, closing the folder she wasn't really using for anything. "So, your girlfriend was stabbed."

"Yeah. We weren't together that long, though."

"You weren't in love with her or anything?"

"The fuck? No," he stated as if it should have been obvious. "She put out and was good to look at. She lived at a shelter, so we had to meet in weird places because I was still at the foster house."

"Weird places like where?" Dylan asked.

"Like alleys. Warehouses. Empty buildings and stuff. She'd blow me sometimes when I was on my way home from school, so we needed a little privacy."

"Gross," Carina said.

"So, you knew the warehouse where she was found? You'd been there before?"

"Yeah, a bunch of times. That's where we'd fuck sometimes. Inside of it and outside. She didn't care."

"He just put himself at the crime scene," Kevin noted.

"Were you there the day she was killed?" Dylan asked.

"I didn't find her body, if that's what you're asking."

"Were you with her at all that day? I'd heard before that she went missing from the shelter, but you were her boyfriend, so you knew where she was, right?"

"Yeah, I knew."

"She caught him in a lie," Carina said and shook her head. "She's really good at this."

"And you saw her that day? She probably let you do whatever you wanted to her, right? I mean… I'm sure you were good."

"Yeah, we fucked. She asked me for another round, but I had to go."

Dylan nodded and said, "And then, she was killed?"

"I guess."

"With your knife?"

" My knife?"

"Yeah. See, I was looking into this case because we're trying Marin May for it, too, thanks to your statement, and I came across the old evidence box that no one had looked at in over a decade. I run the cold case squad here, so I got to crack it open after you gave us your statement. Did you know that the person who killed your girlfriend left the murder weapon there? It looks like they tried to wipe their fingerprints away and maybe just tossed it to the ground before they fled the scene."

"No, I–" Theo cleared his throat. "I didn't know that."

"Well, they missed a spot, and we found it."

"Missed a–"

"A fingerprint. On the hilt. Do you know what a hilt is?"

"What? No, but I don't give a shit."

"Okay. Well, there's a partial print there, and I've sent it away for comparison."

"Was there a print on the hilt?" Kieran asked.

"Nope," Kevin replied.

"You found a fingerprint?" Theo asked.

"Yeah," Dylan said. "And you know, with advances in DNA, I bet we'll be able to find some of that, too."

"That is true," Kevin noted. "Dylan found the knife yesterday. She already sent it for testing, but that'll take weeks to get back."

"So, here's what I think we should do next," Dylan continued. "I think we should start being honest with one another. I'll try to see what kind of help I can get for you, but you have to tell me the truth."

"What truth? I fucking told you the truth."

"Theo, she wasn't your girlfriend, was she? She was just some girl you knew from the foster home."

"I told you–"

"You wouldn't have a girlfriend because you were in love with Marin May."

"I fucking told you to stop calling her that!" He yelled.

"Why, Theo?"

"Because she's not his. She's mine! Marin is mine. She always has been and always will be."

"She got him," Kieran said with a smile on her face.