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In the living room, Mae sat on the couch, surrounded by her friends.
“You need to leave,” I told Tori and Will. “We need to question her.” The words came out gruff and short, but sharp words that got straight to the point were all I had to give if I wanted to remain standing.
I couldn’t find a killer if I couldn’t get off the ground.
I should have known Tori wouldn’t listen. She went straight into protective best friend mode.
“We aren’t leaving. You can question her all you want when she’s had medical attention. Can’t you see that she’s not in a state to do anything right now?” The anger in her eyes was belied by the crack in her voice. “God, Boston. What’s wrong with you?” A sob cut off the last of her words, her grief finally overcoming everything else.
Her husband wrapped his arms around her small frame, drawing her into his chest and murmuring words of comfort in her ear.
“It’s okay. I can do it.” Mae’s quiet voice broke the standoff between Tori and me.
I dropped to my knees in front of her. “I need you to get it together and talk to me.”
Frustration rose when she didn’t immediately answer. Every muscle in my body was coiled too tight, and my heart thumped overtime, a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. I needed action. I needed to move. I needed to get the hell out of this apartment where all I could smell and see and think about was the deep crimson of Jayela’s blood. My patience snapped. “Do you want whoever did this to get away with it? Come on, Mae. I need you to tell me everything. Any little detail, and I need you to tell me now. There’s no sign of forced entry, so this is probably someone you know. The longer you take, the bigger the chance we never catch this guy.” I lowered my gaze to the floor, my head too heavy to hold up any longer, and silently begged her to have seen something. I needed something to go on, a name of who’d done this, or at the very least, an idea. Around here, murders got solved quickly, or not at all.
I refused to let Jayela’s death be the latter.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said finally. “We got drunk last night, and when I woke up this morning it was to Heath yelling my name—”
I glanced up sharply. “We? Who’s Heath? There was someone else here?” It took me a minute to realize why the name sounded familiar. “Heath? As in Jayela’s ex-boyfriend Heath? What the hell were you doing with him?”
“Yes. That Heath. I met up with him in a bar last night, and we came back here afterward.”
Tori’s eyes went wide.
“We had drinks. A lot of them.” She glanced toward her bedroom.
I followed her line of sight. Mae’s bedroom was right off the living room. The open door revealed a neat and tidy space, apart from an unmade bed and a mostly finished bottle of tequila discarded on the floor.
I swallowed hard, putting the pieces together. “You had sex with your sister’s boyfriend?”
“What? No! I mean, I don’t think so. We had some shots and we flirted. But then Jayela came home. We passed out. Or at least I did. I don’t know what happened after that. All I know is when I woke up this morning, Heath was in Jaye’s room, covered in blood…”
More pieces slammed together. Heath and Jayela had broken up on bad terms. I’d never really gotten the full story from her, not wanting to upset her further after their breakup, but now I wished I’d pushed her harder for it.
So instead, I pushed Mae, whose incessant babbling was only fueling the frustration and anger inside me. What on earth would have possessed her to bring her sister’s ex here? She knew that never would have been okay with Jayela. And the longer she babbled, the longer this guy had to get away. That wouldn’t happen on my watch.
“He was trying to save her, Boston. He had his hand on her throat, trying to stop the blood…”
“You think that means anything?” I snapped. “He wouldn’t be the first jealous lover who had instant regret. You’re going to have to give me more.” I racked my brain but I couldn’t even remember the guy’s surname. It had been years since I’d last seen him. “Tell me his full name. Quick, Mae. If I can get a team out over to his house now, before he does a runner, we might actually be able to nail him.”
“Wait. Nail him? You don’t know he did anything.” She turned to Tori and Will, looking for some sort of support, but thank God, they had the sense to back me up. Both of them nodded at her, encouraging her to tell me everything.
“Michaelson,” she said slowly. “Heath Michaelson. He has an apartment in Saint View. But I—”
That’d do. I could get the rest of the story from her later. I grabbed a walkie-talkie and barked an order into it. “Somebody find this guy’s apartment and get a team over there now. Restrain him, but you do not talk to him until I get there. Is that clear?”
A garbled response crackled across the radio in agreement.
I stared down at Mae. “Did you hear anything during the night?”
“No, I swear. Heath and I… And then nothing. Nothing until this morning when I woke up and heard him yelling for me.”
“Did you see him with the knife?”
She blinked up at him. “What knife?”
