37 Reflections
Andrea stared at herself in the bathroom mirror.
She wasn't here to cry. She wasn't! She wasn't here to throw up or splash water on her face. She just needed a moment…
She stood there, arms out in front of her with her fingers splayed across the hard stone countertop. She took a moment to just focus on her breathing, the cool feel of the stone beneath her fingers.
She wished she had something this solid to hold on to mentally.
When the guard had hustled her out of the room, he had been very concerned. Was she okay? Did she need medical attention?
She had brushed him off as casually as she could. She was fine. She wasn't hurt. There had just been a moment when she had thought… But she was fine. There was nothing to worry about. She was fine.
She almost thought the guard was going to lecture her for misusing the duress button—she imagined that it would result in him needing to fill out some paperwork on the incident—but he didn't. He just directed her down the hall when she asked where the nearest bathroom was.
It felt like the moment that she knew she was alone, the weight of everything that happened hit her at once.
The feeling she had when Kyle had grabbed her, that flash of anger and frustration and… and fear. Just for a split second, feeling him grab her, seeing how fierce he looked, she was afraid.
But then… his face after the alarms went off. He hadn't looked annoyed when she'd hit the alarm. He'd looked… Shocked. Shattered. Hurt…
Andrea looked at her face in the mirror, and tried to calm her breathing. She wasn't crying! She was flushed, and her eyes were puffy and red, and…
Her reflection didn't look fine.
She didn't want to feel sorry for Kyle. He was a liar! She wasn't going to let herself get fooled again. No matter how convincing his act might have been, how believable the pain on his face had been as she was led out of the room. How his voice had cracked when he said her name.
She didn't feel sorry for him, she was still angry at him! She NEEDED to stay angry at him!
Otherwise she might start to have doubts…
Because what if Helen was lying? Or mistaken?
If Triss wasn't real, why even talk about her? Why talk about his dinner plans with her that lunchtime? If she was a secret girlfriend he was planning on killing, why not just keep her… secret? Especially since according to the coroner's timeline, she was already dead at that point, why bring her up?
It didn't make any sense to lie like that. It just made him look more guilty.
Even after he had been arrested, why say that he had been out with a made up girlfriend in the woods? If Triss didn't exist, she couldn't confirm his story. As an alibi, it was worse than just saying he had been out on his own.
As a lie, it didn't make any sense. And as much as she hated to admit it, while she might have disagreed with his actions in court or his positions, they always at least made SENSE. Even when he had deceived her to lure her into taking the case, it had made sense to do so. And whenever she called him out, he has always come clean.
This is why she had wanted to stay angry, to focus on him being a liar. If she let herself stop and think… it made more and more sense that she might have been wrong.
Andrea hated admitting it to herself, but she had handled this badly. She had been so shocked at Helen's testimony, that she had flown off in a rage to confront Kyle. Because she had let things get personal between them. Because finding out he had lied to her hadn't just felt like a client lying to his lawyer, it had felt like being betrayed by a… a friend?
What she should have done was actually study all the evidence. She didn't even know what else Helen had said in the rest of the interview, or what other evidence there might be in the folder Jack gave her.
Was there another explanation for what had been said? Was there something that could prove the truth one way or the other? Right now it felt like she was basing her feelings on the word of a girl she knew almost nothing about. Maybe there was something in the files that might cast doubt on Helen's claims.
Should she really trust Helen more than she trusted Kyle…?
She quickly turned the faucet on as she heard the door to the bathroom open, pretending to wash her hands as a woman came in and entered one of the stalls. The cold water felt soothing.
She needed to get out of here. She needed to get back to work. Things looked hopeless, but she had persevered with hopeless cases before. It looked like Kyle had lied to her, but clients had lied to her before and it hadn't stopped her. The only reason this time was different was because she had let herself get too close. Because she had trusted him, and felt as though that trust had been betrayed.
Kyle had said he wanted her because he needed a lawyer who believed in him. Maybe this was why. Because he needed someone who would keep fighting for his innocence, even when it looked hopeless. And maybe she needed to apply some of his philosophy, and just try as hard as she could to prove he was innocent.
If he really was guilty, she shouldn't be able to. But if he was innocent… there had to be something.
For now, she had to make her mind up to trust that he was innocent, and act like he was innocent.
Maybe once she did, she wouldn't feel in such turmoil.
She wasn't crying. But she dabbed the corners of her eyes anyway.
* * *
It had taken her hours to go through all the paperwork, as well as re-reviewing the original police report and coroner's report. Rather than head back to the office, Andrea had stayed at the precinct so she could get right to work. While the lobby was bustling at all hours, the rest of the station had grown quieter as the evening had drawn on. She had set up at an empty desk so she could spread out her papers and really analyze all the evidence.
Andrea would have liked to ask Helen more questions, but she had been allowed to leave already. Besides, Andrea doubted the detectives would have let her take part in the interview. She had a full copy of the final transcript, and that would have to be enough.
It didn't look good for Kyle. As far as everyone was concerned, he had lied about his relationship with Beatrix.
Someone had killed Beatrix in that bed, that much was certain. What physical evidence was there?
There was Kyle's shirt covered in Beatrix's blood. It was odd that there were no other bloodsoaked clothes of his. Had they already been disposed of? Or was the shirt an effort to manufacture evidence?
The knife was no help, that was already in the apartment.
They hadn't found any of Beatrix's fingerprints anywhere, which is odd if she had been there before. If he were covering up a murder, why wipe down the scene before he had even disposed of the body? If Kyle were guilty, that just wouldn't make sense.
She stared at one of the few photos of Kyle in the report, a copy of his driver's license. His smiling face in miniature, along with his date of birth, height, weight, blood type, address, and so on. She wished the facts of the case were that easy to pin down.
Andrea rubbed her temples. It felt exhausting to try to come up with excuses for Kyle to still be innocent when the most obvious answer was that he was guilty.
What Andrea really needed wasn't evidence of Beatrix in the apartment, it was evidence of someone else being there at the moment of the murderer. Someone who killed her. Someone other than Kyle.
She drained the last of her cup of terrible vending machine coffee and added the empty cup to the stack. That was her fourth cup. She couldn't remember when she had last eaten, but she'd learned to keep going on caffeine and adrenaline when she had to.
She spread out the pages of the coroner's report again. There had to be something here that would let her convince herself one way or another. She just needed some peace of mind.
She had looked over the autopsy and crime scene photos so many times that she had grown a little desensitized to their content. They showed a horrific scene, but it wouldn't help Beatrix find justice if Andrea shied away from studying the photos in detail searching for a lead.
All of the wounds were consistent with Kyle. The fatal neck wound, the weird post-mortem stabbings... They were all consistent with someone of his height and handedness—he was right-handed. If only it was as simple as proving the killer had been left handed.
What about the defensive wounds on Beatrix's legs and bare feet? The report talked about how they were likely to have been obtained in a struggle. Did they tell her anything about the killer?
No. But what if… what if the KILLER had been wounded in that struggle? Beatrix had been fighting for her life, you'd expect the killer to have bruises at least.
The image of Kyle's chiseled torso came to Andrea's mind. She had been so busy looking at the injuries from the taser and then… distracted… that she hadn't really thought to look for any other injuries. But she didn't remember any bruises or scratches…
Unless…
Did they check that…?
The thought invigorated Andrea more than a cup of espresso. She wanted to rush off straight away to investigate, but forced herself to read the entire coroner's report again, just to make sure this wasn't something they had already covered. It was possible they had, and it just hadn't been worth including in the write up, but maybe…
Andrea started packing up her papers. It looked like she was headed back down to the morgue.
