Kenzie hoped they were both telling the truth.

  It was hard to believe that the red-faced, red-haired man sitting calmly at the interrogation room table might have spent months poisoning his brother to get his inheritance and then viciously killed Alex Collins with a hammer.

  He looked physically strong enough and didn’t have any obvious disabilities that would have prevented him from doing what they suspected him of. He had certainly been bitter about the money his father had left to his brother and had an aggressive manner. He believed that he had been in the right and had been prepared to spend years litigating to get what had been his.

  Was he cold-blooded enough to shortcut the process with murder?

  “Thanks for coming in,” Detective Cameron told him. “I appreciate you taking the time out of your day.”

  “I don’t think you realize how much there is to do when a loved one dies. I have all these arrangements to make, and I guess I’m the only one who can do them. My mom is in Australia,” he reminded Cameron.

  “Yes, that must make things difficult.”

  Kenzie and Cameron both knew that Kirk wasn’t planning a funeral or memorial service, unless he had recently changed his mind. He hadn’t wanted to deal with his brother’s remains, and had tried to cajole Kenzie into having the municipality take care of the cremation instead.

  So she wasn’t sure what arrangements had him so busy, unless maybe it was dealing with his brother’s bank accounts and shutting the start-up business down before it ever got off the ground so that he could get his father’s money out of the company. Dealing with financial institutions and financiers could be mentally taxing; Kenzie knew that. But Kirk’s complaint didn’t seem to garner much sympathy from Detective Cameron.

  “That may be,” Cameron agreed. “Unfortunately, I have a job to do, too, and that includes pulling people like you away from their busy lives to deal with murder and other very unsavory topics.”

  Kirk made a face, demonstrating his dislike of such topics as well. “I suppose we may as well just deal with it,” he sighed. “No point in complaining about a necessity.”

  Cameron nodded. “When I talked to you last, you said you had never been to Scott’s apartment.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I don’t think it is quite true, is it? You have been to his apartment before. More than once, in fact.”

  Kirk’s eyes widened. “No!” He shook his head vigorously. “I had never been there. I wasn’t talking to Scott. I didn’t have any reason to go to his place. We did not get along. Not since our dad died. Before that, even.”

  “And you have sent letters and deliveries to his address.”

  “No way. Why would I? We were not in correspondence. If we were, it would be by email or text. I’m not a letter writer.”

  “And yet you sent him, what…?” Cameron flipped some pages in his notebook. “Candies? Pills? What was it?”

  “Nothing. I never sent Scott anything. Where are you getting this?” Kirk leaned forward, trying to ascertain details from Cameron’s notebook. “Who told you that? None of it is true. I don’t know why anyone would say that.”

  “Maybe because it was true. What other reason would they have? No one profits from making this stuff up.”

  “Was it that roommate of his? I don’t know why he would be telling stories like that.” Kirk’s face got redder. He looked like a boiled tomato. “I’m telling you, I never even met the guy until I went to the apartment to look at Scott’s room so I could start making plans to dispose of his possessions. I never even met the guy before that, so I don’t know why he would be telling you crap like that. Maybe he’s trying to hide something. Maybe he’s the one who gave Scott steroids. He was the one in the apartment with him. He was the only one who had access. You should be looking at him.”

  “How do you know he was the only one with access to Scott’s food?”

  “Well, I mean, it only makes sense, right? They lived together. They both used the fridge, right? He could just open Scott’s food and put whatever he wanted in it, and no one would ever know the difference.”

  “There were other people in and out of the apartment. Scott’s girlfriend. Alex’s girlfriend. They were there sometimes, too, so they also had access to it. And who knows what other friends they might have had over, deliverymen, tradespeople. Maybe they gave a neighbor a key in case of emergency or for when they were out of town. It wasn’t like there was a log kept of who was there when.” Cameron gave Kirk a warm smile. “But we know you were there.”

  “No. You’re wrong. I never went there while Scott was alive. I never had anything to do with him while he lived there.”

  He did not, Kenzie noted, tell Cameron to ask Alex about it. Ask Alex; he’ll tell you I was never there.

  He knew better than to ask Alex to stand as his witness this time because he knew Alex was no longer around to do so.

  He was starting to sweat. Cameron was not, so it probably wasn’t a matter of the room being too warm. Kirk was beginning to feel the pressure.

  “We know you and Scott did not get along. We know that you wanted the money that had been left to Scott. You felt like it had been taken away from you. He’d already been given money by your father, and you didn’t feel like he deserved it.”

  “He didn’t. There was no reason he should get all that money just because he thought he could become the next billionaire with this start-up company. He was never going to achieve that. How long had he been raising the money and ‘getting ready’ to start the company? He wasn’t ever going to get it off the ground. He wasn’t ever going to become anything. It was just a dream, and he was never going to accomplish it. Dad should have realized that. He should have known by then that Scott wouldn’t get anywhere. He was a failure.”

  “Really.”

  “You don’t know anything about him,” Kirk maintained. “Only what you’ve been told by Alex and whoever else you’ve talked to. You think he was the golden child, the brilliant one, but he could not get anything done. All the good ideas in the world will not help you if you can’t follow through on them.”

  “Or if you are dead.”

  Kirk snorted. “It’s not my fault he was dead. That was his own fault, too.”

  “Oh? How is that his fault?”

  “He obviously ticked somebody off. Who was it that was so angry with him that they killed him? You said that he had been feeding poison to Scott for months. Months! Somebody had to really hate him to do that.”

  “Like you?”

  “I didn’t hate him. We just didn’t get along, and I didn’t think that Dad should have been babying him, giving him money, and telling him how wonderful he was. He should have been telling him to get his stuff together and find courage.”

  “What do you think he should have done with his life? Given up on the start-up company and done what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really care. He could sweep streets or collect garbage, for all I care. He would have been more useful to society that way. These guys who spend all of their time thinking and on high finance, these big risky ventures and investments… what kind of good are they really doing the world? He should have given it up to take up a good, honest living. Maybe then… he wouldn’t have died like that.”

  “You think it was directly related to his career choice.”

  “I think it was directly related to him being a dweeb. He had no idea how to get along with other people. To behave like a normal human being. All he wanted to do was all of that financial stuff, and to tell people how he was going to become a billionaire. Because a few people decided he was brilliant when he was a kid, he thought he was something special and could do these things. He should have just gotten along with people. Made friends. Hung out. Had a drink with the guys.”

  He sighed and looked away from Cameron. Maybe he would have liked to have been friends with his brother. Maybe he wished they could have gotten together for drinks sometime, just hung out as brothers, talking about things Kirk could understand instead of the math and finance stuff Scott was so enamored with. But his brother was gone now, and he couldn’t get him back. Those dreams, if he’d ever really had them, were gone.

  A phone rang. Kirk reached into his pocket and pulled it out. He frowned, rejected the call, and put the phone down on the table. “Sorry about that. I really do need to get back to work before too long. If you have anything important to ask me… so far, I don’t understand why you brought me all the way over here just to ask me if I ever went to Scott’s apartment. I already told you I didn’t.”

  “Did you know Scott’s girlfriend?”

  Kirk shook his head. “No, how would I know her?”

  “Do you own a hammer?”

  Kirk stared at him. “A hammer? Yeah, I guess. Everybody owns a hammer.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Well… I don’t have it here with me.”

  “I’d like to send an officer home with you. You could give him the hammer.”

  “Why would I do that? Why do you care if I own a hammer?” His face screwed up as he made a show of trying to understand what he would need a hammer for.

  “Because that is what Alex Collins was killed with.”

  “What?” Kirk’s face went from florid to deathly pale in a few seconds. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your buddy Alex. The guy who was supposed to be giving you an alibi. He’s dead.”

  “With a hammer?” Kirk seemed shocked by this news. “How do you kill someone with a hammer?” After asking, he raised his hands in a “stop” gesture. “No. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about it. I’m leaving. I don’t know why you would think that I would have anything to do with anyone’s death. I haven’t done anything to hurt anyone.” Kirk stood up. His phone started to ring again. He picked it up and again rejected the call.

  “Look. Don’t call me again,” he told Cameron. “I’ve had all I’m going to take from you. Understood? Just leave me alone.”

  “We already have someone at your house looking for the hammer,” Cameron told him unemotionally.

  “I didn’t kill Scotty or Alex or anyone else. I certainly never hurt anyone with a hammer. You are crazy. You need to stop looking at me and look for the person who really did this.” Kirk tugged at his collar. “Do you really think there is some sicko killer out there who poisoned my brother and beat his roommate to death with a hammer?”

  “They’re both dead. Who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t know. That’s your job. You are going to have to figure it out because I… it’s not me, and I don’t know who would have done something like that!”

  Cameron nodded. “I see. Well, good talking to you, Kirk. I hope that next time, it will be under different circumstances.”

  He didn’t say that he hoped to be arresting Kirk the next time, but Kenzie thought the insinuation was pretty obvious.

  Kirk’s phone started ringing again, and he looked like he wanted to throw it across the room. He silenced it, jammed it into his pocket, and stalked out of the room. Cameron followed him and escorted him to the elevator.

  A few minutes later, Cameron was opening the door to the room where Kenzie had watched the video feed.

  “He didn’t break,” Kenzie observed.

  “Not yet. But I think he will.”

  “You’re not going to get him to come in for questioning again.”

  “It will be interesting to see whether he goes directly home and how he reacts to the police searching his home.”

  “Have they found anything? The hammer? Blood evidence?” Kenzie already knew the answer. Cameron would not have let Kirk walk out of there if they had.

  Cameron shook his head.

  “Did you see or hear anything you found enlightening? Anything I might have missed?”

  “The overhead camera might catch things at a different angle. It might see things that you can’t.”

  Cameron raised his brows. “Like what?”

  “The caller ID on Kirk’s phone screen.”

  “Who was trying to reach him so urgently?”

  “Mr. Harris. The landlord.”

  46

  Cameron called Harris on the phone in the middle of the table and switched it to speaker.

  “Yes,” Mr. Harris confirmed. “I was calling Kirk Robertson. Why does that matter?”

  “Why were you trying to reach him?”

  “I need someone to take his brother’s personal things from the apartment. He’s the next of kin.”

  “Why is that so urgent?”

  “It has been more than a week. It’s not like I was harassing him the day after Scott died. But I need someone to take those things, and he’s the only one I can call. Why do you care about it?”

  “We’re just trying to get confirmation of everyone’s movements,” Cameron said. “If you are calling Kirk, I assume you have a history with him. Had you met him before? While his brother was living in the building?”

  “No.” Harris’s tone was confused. “I only met him last week, after Scott died. What makes you think I knew him before that?”

  Cameron grimaced and slapped the table softly, not loud enough for Harris to hear and wonder what was going on.

  “Well, he must have come to visit before. I just assumed that you might have run into each other on one of those visits. You strike me as the kind of landlord who keeps track of what is happening in his building. One who is concerned about the people and the community within the building, not just whether people’s toilets are working.”

  “Of course,” Harris agreed, flattered. “People are what is important. It is much easier to keep things running smoothly if people are willing to talk to each other and support each other. It opens up conversations, and you learn about things before they become a problem. It’s much easier to address issues early on.”

  “Exactly,” Cameron agreed. “A building like yours is more than just a structure; it is a living, breathing organism.”

  Kenzie raised her eyebrows at Cameron, who responded with a sheepish grin and a shrug.

  “I’m like a gardener,” Harris said, taking up the idea with enthusiasm. “Watering and pruning and training. Creating an ecosystem where everyone works together.”

  “Right,” Cameron agreed. “So you know who spends time hanging around your building, even if they are not your tenants. You recognize people who visit regularly, know who they go see…”

  “Some of them,” Harris agreed. “Not everyone, of course, not if they’ve only come once or twice. But regular visitors, you do get to know them.”

  “And Scott’s visitors? The people who came to see him?”

  “His girlfriend, of course. And sometimes she had other friends that she brought over with her.”

  “Uh-huh. And Scott must have had other friends who came over too. And Alex said he sometimes had over investors or other businesspeople he was working with. He was quite smart, you know. He was starting his own company that was expected to really take off.”

  “I always thought he was a smart boy.”

  “So, who else did you recognize out of his friends? Who was over regularly?”

  “Well,” Harris cleared his throat. “He did have some visitors who were dressed up in suits or white shirts. Those corporate types. And the girlfriend’s friends.”

  “But no one else? His own friends?”

  “No, I don’t know of any. He wasn’t a social person, I don’t think. He liked his books and computers, you know.”

  “His brother didn’t come over very often?”

  “I had never met Kirk until last week,” Harris insisted. “If he had been in the building before, I didn’t know about it.”

  “Who would have seen him?”

  “Maybe one of the neighbors. Maybe Matt, when he did work in their apartment. Matt is quite friendly with a lot of the tenants. He talks a lot. Or maybe the security camera caught something.”

  “Security camera?” Cameron repeated. He pulled out his notepad and started to flip through it. “I thought you said there was no security camera in the building.”

  “I said there wasn’t anything useful on the camera footage,” Harris clarified.

  Cameron frowned, shaking his head and looking for the place he had written down something about this. “No, you didn’t. You said you didn’t have any security camera footage. If you had said that there was footage, I would have been there looking at it long before this. A lot of these systems only keep three days or a week of video before they start recording over it again!” he said in frustration. “How much do you keep?”

  “I don’t know… we download it to a hard drive, and then switch out the hard drives when they get full. But they hold quite a bit.”

  Kenzie could see the hope come back into Cameron’s expression.

  “So you might still have footage of the days before Scott died?”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t that long ago. But I looked at it myself. There wasn’t anything suspicious on it. That’s why I told you there wasn’t anything.”

  “You said you didn’t have any footage.”

  “No, I said I had already looked at it, and there wasn’t anything.”

  Cameron rolled his eyes and shook his head. “That is not what you said.”

  “Well, officer… what is it you want from me? What exactly do you want me to do?” Harris asked in irritation.

  “What I want you to do is send your Mr. Johnson over to the police station right now with whatever footage you have from before Mr. Robertson’s death. I want to talk to him about anyone he might have seen in Robertson’s apartment, and to go over the security footage now, before anything gets deleted, overwritten, or forgotten.”

  “Matt has work to do here⁠—”

  “And you want to help out with our investigation. You want to know who killed Scott and why. You don’t want things like that going on in your building without knowing about it. You don’t want a killer living in or visiting your building.”

  “Well, of course not, but…”

  “Send Matt over here ASAP. We need to cue up that video and start reviewing it. It will take time.”

 

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