The Darkest Hour

by Anina Collins

  “She wanted me to come over so we could talk.”

  “Why? Why not just talk on the phone?”

  Alex shook his head. “She said she wanted to talk and asked if I’d come over. She sounded upset, so I told her I would.”

  “Did you know what she wanted to talk to you about?” Derek asked as he jotted down details from Alex’s answers on a sheet of paper in front of him.

  “No.”

  “So you drove over to her place to talk to her at what time?”

  “It was right around nine.”

  I listened as Alex gave answers that offered the most basic of details and couldn’t help but wish he’d give more. I wanted to know why she’d felt like she could call him to come over when she knew full well he was with me. I wanted to hear him describe how she acted so I could know everything about why she’d invited the man I was seeing to her house.

  Derek didn’t seem frustrated by the lack of details, though, and continued to ask his questions more methodically than I’d ever seen him. “Okay, so you get to her apartment and she acts how? Happy to see you? Hugs you? What happened?”

  Swallowing hard, Alex thought about the question and then said, “She acted like she didn’t even know why I was there and screamed at me to stop toying around with her feelings.”

  “And where exactly was this? Outside the apartment? Inside? Where were you two standing when she started screaming at you?” Derek asked, clearly remembering how Mallory Michaels had described Bethany fighting with a man just outside her front door that night.

  “Outside. Well, sort of outside. She answered the door and immediately she asked what I was doing there, like she didn’t remember calling me just a few minutes earlier. I stood outside, never going in, and I think she eventually came outside with me as she continued screaming at me.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I told her I’d come over because she asked me to, and she kept saying I was toying with her feelings.”

  Derek looked up from his notes and asked, “Did she hit you at any point in that exchange between the two of you?”

  A sheepish look came over Alex’s face, and I thought back to Mallory’s claim that Bethany had gotten physical with whoever the male she was fighting with. “She was flailing her arms because she was upset, but I wouldn’t say she hit me. And before you ask, I didn’t hit her either. I merely put my hands up to stop her.”

  Mimicking what he’d just heard Alex describe, Derek put his hands up in front of his face like he was shielding himself from an attack. “Like this?”

  Alex nodded. “Yeah. She wasn’t trying to hurt me or anything like that. She was just upset.”

  “Okay. Then I’d like you to push up your sleeves, if you will. I want to see if she left any marks.”

  A rush of emotion tore through me as my mind flashed back to that afternoon when we’d been together. Had I jokingly tickled him and in the process scratched his forearms in the same way Bethany may have that night when she was so upset? Part of me sat terrified at what I might see if he lifted up his sleeves, but another part of me needed to see the evidence that what had happened between them was exactly as he’d described.

  Not hesitating for a moment, he pushed up the sleeves of his black thermal shirt past his elbows and displayed his muscular arms for us to see there wasn’t a scratch on either one. Just as he’d described.

  A feeling of relief washed over me, followed by a feeling of guilt for doubting him. As Derek wrote down the details of what Alex’s arms looked like, I took the opportunity to ask a question that had plagued me since I’d first heard how upset Bethany had been when she saw Alex there to talk to her. I just hoped it didn’t get me thrown out of the room.

  “Did she sound strange on the phone, like she had been forced to call you?”

  My question made Derek stop writing, and he looked over to me sitting on his left with an expression that told me he wasn’t happy I’d decided to be a part of the questioning. I smiled and looked over at Alex, who sat thinking about what I’d asked.

  Finally, he answered, “Not like she’d been forced to call me, no. She didn’t sound like herself, though.”

  “What do you mean?” Derek asked, seeing some use for my idea after all. “How would you describe how she sounded on the phone?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t sound right. That’s the only way I can describe it. She didn’t sound like herself.”

  Wanting more than that, Derek began talking with his hands, waving them around as he pressed further. “Like what? Was she talking unusually slow or fast? Did she sound upset? Frightened?”

  Alex’s face showed his frustration as he tried to remember exactly how Bethany sounded nearly forty-eight hours earlier. “I don’t know. I can’t really describe it. She just didn’t sound right.”

  His voice louder now, Derek continued to ask, “What do you mean? How did she sound, Alex?”

  Finally, his frustration overwhelmed him, and Alex exploded. His eyes flashing his exasperation, he shouted, “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew? She just didn’t sound like she always had when I spoke to her on the phone. She sounded different. That’s all I know!”

  Derek and I sat stunned at Alex’s outburst, and as he leaned back in his chair after the final word had left his mouth, he looked exhausted like he’d run through all these same questions over and over in his mind since the moment he found out Bethany had been murdered and he was the prime suspect.

  I’d never seen Alex so emotional in all the time I’d known him. Even when we were together in private, he’d never shown me that side of him. I’d come to rely on how even his mood had always been, and now I saw this whole thing had already begun to take its toll on that balance I so admired.

  Turning his attention back to the exact time when Alex saw her last, Derek asked, “Okay, what time did you leave her apartment?”

  “Just after nine. I wasn’t there more than five minutes before I left.”

  “Did you see her sister in the apartment?” I asked, eager to find out if Mariah had been there at that point Sunday night.

  Alex shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I only saw into the apartment for a second or two, but I didn’t see her. Only Bethany. Did you find her sister yet?”

  Quickly, Derek snapped, “I’ll be asking the questions here, even though Poppy here seems to think she’s part of this too. Don’t forget you’re not on this side of the table now, Alex.”

  I saw the hurt in his eyes from Derek’s icy rebuke, and it was evident in his voice when he asked, “Do you really think I did this? After all those months we’ve worked together, you think I could kill someone?”

  For a moment, I couldn’t hear a sound in the room as I wondered if Derek would finally answer that question I’d asked him half a dozen times since the investigation began. Did he really think Alex could kill Bethany in cold blood like that? Or was his insistence on Alex being his main suspect borne out of something else that had nothing to do with Bethany’s murder?

  He didn’t answer the question, though, and continued on with his own. “How would you characterize your relationship with Bethany?”

  Alex glanced over at me and then away. “We were friends.”

  Derek wrote down the word friends with a question mark and looked up to face him. “I meant before you two broke up.”

  “A typical relationship,” Alex answered flatly. “We dated and then broke up.”

  “Was it physical?” Derek asked.

  “Yes.”

  With just one word, all that jealousy I’d harbored when they were dating came rushing back. I knew it was silly, but I felt my cheeks warm at the thought of him with Bethany. I didn’t want to face him, so I looked away as Derek continued to probe into the nature of their relationship.

  “Did you love her?”

  I listened with desperation to hear what he’d never told me about her. In all fairness, I’d never asked about anything concerning his time with Beth
any, so it wasn’t like he’d hidden anything from me. But now as I waited along with Derek to hear how he’d honestly felt about her, I wished I would have asked when it was just the two of us and I didn’t have to dread his answer.

  He hung his head and quietly said, “No, but I don’t think she felt that way for me either.”

  “So you didn’t love her, but do you think she loved you?” Derek asked, strangely referring to something already answered. What did he know that I didn’t?

  Alex raised his eyes to look at him and shook his head. “No, I think she cared about me, but I don’t think it was ever love.”

  And then I saw what Derek had kept from me when he lifted the piece of paper he’d been writing on to reveal photocopies of handwritten journals. I didn’t have to guess whose they were.

  Tapping them into a neat pile, he looked across the table at Alex and said, “Let me read you a few passages from her diaries. Here’s one from late August where she says, ‘Alex isn’t like anyone else I’ve ever met. So silent usually, but sometimes I see a side to him that’s so intense. I haven’t told him how I feel about him yet because I don’t know which side will respond.’ That’s from the 29th of August.”

  With every word, I wanted to run out of the room so I didn’t have to hear what she thought of the man I loved. Alex simply kept his eyes fixed on a spot above Derek’s head and didn’t react at all.

  Turning the page over, Derek said, “Here’s another one from early October. ‘Alex is slipping away and I don’t know what to do to stop it. Is it her or another woman that makes him so able to just brush me off night after night? I love him and I’m losing him.’”

  I watched for Alex’s reaction and saw him wince like hearing she cared for him more than he cared for her hurt. For me, the jealousy that had flooded my brain with her first diary entry had been replaced by guilt. I didn’t know if I had any part in why they’d broken up, but that she mentioned me as a possible reason for why he didn’t care about her as she wanted him to made me feel sick. For as much as I hated him with her, I never consciously acted in any way to see their time together end.

  Derek turned another page and asked, “Now you say you two broke up in October, right?”

  Alex pursed his lips, nodding yes to answer his question. By the number of entries still left in that pile of papers, I had a feeling what Derek was about to ask would make me feel even sicker.

  “Then why did she continue to mention you in her diary even up to the day she died? This is from not even a week before her murder. ‘No matter if I see him every day or not, he never leaves my mind. Sometimes I press my lips together and I can still remember how they felt when he last kissed me. I don’t ever want to forget that.”

  For a while, Alex sat speechless as Bethany’s words hung in the air around the three of us. What was he supposed to say? What would anyone say hearing another’s deepest thoughts about them?

  “So I ask you again. Did she love you?”

  His voice low as if answering in his normal tone would be disrespectful, Alex said, “I didn’t think so. I had no idea she felt this way about me.”

  Either did I. Yes, it was true that I had a sense when they broke up that Bethany had been hurt by it, but it didn’t take long before she was back to her normal self. Had she been hiding this secret love she still felt even recently from everyone but her diary?

  Or maybe I hadn’t seen it because I didn’t want to.

  Alex continued, “We hadn’t seen each other in months, other than in passing at The Grounds or at the diner and once on the street while her sister was visiting. She gave me no indication that she felt that way about me after we broke up. I mean, I knew she wanted to continue seeing me, but I never thought she loved me like she said in those diary entries.”

  “Well, it sounds like it would have been hard to miss. So let’s get back to that night. What did you do when you got home from going to talk to her?”

  “I drove home and went to bed. I planned to wake up early, go for a hike, and then meet Poppy by nine at The Grounds.”

  Derek added to his answer, “Like you do every day, right?”

  For the first time since he’d avoided my gaze during Derek’s questions about his relationship with Bethany, Alex looked over at me and smiled. “Yeah, like we have since almost the first day we began working together.”

  “And you didn’t leave your house after you returned home from Bethany’s that night? Can anyone vouch for you on that?”

  Shaking his head, Alex sighed. “I didn’t leave, and no, nobody can vouch for my whereabouts. You know where I live. There’s not a soul around for nearly a mile. The next time I saw another soul was when you and Poppy showed up at my house at five the next morning.”

  “You seemed to be asleep for a long time then since you say you were back at your house by ten. Was it usual for you to sleep that much?”

  I wanted to interrupt and explain that he’d left my house early Sunday night because he’d felt sick, but I kept my mouth closed since the reality was Derek didn’t care about those hours Alex had been with me. All he cared about were the hours after he’d seen Bethany at nine.

  “It wasn’t usual or unusual, but I’d been feeling sick earlier in the evening and I was pretty worn out when I returned to the house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Bethany’s outburst had shocked me and I felt bad about her being unhappy.”

  “Why would it bother you so much if you didn’t love her, like you said?”

  “Because I’m a decent human being, Derek. I don’t know what you want me to say. Yes, I had a relationship with Bethany, but no, I didn’t love her. I feel bad about that. I broke it off with her because I knew I never would be able to feel like that for her.”

  “So what you’re saying is while you were sleeping, someone else with some hatred for the woman you’d been sleeping with for months until you broke up with her surprised Bethany as she got into her car and with a hunting knife dug into the left side of her neck and then dragged it across to the right side under her ear, nearly cutting her head clean off. Someone we haven’t been able to find in her personal life. Someone who coincidentally murdered her just like your wife was murdered. That’s what you’re saying?”

  Alex said nothing, but his deep frown and the sadness in his eyes told the story Derek didn’t want to hear. He hadn’t hurt Bethany or Helena, and just hearing what happened to them devastated him.

  “Is that what you’re saying, Alex? That this person with a hunting knife like the one that slit your wife’s throat did the same thing to Bethany but it’s not you? That—”

  I jumped out of my chair and ran around the table to stand next to Alex. “Stop it! Stop describing it like that! You’re not a heartless person, Derek. Can’t you see what you’re doing to him?”

  He looked up at me with no expression at all and then lowered his stare to Alex, who sat with his shoulders hunched over like he’d just been punched in the gut. “I can’t hold you because I don’t have proof yet, but once the coroner gets the DNA results back from the lab, I won’t have a choice.”

  “Even though I showed you I had no scratches on my arms, and even though I had no motive to kill her, you have me guilty and convicted already. Everything Poppy has tried to tell you, you’ve ignored because you had your mind made up by the time you came to see me that morning,” Alex said sadly as he weaved his fingers through mine at his side.

  Derek gathered up his notes and papers and shrugged. “I’m no different than your partner here usually is. That should tell you something.”

  He left, and I crouched down beside Alex. I looked up into his eyes and saw how much what Derek had done had hurt him. “Don’t listen to him, and if I have ever been like that on any case, I apologize. Let’s get out of here.”

  Alex nodded and brought my hand to his lips for a kiss. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m tired of sitting on the sidelines on this case. I think it’s time for your partner to j
ump into the game before Derek sends me up the river.”

  My emotions a wreck, I went from wanting to cry after watching Derek practically torture him to wanting to cry in happiness that Alex was finally going to be by my side again on a case.

  “It’s about time. Your partner has missed you so much.”

  For the first time in public, he kissed me. “And he’s missed you too.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We walked out of the police station together as we had so often in the past, but this time it was different, even if only the two of us understood how. After that interrogation, it truly was Alex and me working together because Derek clearly had no interest in pursuing anyone but him. If we wanted to find Bethany’s killer, we’d need to do it on our own.

  Heading down Main Street toward my house, Alex stopped in the middle of the block and turned to face me. “He was wrong back there. I hope you know that.”

  “Of course he was wrong,” I said as I stopped next to him. “You could never kill her, Alex. I know that.”

  He hung his head. “No, I mean when he said he was like you. He’s not. When you jump to conclusions, it helps me see another side to the case. It opens my mind, no matter how wild and crazy your idea may be. Derek’s not like you.”

  I took hold of his hand and smiled up at him. “He’s just doing his job. The problem is he’s not as good at it as you are.”

  Those brown eyes I could get lost in for hours filled with sadness once again. “I’m sorry for all the times I chastised you for jumping to conclusions, Poppy. You really do have great instincts. I forget that sometimes, but seeing how misguided Derek is on this case made me realize how good you are.”

  Shivering from the cold, I waved off his apology as I tugged him in the direction of my house. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything. My type of detective work is an acquired taste. It’s just good that you’ve acquired it. Let Derek get mired down in his DNA and everything Donny has to offer. We’ve got better things to do. Science isn’t how this case is going to be solved.”

  Alex chuckled at my anti-science attitude. “He’s banking on that to break this case.”