“So, you’re telling us that you decided you would leave your wife, yet clearly it wasn’t resolved if you were fighting over that very thing. But you don’t have to deal with that whole problem now.”
“I didn’t kill her,” he stated. “You know that, right?”
“What did you do when she didn’t show up for work on Monday?”
“I sent her several texts, asking her to come in. I was hoping she would, but she didn’t answer my phone calls or my texts.”
“Today is Wednesday,” she noted. “Have you had any contact with her since the fight on Saturday morning?”
He immediately shook his head no.
“And what time was it Saturday?”
“We fought very early that morning,” he recalled. “I left about seven in the morning.”
“You said you didn’t check into the Hotel Vancouver until noon. Where were you for those five hours?”
He stared at her, shaking his head. “Surely you don’t think I killed her?”
“It’s looking good right now,” she noted in a suspiciously bland voice.
The sweat built on his forehead, and he immediately dabbed at it again. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. I loved her. I swear.”
“Which is why you had a fight because you obviously hadn’t made the decision that you loved her enough to leave your wife by then.”
“No.” He sighed. “And I will regret that forever.”
As he stared out the window, she could see the visible tremors in his fingers as he played with a pen in his hand. He was trying to regain some semblance of control. He was obviously overwrought, but she didn’t know whether it was because he was afraid he was about to get caught or because he would actually miss the love of his life. “Can you confirm where you were?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Well, I was at her apartment. I left. I didn’t see anybody that Saturday morning,” he added. “I was pretty upset. I stormed out of there. I took the stairs down, went out the back way, got into my vehicle, and I just drove around for a while.”
“For five hours?”
He winced. “No. I sat at the beach, just thinking about what I was supposed to do with my life. It’s a pretty major deal to get a divorce for an office romance. It’s so cliché and so damn common and frankly just messy on many levels. It’s not what I ever expected. I fell in love, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’re married, but do you have children as well?” Rodney asked.
Tom looked over at Rodney and slowly nodded. “I do. I have two daughters and a son.” His voice heavy, Tom sagged even farther into his chair. “I’m not proud of what I did,” he admitted, “and I get that you’re probably judging me.”
“We see it all the time,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “Marital vows apparently don’t matter anymore.”
Rodney looked at her sharply, but she ignored him. Her suspect, now skewered in place, twisted in his seat even more. “I get it,” Tom acknowledged. “God.” And he buried his face in his hands.
“Well, now you get to backtrack, don’t you?” she said cheerfully. “I mean, once you explain to your wife the fact that your girlfriend has been murdered, I’m sure she’ll take you back, with no problem.”
He dropped his hands and stared at her. “Murdered?”
“Oh, yes, murdered after being tortured for days.”
The color completely drained from his face. He shook his head. “No. God, no. Please, not her.”
“What was she like?”
His voice trembling, he replied, “She was an angel. She was the most beautiful, heart-warming soul I’ve ever met.”
“And yet somebody hated her. Any idea who?”
He shook his head. “She was very popular with all our clients, very popular at the office. I have no idea.” His voice went hoarse, as he caught tears at the back of his throat. “I need—I need to go home.” He stood.