She nodded and soon approached the man. His name was Barry Little, but nothing was little about him. He was tall, six-two, with broad shoulders and a clean-shaven face. He lookedlike a salesman but could also have easily been a lawyer or some other professional. He definitely had a businessman look to him.
She held out her hand and introduced herself. “Thank you for coming down.”
“It’s always the husband—or ex-husband—who gets looked at first,” he stated bitterly, “even if we didn’t do anything.”
“Which is why, the sooner we can count you out,” she noted, “the better. Then we can focus on finding the real killer.”
He studied her in surprise. “Well, that’s a refreshing attitude.”
She shrugged. “Listen. I’m not here looking to nail you, unless you did it. What I want is the killer. If that’s not you, then the sooner we get there, the better,” she explained. “Follow me, and we’ll head into an interview room.”
Once there, she sat down, started the recorder, identified the both of them, and then began. “Okay, so can you give me your whereabouts during the time frame in question?” She went on to specifically describe the time span she was interested in.
He nodded. “At home, sleeping.”
“Anybody else with you?”
He shook his head. “As you are undoubtedly aware, I’m an ex right now,” he said, “and I haven’t hooked up with anybody new.”
“Do you have anybody in your life right now?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
She nodded. “So, you don’t have an alibi.”
“No, I don’t. But the thing is, most people are at home still sleeping at that hour,” he declared. “Honestly, it was one of the problems in our marriage.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“The running,” he stated. “I get that it’s healthy and keeps you fit and all that good stuff. But she was fanatical about it, andit wasn’t just a morning jog for her. She was competitive and absolutely wouldn’t miss a morning run.”
“Some people are fitness crazy,” she murmured.
“Yeah, that was her all right.Fitness crazyis a good phrase for it.”
“And I take it you were not?”
“God no,” he said, “absolutely not. She wanted me to be, but I’m of a much more moderate nature.”
“Yet I understand you were quite abusive,” she stated.
He flushed angrily. “No, I wasn’t. She put that into the divorce papers, and her friends went to bat against me,” he replied. “I never hurt her. We had plenty of yelling matches, but she always yelled back just as much.”
She frowned at that. “So, you never hit her, and are you saying that you never abused her?”
“God no. That was her and her bloody BFF,” he snapped. “The two of them were against me from the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
“Since she started the divorce. I tried hard to fight against it. I wanted to go for marriage counseling. I signed up. She didn’t show. I tried to coax her to go see somebody on her own, but she wouldn’t do that either. Everything I tried to do in order to save the marriage she avoided, saying it wasn’t worth saving.”
“And yet in her paperwork filing, she actually lists abuse.”
“I know. I think it’s almost become a standard cry sometimes,” he suggested. “It doesn’t matter if there actually is any abuse, but they twist it all around to make it sound like you are this horrible person and how they never did anything wrong.”
“Did she do something wrong?”
He stopped, looked at Kate for a long moment, and sighed. “You probably won’t believe this, but Jenna was the abuser. It’s not something I’m proud of and sure as hell not something Iwanted to make public, but it won’t matter if I’ve got a murder charge on my neck. You got to understand. She’s the one who hit me. And it was more than once.”