Page 107 of Homecoming

“She was quite a bit younger than you.”

“Yes, and I felt guilty about that, but she dismissed it from the start. She said she was a full-grown adult woman allowed to decide who she wanted to spend time with, and anyone who had a problem with it could fuck off.”

As Dan took copious notes, he ached for the strong, fearless woman whose life had been cut tragically short.

“Did her parents and friends know you guys were hanging out?”

“One of her friends did. A girl named Lauren Rogers. She’d tell her parents she was staying with Lauren when she was with me.”

“Do you know where I’d find Lauren?”

“She’s local. She worked with Tanya at the sailing camp. I’m not sure what she does the rest of the year.”

“I’ll find her.”

“Why do you need to talk to her?”

“She may have information that’ll help, like she could tell the court how Tanya liked you, trusted you, never had anything bad to say about you. That kind of thing. If, of course, she never had anything bad to say about you.”

“Not sure why she would’ve. We were all fun and no drama. We both knew this wasn’t a forever kind of thing, but it was fun for the time it lasted. She left to go back to school, and I didn’t hear from her again until the day before she came back to town for the future sister-in-law’s bachelorette party.”

“What did she say when she contacted you?”

“That she’d be in town for the weekend and wanted to get together. I told her I’d be at the Barnacle Friday night and to stop by if she was near there.”

This was excellent new information that would be useful to him. Knowing Keith had a preestablished, casual relationship with Tanya and that there was someone who could confirm that would help to show he would’ve had no reason to kill her.

“Tell me about Friday night.”

“She came in with her girls around ten. We had to act like we were just meeting because none of them knew about us. Her parents would’ve flipped out about her hanging out with an older guy, especially one with an arrest record, so we kept it on the DL. I bought a round of drinks for her and the others, and we danced the rest of the night. At one point, we snuck into the ladies’ room to fuck.”

“Did you use a condom?” Dan asked, though he already knew.

He shook his head. “She’s on long-term birth control, and neither of us had been with anyone since the last time we were together.”

“You realize that puts your DNA in her vagina, among the other places you touched her.”

“That’s all I can think about, but I didn’t hurt her. I’d never hurt her. She was the cutest, sweetest, funniest girl.”

“Call her a woman when you refer to her.”

“Right. Sorry. She was a great person, and I’m crushed that someone killed her.”

“Did you get to talk to her at all during the night?”

“Here and there. It was loud and crowded, but she said her semester was going well so far, but it was hard to get back in the groove of studying after the summer.”

“Was there anything else she said or did that might help us?”

“There was one thing that happened, but it didn’t stand out to me at the time…” He continued to rub at the stubble on his jaw. “She got really upset at one point.”

“Did she say why?”

“She said she thought she’d seen her ex in the crowd, but that wasn’t possible because he was in Connecticut.”

Dan’s heart began to beat faster when he heard that. “Did she look for him?”

“No, but after she thought she saw him, her whole disposition changed. She wanted to get out of there and asked me to walk with her for a bit to make sure she wasn’t followed.”

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