Five Minutes Alone by Paul Cleave Page B

forward so I can toss it onto the couch next to him. “Do you remember Kelly Summers?”
    “Yes.”
    “And Dwight Smith?”
    “Yes. You still haven’t told me why you are here.”
    “Dwight Smith is dead,” I tell him.
    “Okay,” he says.
    “Okay?”
    He shrugs. “I can’t imagine many people grieving for him. That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here, but my guess is it has something to do with Wayne Beachwood. Did Beachwood kill him in jail?”
    “No,” I tell him, then I fill him in on the last two weeks of Dwight Smith’s life. His release from jail, his job pumping gas, his sudden departure from the gas station last night after spotting Kelly Summers.
    “Kelly Summers is dead too?” he asks, and still without the emotion.
    “Kelly is fine,” I tell him.
    “I’m pleased to hear that,” he says, but he doesn’t sound pleased. He doesn’t sound anything. If anything he sounds bored.
    “We think Dwight Smith was murdered,” I say, and while most of us think that, I know it for a fact. I saw the window and the shower curtain. I don’t tell him this. I’m here because Hutton wants me here.
    “Okay,” he says.
    “Okay?”
    “It still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”
    “You were the investigating detective five years ago. I want to know what didn’t make it into the file. I want to know what Kelly or her family is capable of. You got to know some of her friends and family. I want to know if you think she could have done this either alone or who would have helped her.”
    “So she’s a suspect,” he says.
    “Possibly.”
    “Kelly Summers is a victim, Theo, she’s not a killer. If Smith followed her to her house last night and forced his way inside, and she overpowered him, why not call the police?”
    “Because—”
    “Because what?” he asks. “There was nothing left out of the file, Theo. If Kelly killed him while defending herself, she would havecalled the police, you would have shown up, you would have taken a look at what had happened whether she’d hit him with a ceramic bowl or stabbed him with a pair of kitchen scissors, and you’d have concluded that Dwight Smith, ex-con and rapist, Dwight Smith who had just broken into her house and attacked her and had been fought off, well, that Dwight Smith would have gotten what was coming. I know you. I know you wouldn’t have tried to see more to it than what was there if that’s what you’d seen, and there’s no reason Kelly Summers would suspect you’d see it any other way. There is no reason at all for Kelly Summers to have not called the police. There is no reason for her to try and hide it by putting Smith onto a set of train tracks.”
    “I don’t think the train was part of the plan.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    My phone starts vibrating in my pocket, but I ignore it. “Smith’s car was used to transport him out there, but it ran out of gas. Whoever was driving was probably taking him somewhere to bury, where he’d never be found, but the plan changed.”
    “I see,” he says.
    “Does that change your opinion of Kelly Summers?”
    “No,” he says.
    “No?” I ask, and my phone has gone quiet.
    “It’s the same thing, Theo. There’s no reason Kelly would hide what would have been a clear case of self-defense. I’m not saying Dwight Smith wasn’t murdered. It could be your theory all stacks up, but what I’m saying is something else must have happened between the gas station where Smith worked and his following of Kelly Summers. He couldn’t have made it to her house. Have you considered he jumped in front of the train?”
    “We’re considering it,” I tell him.
    “What did forensics find in the car? Other prints on the wheel? Hairs in the headrest?”
    “Nothing. In fact forensics is sure Smith was the last person to drive it.”
    “Well there you go,” Schroder says. “Look, Theo, I know it seemsunlikely he saw Kelly Summers then had the urge to kill himself, but to me it sounds like a