cops, they all ran when they heard the sirens, including Celeste. I’m sure not having extra witness statements helped my case.
Detective Rodriguez was there along with some detective I didn’t know. They must have thought Rodriguez and I had a rapport. That I would be more likely to talk to someone I already knew. But being reminded of the night I found out my murdered sister was pregnant didn’t make me feel particularly chatty.
“Why’d you fight Kai?” he asked.
“I’ve always hated the dude. Never really liked that Violet was dating him.” The detective took notes.
“Why not?”
“He’s a piece of shit fry cook, and his brother is a drug dealer. Do I need more of a reason?”
He kept asking why I was fighting with Kai, changing the wording of his question to catch me in a lie. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell them that he kicked my ass because I choked the girl I was fucking a little too hard. And how he then accused me of liking to strangle women. Women like Violet. How the fuck could that asshole even suggest it? Instead, I just shrugged my shoulders and gave a vague answer, saying it was over a girl. That was kind of true.
I kept thinking about Kai’s anger. He attacked me with a vengeance. My earlier assumptions about him killing Violet weren’t adding up now. Was he trying to draw attention to me, or did he really care?
“Did you know about this?” Detective Rodriguez asked while sliding a leather-bound journal across the desk. I glanced at it.
“Nope.”
“It’s your sister’s diary. For the most part, she kept it vague. She mentioned a love interest a lot. Do you know who she could be talking about?”
“She was dating Kai. You know that.”
“We have reason to believe she was talking about someone else.”
“Who?” I asked, the hotel key Breeze showed me burning through my mind.
“We don’t know yet.”
No, but I’d sure as fuck find out.
“I found a hotel keycard for the Sandals Resort. She might have gone there with whoever this sorry fucker is,” I admitted.
Detective Rodriguez quickly took a note and sighed. “Getting a warrant for a hotel’s security feed could take weeks. So much red tape. I’ll see what I can find out.”
I didn’t fucking have weeks.
After they were satisfied that the fight between Kai and me was nothing, and that it was just a stupid party, they let me go, telling me to take it easy on the parties for a while. I was in the interrogation room for less than an hour.
I was lying in my bed, trying to make sense of everything that happened last night. Celeste. Breeze. The fight with Kai. Talking to the police. I brought my hand to where my eye was black and tender. I definitely deserved it. The words he hurled at me, accusing me of strangling my own sister, hurt worse than his fists. And now everybody thought that I had killed Violet.
It was Saturday, so at least I didn’t have to face seeing anyone at school. Not that I would have gone anyway, but at least today I didn’t have to make up an excuse for not being there.
I dragged my ass out of bed and got in the shower. I was too tired and sore to even rub one out. But at least the hot water felt good on my skin, the parts that weren’t bruised anyway. The shower helped to wake me up. I got out and wrapped a towel around my waist, taking the time to examine my eye in the mirror.
I went to my dresser to grab some clothes and saw the plastic hotel keycard Breeze gave me with the box of Violet’s belongings. I stashed it in my drawer a while ago. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it at the time, but seeing it now, I knew that I had to do everything I could to prove that Kai killed Violet. I couldn’t handle people believing that I did it.
I examined the card. It had the Sandals logo printed on it, but no address. I typed the name of the hotel into my phone and only one location came up. It was over two hours and one ferry ride away, but at least I wasn’t going to have to go to a bunch of different hotels, trying to find the right one. I looked up the ferry schedule and saw that if I left