EYEWITNESS

smiled. “Sorry, it’s always been easier to call Jessica my aunt. She was much older than me, but technically, I think we’re third cousins, so many times removed.”
Johanna nodded again. “Oh, so how did you know each other? I don’t think I could pick out a second cousin or beyond out of a crowd.” Johanna thought about her own family and how her parents had passed away when she was young. She’d gone to live with an aunt, but the woman had been unmarried and without children. Cousins were a rarity in her family.
“Oh, my mom was big into family genealogy.” He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “We were always meeting some relative or another. Jessica had a big house and lots of room to play outside, so I remember going there often.”
Johanna recalled the discussions with Lilly. “So you knew their daughter too? Jessica’s daughter, that is?”
Another unreadable emotion crossed his face. “Yeah, definitely. Uh, could we go into your place and talk? If I’m going to be sharing this family stuff, I feel a little exposed in the hallway.”
Before she made a move, Johanna pressed a button on her phone. She was going to verify the identity of this man before she let him into the house. Lilly answered the phone.
Johanna introduced herself. “I just had a quick question. Did Jessica have a relative named Thomas?” She waited while the woman went through a rather lengthy discussion of Thomas and his relationship with Jessica.
When she hung up, she smiled at the man. “You’ve been vouched for.” She pulled her key out of her purse, and they entered the apartment.
Johanna offered him a drink, which he declined. That was probably a good thing since she thought she only had beer and water available.
They sat down in the living room, facing each other. Johanna was drawn to those eyes as she looked at him. She forced herself to focus by reminding herself that he was probably married, engaged, or seriously involved with someone. There was no way to bring that up in a discussion of the murder of his aunt.
“So you had questions?” she asked finally, when he hadn’t spoken. She wasn’t sure if he was shy or merely rude.
He seemed to snap out of his thoughts. “Yeah, the police haven’t shared much with the family. We know that she was found dead in her home, and some man killed himself after confessing, but that’s it. No motive, nothing more.”
Johanna took a deep breath. This would not be an easy conversation. She started by explaining what had happened at the park, how she’d seen a couple in what turned out to be Jessica’s car, and then witnessed a murder. She talked about hiding in the woods, calling the police, and tracking down the vehicle to his aunt’s house.
“By the time that I got to your aunt’s house, they’d found her body and had declared her dead.” Johanna felt as though she’d just finished a marathon. She was tired and emotionally beat from sharing the events of the last few days.
“So what about this guy? The one who supposedly killed her?” he asked.
“I don’t really know. I never met him. He was dead before I could speak to him. I know that his confession doesn’t match what I know of the killings, and it leaves several large things unexplained: the car, the locked doors, and all of that. Why did your aunt make her doors that way?”
Thomas smiled. “She was scared to death to live alone after her husband died. She wanted to make sure that she was safe, locked in as it were, but some people in the family made fun of her for it—suggested that she could go to an assisted living place. So she made the locks as unobtrusive as she could. Nothing on the outside, and locks up near the top of the doors on the inside.”
The idea made sense to Johanna. She lived in a secure building with multiple locks on her door. She could understand the need for a feeling of security, even if it hadn’t saved her from murder.
“So why are the police so certain that it was murder? I mean, wouldn’t it have been easier to call her death a suicide?” Thomas asked.
She felt awkward talking about his family member in this way. It felt as though she was involved, and yet, she had never met the woman while she was alive.
“My understanding is that she was shot. I’m not certain of where because the police asked me to identify her, only to determine if it was the same woman I’d seen in the car. I saw her face, but there were no visible signs that was what led to her demise.”
“So below the neck?” Thomas said. He asked it as a question, but Johanna felt that he didn’t expect an answer from her.
“They couldn’t find the gun in the house. So a gunshot with no gun has to be murder. You’d expect the gun to be right by her side if it was suicide or an accident.” Johanna thought back to the house and its design. How could someone have escaped from that locked space? She still didn’t understand how the police could close the case without an explanation.
“And you said her car was still at the park?” he asked. “I don’t understand that.”
Johanna explained how she’d found the car the last time she was there, unlocked but cleaned out of any forensic evidence. The police had been thorough, even if they hadn’t strongly believed her story.
“So that’s it?” he asked. Johanna wasn’t sure what he’d expected from her. If the police had believed this story and closed the case, then a member of the public was unlikely to overturn that decision.
“In a nutshell,” Johanna replied.
“How can I help? I need to know more,” he said,