One Night. No Alibis

Chapter ten: Replaying The Night

She called a meeting on Tuesday. Not at Zach's house this time: neutral ground, the back corner booth of the diner on West Street that was slow enough on Tuesday afternoons to give them a private conversation. She said they needed to go through the night again, properly, with everyone saying everything they actually remembered.

They came, which surprised her a little. Even Caleb came, sitting across from her with his hands flat on the table and his expression arranged into something cooperative and calm.

'I want to go through it in order,' Ava said. 'Starting at ten and moving forward. What each of us saw and did. Real versions, not what we told Detective Rowan, not what we've been saying to each other. What actually happened.'

'We told Rowan the truth,' Caleb said.

'Some of us told him most of it,' Ava said.

Logan went first. He placed himself in the living room until about eleven, then the hallway area for a stretch, then back to the main party. He'd spoken to Sienna once, briefly, around ten-thirty. She'd seemed distracted. He hadn't pressed it.

Zach said he'd been in the living room most of the night, outside for a while around eleven-thirty for some air, back inside by midnight.

Riley's account matched what she'd given before, largely: kitchen, living room, back to the kitchen. She'd noticed Sienna looking at her phone but hadn't thought much about it.

Caleb said he'd stepped out to the back patio around eleven-forty-five. He'd been out there for about twenty to thirty minutes. Then back inside until the sirens came.

'But the back patio,' Ava said, 'doesn't face the street. It faces the yard.'

'Right,' Caleb said.

'So you couldn't see who came or went from the front of the house from the back patio.'

'I wasn't watching who came or went. I was getting air.'

'The park is three blocks from Logan's house,' Ava said. She laid it out carefully, the way she had rehearsed it. 'If Sienna left around eleven-thirty to eleven-forty-five, the walk to the east entrance of the park takes about eight minutes. She would have arrived there around eleven-forty to twelve. Her time of death, which was in the preliminary information the detective mentioned, was estimated between eleven-forty-five and twelve-thirty.'

The table was quiet.

'She didn't go alone,' Ava said. 'She met someone there, or she walked there with someone, or someone followed her. The bracelet on the path outside the park was broken, which means there was a struggle or at minimum a physical confrontation at that location.' She looked at each of them in turn. 'I've been thinking about who wasn't visible inside the house during the window when Sienna left. And the answer is that at least two people were unaccounted for during the critical time. Zach says he was outside from eleven-thirty. Caleb says he was on the back patio from eleven-forty-five. Neither of them can be verified by anyone else.'

'You're pointing at us,' Zach said. His voice had gone flat.

'I'm telling you what the evidence shows.'

'Ava.' It was Caleb, and his voice was very quiet now, the cooperative surface worn thin. 'You should be careful about what you're saying.'

It was, she thought, an interesting choice of words. Not: you're wrong. Not: I have an alibi. Be careful about what you're saying.

She filed that too.