Guilty by Proximity

Chapter 4— Off the Record

Dana's number.

That was the number in the photo timeline, the one Hazel had scrawled on her notepad and stared at until she couldn't stop thinking about it. Her aunt's cell, saved in Hazel's phone under "Aunt D."

It didn't have to mean anything. That was what Hazel told herself, lying awake with it, turning it over the way she'd turned over the blurred figure in the tree line. Holloway was a town councilman. Dana was the sheriff. If he'd found something worth worrying about, texting the sheriff was exactly the kind of boring, procedural thing a responsible adult would do. It probably meant nothing at all.

It still sat wrong in her stomach.

Milo caught her at the kitchen table at 6 a.m., laptop already open, notepad covered in handwriting that had gotten steadily less legible the later she'd stayed up.

"You're doing the thing," he said, pouring cereal without looking away from her.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you get a mystery and it's like watching a dog find a tennis ball. You're not going to put this down until you've chewed it into pieces, are you?"

"It's not a tennis ball, Milo. Somebody's dead."

"I'm aware. I'm just saying, you had that same face when you found out the water tower story had a permit violation nobody else noticed." He sat down across from her, unbothered. "You want me to walk Desa to the bus so you can keep staring at whatever that is?"

She looked up, surprised. "You'd do that?"

"I mean, you're going to do it whether I offer or not. I'm just skipping the part where you feel guilty about it." He shrugged, already standing, cereal bowl in hand. "Try to look less like you haven't slept before you leave, though. People are going to ask questions."

"Noted."

She brought it up anyway, the next morning, standing in the kitchen of the sheriff's office in her school clothes because she hadn't wanted to wait until after last period.

"You're going to have to give me more than a feeling, kiddo." Dana didn't look up from the file in front of her, angled just slightly away. "Holloway texted half the town council about that land vote. If he texted me too, that's not exactly breaking news."

"So he did text you."

"I didn't say that." Dana finally looked up, her expression the careful, even one she wore when she was being a sheriff and not an aunt. "Hazel. I know this is hard, and I know you found something that scared you, and I'm not dismissing that. But I can't walk you through an active investigation just because you're family. If anything, that's exactly why I can't."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It makes plenty of sense. You're family. That's why I trust you." Dana's voice softened. "It's also why I can't tell you everything. If this goes to trial and it comes out I was feeding case details to my niece, it could compromise the case. Then nobody gets justice for Holloway. You understand that, right?"

Hazel understood it. She hated that she understood it. She left the station with exactly as much as she'd walked in with, minus twenty minutes of first period she wasn't getting back.

***

Ethan was still home when she got there that evening, standing at the counter with his keys already in hand.

"Dana called me," he said, without preamble. "Said you came by the station this morning. Before school."

"I had questions."

"About a murder investigation." He wasn't angry, exactly, just tired. "Hazel, I get that you and this Ashworth boy found him. I get that's not something you just walk away from. But this isn't your blog. This isn't a permit violation at the water tower."

"I know what it is."

"Do you? Because from where I'm standing, my daughter's decided to get involved in figuring out who killed a man, and I don't love the math on that."

"Somebody has to. Nobody else believes he's innocent."

"That's not your job."

"Then whose job is it?" It came out sharper than she meant it to, and something flickered across his face, like he saw more of her mother in that sentence than either of them wanted to talk about. She softened. "I'm being careful, Dad. I promise."

"Careful," he repeated, like he was trying the word out. "Okay. I'm going to trust you on that. But if this starts feeling like more than careful, you tell me. You don't handle it yourself and let me find out after."

"Deal."

He kissed the top of her head on his way past and was out the door before she could decide whether to feel relieved or guilty that it had been that easy.

***

Liam was waiting by her locker when she got to school, which was new. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, looking like a boy who hadn't slept much.

"I heard you went to see your aunt," he said.

"Small town."

"Very small town." He lowered his voice. "Did she tell you anything?"

"She told me she can't tell me anything. Which, apparently, is a whole speech she's got prepared."

The polish dropped away. "I'm getting the same thing from my dad's lawyer. Everybody keeps telling me to let the professionals handle it, and none of the professionals seem to actually be handling anything." He exhaled. "Hazel, I need to ask you something, and I need you not to turn it into a debate."

"No promises."

"Fair." A ghost of the old smirk, gone as fast as it came. "The photos. Do they actually clear me?"

She hesitated. Handing him that felt like handing over a weapon to someone she still, on principle, didn't fully trust, except she'd spent all night with those timestamps and knew, clinically, what they meant.

"Technically, yes. My last shot before I found you was 10:47. If the coroner's window holds, you couldn't have done it."

He closed his eyes for a second, like something in his chest had finally let go. "Okay."

"But it's not enough. Nobody outside my aunt's office is going to take my word for it. I'm your rival. Everyone knows we hate each other."

"So we need someone else to verify it."

"We need a lot of things." Hazel shut her locker harder than she meant to. "We need whoever was standing in the tree line at 10:22. We need to know why Holloway's last text went to my aunt's phone. We need—" She stopped herself, aware of how much she was saying out loud, in a hallway, to him.

Liam studied her for a moment. "You've been doing this all night, haven't you? Working it like one of your blog investigations."

"I can't just sit around."

"I could help."

"You're a suspect. That's the opposite of helping."

"I'm the person with the most reason on earth to actually find out who did this." His voice had an edge now, aimed at everything but her. "Everyone keeps telling me to sit still and let it work itself out, and meanwhile my name's already ruined at this school whether I'm charged or not. I'd rather do something."

She wanted to argue. Except she couldn't find the part of herself that actually disagreed.

"Fine," she said. "But we do this my way. Nothing goes public until we're sure. And if you're lying to me about anything, I will absolutely let you go down for it."

"Understood." He almost smiled. "For what it's worth, I wasn't planning on lying to you. Which is new for me, apparently."

***

They ended up at the diner after school, in the back booth, a laptop and a legal pad between them like a truce table. It was stiff at first, both of them talking around each other more than to each other.

"Walk me through it again," Hazel said. "Where you actually were. Not the version you gave the officer."

Liam went quiet for a second. "That's the thing. The version I gave the officer wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the whole picture."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I told him I got to the mill around 10:50. That's true. I didn't tell him I'd been sitting in my car in the lot across the road for almost twenty minutes before that." He turned his coffee cup a quarter turn. "I wasn't ready to go in. I kept telling myself I was going to walk over and get a few pictures for my own reasons and I just—sat there instead. Ten, fifteen minutes, maybe more. I didn't check the clock. I know how that sounds."

Hazel's stomach dropped. "It sounds like you were near the mill during the coroner's window and told the police you weren't."

"I told them I arrived at 10:50. I didn't specify when I got there." His jaw tightened. "I know the difference doesn't matter to a jury. It's still going to look like I was lying."

"Why were you even there? Alone, at night, not planning to go in?"

He didn't answer right away. For a second Hazel thought he might actually tell her, before something in his face closed back over, the mask sliding right back into place.

"It's not relevant to the case," he said finally. "I promise you that much."

She wanted to push. She filed it away instead—one more thing that didn't add up, sitting next to the tree line figure and her aunt's phone number.

"That complicates my photos," she said instead. "If you were out there twenty minutes earlier than you said, and someone finds out, it doesn't matter what my timestamps say. It'll look like you had time."

"I know."

"So we can't just hand this to Dana and hope for the best."

"No." He met her eyes. "Which is why I have to show you something. I wasn't going to, because I honestly don't know what it means yet, but I don't think I can figure it out on my own."

He reached into his bag and set something on the table between them—a worn leather day planner, the initials A.H. stamped small in the corner.

"That's Holloway's," Hazel said, very quietly.

"He left it in my car. Weeks ago, before any of this happened, before I even knew why. I forgot I had it until last night." Liam flipped it open to the last few filled pages, turning it so she could see. "I finally sat down and actually read it. Hazel, I don't think he was worried about a demolition vote."