"That's—" she started, but Carlisle cut her off.
"Pathetic.I know.Unhealthy.I know that, too."He slumped back in his chair, the brief flash of energy draining out of him."But I'm not a killer.I'm just a man who lost everything and doesn't know how to want anything anymore."
Isla let the silence stretch.In her experience, silence was its own kind of pressure—people rushed to fill it, sometimes with truth, sometimes with lies, always with something revealing.
Carlisle just stared at the muted television, his face slack, empty.
"Mr.Carlisle," she said finally, "I know this is an unusual request, but the medical examiner wasn't able to determine a precise time of death.The cold complicated things.So, I need to ask: can you account for your whereabouts over the past week?Everything you've done, everywhere you've been?"
He laughed—a hollow sound, devoid of humor."My whereabouts?I've been here.In this house.In this chair, mostly."He gestured vaguely."I ordered groceries on Tuesday.Online.They delivered them to the porch because I didn't want to talk to anyone.I walked to the corner store on—Thursday, I think?—to buy cigarettes.I shouldn't smoke but I don't care anymore.I haven't had a visitor in weeks."His mouth twisted."Is that an alibi?Being too pathetic to leave your house?"
"Would you be willing to write that down?"James asked."A rough timeline of the past week—dates, times, anything you can remember.It would help us eliminate you from our inquiries."
Carlisle stared at him for a moment, then nodded slowly."I can try.The days run together.But I'll try."
He pushed himself out of the chair with effort and shuffled toward a desk buried under months of mail and old newspapers.It took him several minutes of searching before he found a pen and a piece of paper that wasn't already covered in something.He stood at the desk, writing slowly, his handwriting cramped and uncertain.
Isla watched him and catalogued what she saw.The tremor in his hands.The way he had to pause and think, genuinely struggling to remember the sequence of empty days.The total absence of guile or calculation in his manner.
He was broken.Completely, utterly broken.But did that mean he was incapable of violence?
When he finished, he brought the paper over to them.His timeline was sparse—grocery delivery, corner store, a brief walk around the block when the walls had started closing in, hours upon hours of nothing distinguishable from nothing else.
"That's all I can give you," he said."That's all there is."
Isla took the paper, folded it carefully, and tucked it into her coat pocket."Thank you, Mr.Carlisle.We appreciate your cooperation."
"One more question," James said."Is there anyone you can think of who might want to target you through the restaurant?Someone from your past, a former employee, a grudge you might not even remember?"
Carlisle shook his head slowly."I was a restaurant owner, not a crime boss.We had employees who came and went—it's the nature of the business.But enemies?"He almost smiled, a sad ghost of an expression."I don't have enemies.I don't have anything."
They thanked him again and let themselves out.The cold hit Isla like a slap after the stuffy warmth of the house.She stood on the porch for a moment, breathing in the sharp February air, trying to clear her head.
James fell into step beside her as they walked back to the SUV.They didn't speak until they were inside, doors closed, the engine running and the heater beginning its slow battle against the cold.
"So," James said."What's your read?"
Isla stared out the windshield at Carlisle's house—the sagging porch, the drawn curtains, the single light still burning in the window.Inside, a man was probably already back in his chair, staring at a television he couldn't hear, waiting for nothing.
"I'm not sure he's guilty," she said finally."Everything in there—the grief, the isolation, the way he reacted to that photo—it all felt real.Profoundly, devastatingly real."
"Agreed."James pulled away from the curb, pointing them back toward the main road."But 'felt real' isn't the same as innocent."
"No, it isn't."Isla pulled the folded paper from her pocket—Carlisle's sparse timeline, his alibi of emptiness."His account is essentially unverifiable.He was alone, at home, with no one to confirm his whereabouts.No security cameras in that neighborhood.No regular contact with anyone who might have noticed if he'd left."
"So, he had opportunity."
"He had opportunity," Isla agreed."And the connection to the crime scene is undeniable—it's his former restaurant, the place he built with his dead wife.The victim looks like that wife.If I were writing a profile, those are exactly the kinds of elements I'd be looking for."
"But?"
She turned to look at James, at his strong profile and the slight gray at his temples, at the weathered hands resting steady on the wheel.He'd been doing this long enough to know that intuition mattered, even when it couldn't be quantified.
"But something doesn't fit.The staging of the body—that took care.Attention to detail.Precision."She thought about Monica Hayes in the freezer, her hands folded, her eyes closed."The man we just talked to can barely take care of himself.He's drowning in his own grief, in his own house.I can't see him having the focus, the energy, to plan and execute something like this."
"Unless the grief is exactly what drove him to it," James said."You know as well as I do that trauma can express itself in unpredictable ways.Maybe killing a woman who looked like Maria was his way of—I don't know—trying to get her back.Or trying to let her go.Or both."
Isla considered this.It wasn't impossible.Grief could warp people in strange ways, could turn love into obsession, could make violence feel like devotion.She'd seen it before.
