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“Why were you really calling, Louis?” asked Josie.
“I told you, I—”
“Think long and hard before you lie to us,” Josie interrupted. “If you were that worried and that convinced that Sylvia needed company, why didn’t you leave any voicemails? Why didn’t you drive over to her house? Or did you?”
He hadn’t shown up on the security footage but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there.
“No, I didn’t drive to her house.”
He reached for the nearest chair but Josie planted herself in his way. “Then what was so pressing that you needed to call her seventeen times?”
Louis didn’t answer.
In her experience, a man didn’t stop at seventeen phone calls. There was only one reason she could think of for this man to do so.
“Were you drunk?” she asked.
His face paled but still, he said nothing.
“You couldn’t risk another DUI,” she added.
“Not even for your soulmate,” Turner said, shaking his head.
“I just had a couple of drinks.” He clenched his hands at his sides. “I was upset. I just needed something to take the edge off, okay? It was nothing, but yeah, I didn’t go over there because I couldn’t risk another DUI. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Didn’t you say you run the AA meetings here?” Turner asked.
“Fine,” Louis said. “I fell off the wagon. Happy? I was going to share at the next meeting.”
“Did you call your sponsor before you started drinking?” Josie asked.
Louis’s silence was answer enough.
He tried to edge around her to get to the chair but she blocked his way again. “How many years of sobriety did you have before Saturday?”
Quietly, Louis answered, “Five. It’s not my first time falling off the wagon, but I’ll get back on track.”
“What made you so upset that you drank?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“It must have had to do with Sylvia,” Josie pressed. “Since she was the one you kept calling. Did something happen between you two?”
“Not between us,” he said bitterly. “I think she was seeing someone else.”
“What made you think that?” Turner asked.
“I saw her with a guy a couple of weeks ago. They were walking in the city park together. Talking, laughing.”
Turner wandered around the room, obviously unable to stand still any longer. “Where were you?”
Louis frowned. “I was out for a jog. I had stopped along the side of one of the paths to rest and I saw them so I—I hid.”
“Behind some trees, like a stalker?” Turner asked.
Louis threw his hands in the air. “I know it doesn’t look good, okay? The thing is that I had asked Sylvia out to breakfast that morning, and she told me she had too much to do at home. I went out for a jog to burn off some energy. When I saw them, I knew she had lied to me. Otherwise, I would have walked right over and joined them.”
“Did you follow them?” asked Josie.
