A. M. Taylor - Innocent or Guilty?

“What on earth would make you say that?” I asked sharply.

I felt pinned by her eyes as she said forcefully, “I just don’t think he was a good person.”

“And what could you possibly have known about that?” I asked, “You didn’t know him, did you? You couldn’t have known what kind of a person Tyler was.”

“I didn’t, but my sister did, and she said he was just … awful. She said your whole group was full of kind of shitty people.”

“Oh really?” I said, taken aback, “Because that’s not how I remember it at all. From what I remember Spencer was desperate to be our friend.”

I watched as Reid’s expression changed, as her posture grew more rigid, as she seemed to tighten up within herself. Shutting down and zipping herself up.

“Was James Asher an awful person too?” I asked lightly, looking down at my phone again in the hopes that she’d think I wasn’t too bothered about how she answered.

“Yes,” she said, her voice so firm and strong, so direct, that I was forced to look back up at her. Something in her eyes shifted and a little light crept in. She smiled, however small, and nodded at me. “Yes. He was a terrible person.”

* * *

When I’d left Portland, the morning had been low and grey, the sky practically within reach as it hovered over the earth, but the sun had cracked the sky wide open, just as the car rolled into the city of Twin Rivers, and Daniel had claimed it as a good omen. I hadn’t intended to let Daniel join me on this trip, but he’d dropped by early that morning, and had teamed up with my roommate, Samira to convince me I needed the support.

Checking into the B&B I’d booked earlier in the week, Daniel proceeded to amuse himself by pretending we were there for a romantic getaway, while I messaged Kat to find out where she and Ray had got to by then. They were staying in a motel closer to the edge of town to save a bit on money, so we arranged to meet at one of the many breweries that dotted the town.

“This is nice,” Daniel said. He’d been waiting for me out on the porch while I visited our en-suite bathroom.

“You did choose it,” I said drily. I’d been about to book in at the same motel as Kat and Ray when Daniel intervened on my behalf, pointing out that I had a bit more money to spare than a couple of investigative podcasters, and I was beginning to wonder if he’d been intending to join me all along. What I hadn’t told him when I booked it was how close the B&B was to my old neighborhood. We were a few streets over from my childhood home, but really, Tyler had died mere minutes from here, and standing on that front porch set something on edge. The B&B could have been my house, the street it was on could have been my street; luckily it couldn’t have been ten years ago. Far too much had changed.

We walked to the brewery in milky sunlight, Daniel excitedly pointing out landmarks of my former life to me. At one point we crossed over the top of my old street, and I hesitated, looking up at the street sign, exactly as it once was: there was no evidence of previous heartache, no indication that this was somewhere I and my entire family had run from. As I walked next to Daniel, it simply became a pleasant Oregon town, currently basking in some surprising autumnal sunshine.

Kat and Ray were already there when we got to the brewery. Huddled together at the end of a long table they looked a little conspicuous, heads bent towards each other, talking intensely, a private world for two. But Ray jumped up immediately when he spotted us, speed walking over to clap Daniel on the back and join us at the bar.

“Is day drinking really the best way to kick off an investigative podcast?” I asked as we joined Kat, orders in hand.

Ray laughed, a round little chuckle, “Well, not normally no, but during some of our research this week, we found out that one of the witnesses at the trial works here now, so we thought we’d scope it out.”

My hand stopped in mid-air as I raised my beer to my lips. “Who?” I asked.

“Cole Sampson,” Kat said. “You knew him, right? He’s the general manager and head brewer here now.”

“Cole?” I said, shifting in my seat, looking around me at the large, semi-industrial room, sure that he must have suddenly appeared as if from nowhere. “Yeah, I knew him. We used to date.” ‘Date’ didn’t really cover what Cole and I were together, and ‘I knew him’ was a pretty poor way of describing what he once meant to me, but I wasn’t about to get into that in the middle of a busy brewery he apparently worked in. I’d experienced most of the significant ‘firsts’ in a teenager’s life with Cole, and that included my first major betrayal.

“Wow, that’s great,” Kat was saying, blissfully unaware of the cord tightening inside me. “Do you think you could reach out to him, see if he’d be willing to do an interview? We’ve been coming up against a little resistance when it comes to people talking.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised. My brother is hardly this town’s favorite topic, unless it involves dragging his name through the mud.”

“But Cole would be up for it right? If he testified for your brother?” Kat asked.

“Cole? No. He was a witness for the prosecution,” I said slowly.

“Wait, what?” Kat looked stricken, embarrassed by her error and she opened up her laptop with practiced ease, swiping through various documents before coming to the right one. “Oh, right. He testified the same day as Jessica Heng and Nick Green. I guess I got confused when you said you guys dated.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Well, it was a pretty big part of why we broke up.”

“Mr Sampson,” the prosecutor says, Cole’s eyes snapping to his, locking in, “you were in attendance at the party Tyler Washington was at on the night he died, is that correct?”

“That’s correct, sir,” Cole says, keeping his eyes on the prosecutor, his face serious, earnest.

“And you saw Mr Washington leave the party?”

“Yes, I saw him as he was leaving.”

“And could you state for the record when this was?”

“It was around two o’clock, I think. I can’t remember exactly, but it was definitely around then. Could’ve been a bit before, could’ve been a bit after, but definitely around two.”

“On the morning of Sunday August 24?”

“That’s right.”

“Was he alone at that point?”

“Yeah, he was alone. I didn’t see anyone leave with him.”

“And where were you exactly when you saw Mr Washington leaving? Were you still in the house yourself?”

“No, I was out on the porch. The front porch.”

“And from here you could watch Mr Washington leave and walk down the street towards the entrance to the woods?”

“Yeah. There’s a little shortcut down there by the high school that everyone uses, and you can still see it pretty easily from Jessica’s porch.”

“And you saw him walk into the woods from your vantage point?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“And was anyone else with him at that point, when he entered the woods?”

“No, but a little while later I looked back around and saw someone on a bike go into the woods right in the same place Tyler had.”

“And you recognized that person as being Ethan Hall?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How could you be sure?”

“Well, I was pretty sure I recognized him anyway, as it really wasn’t that far, but he also rides a bike that has black and bright orange striping that’s pretty distinctive. I don’t know anyone else with that kind of bike.”

“And how much time had passed since you witnessed Mr Washington leaving the party and entering the woods?”

“I can’t be sure because it’s not like I checked the time or anything, but probably between ten and fifteen minutes.”