After half an hour of reviewing the existing documents, Kyle leaned back and went to run his hands through his hair, only to be once again pulled short by his manacles.
"Any chance you could ask the guards to take these off?" he said. "It's not like I'm going to attack you, especially now you're my lawyer."
"Sorry," said Andrea. "I don't think that's my call to make." Truth be told, she wasn't sure how the police determined who needed to wear restraints or if she could just ask them to take them off Kyle. She'd have to remember to ask them the next chance she got.
Kyle instead had to lean forward so he could reach with one hand by pulling the chain through to its fullest extent, which looked far more awkward than the natural motion he had intended as he tousled his hair.
For a fraction of a second, Andrea thought about offering to help. She quashed the idea immediately. It wasn't like he had his hands chained while he was in his cell. She wasn't about to embarrass herself just because he was a little uncomfortable.
"There's a bunch of oddities now that I have a chance to really dig into this," said Kyle. "First of all, how did the girl end up in my apartment? I'm up on the condo level, you have to ride the secure elevator to even get to that floor."
'If Kyle did it, he could have just brought Beatrix home with him,' Andrea thought.
"Then how did they lock off the bedroom she was in, while the cop was still able to get in?" he said.
'…I only have your word that the door was secured, and the report doesn't mention anything about the officer having any difficulty getting in the door.' Andrea didn't want to be thinking this way, but the thoughts rose unbidden.
"And why did the guy call 911 saying there was screaming when there wasn't? Was he in on it, or was he tricked somehow?" Kyle continued.
'The man who made the call was old and might have just been confused,' Andrea thought, though even she had to admit that seemed unlikely. Whatever the truth, there was something off about that call.
"And it says here that they found one of my shirts with the victim's blood on it!" Kyle looked up at Andrea in horror. "They put on my clothes when they committed the murder?? Who does that unless it's to create evidence against me?"
'Simpler to believe you were wearing your own shirt when you killed her.' Andrea hated how much sense these intrusive thoughts made.
"Hey, Blondie, you still with me?" Kyle waved his hand in front of his face.
Andrea realized that she had been zoning out slightly, lost in her thoughts. She blinked to snap herself back to the moment.
'It doesn't matter if he's guilty,' she told herself. 'If he's innocent, we need to prove that quickly! If he's guilty… then we have weeks until the trial. Maybe I can get him to take a plea by that point, or maybe I'll just resign as his lawyer. But I can worry about that later. Right now, so long as we're against the clock, I need to just assume he's innocent and try to find some way to prove that, both in court and to myself.'
Out loud, she said, "Why would someone want to do this to you? Because you're right, this is a lot of effort for the murderer to go to… Break into your apartment, wear your clothes, set you up to be discovered with the body. The murder isn't the point, framing you for it is."
Kyle nodded seriously. "Kind of scary to think someone has it out for me like that. And almost scarier, why wouldn't they just kill me? Why kill someone else?"
"So who?" Andrea asked. "What enemies do you have that would be motivated enough to do something like this?"
Kyle cast his eyes to the ceiling in thought. "I've put a lot of serious criminals behind bars… but the worst are still behind bars. Anyone whose sentence was short enough that they'd be out by now… well, it was short enough I wouldn't expect them to hold this kind of grudge."
"What about early parole, getting out on appeal… getting out by a prison break?"
Kyle laughed. "You think someone 'Great Escaped' their way out to get revenge on me? Not that I've heard of. It could always be a relative or accomplice of someone I prosecuted… I'd give you a list of my cases except… y'know…" Kyle rattled his manacles.
"I'll follow up through court records, see if there are any obvious suspects," Andrea said, making a note to do that later.
Kyle snapped his fingers. "Now that I think of it, I was part of the team that sent down some pretty big players in the Spolano family. That was pretty soon after I switched to prosecution, but I didn't even argue in court on that case, so there's no reason they would single me out instead of the lead prosecutors…"
"It's still worth looking into," Andrea said. making more notes. "What about personally? Any jilted exes or angry husbands?"
Kyle laughed again. "I don't know where you get these ideas about my love life from, Blondie. I'm not a heartbreaker. I've had a few girlfriends, but it's all been amicable breakups or… well, to be honest, they've been the ones who dumped me. 'Workaholic' is usually what I'm accused of being." Kyle gave a what-are-you-going-to-do expression.
Andrea had to admit that a lot of the ideas she had about Kyle's personal life basically came from her assuming the worst about him at every opportunity. Given some of the comments he made, it was absolutely deserved! But maybe not all the time.
"Speaking of girlfriends, what about Triss. There is nothing in the police reports to suggest they've spoken to her?"
Kyle gave a mirthless snort. "They think I'm guilty, they think I'm making Triss up! I gave them her number, I don't know why they wouldn't have spoken to her." Kyle patted his pockets theatrically. "Cops have my phone as evidence. Here, let me give you her number." Kyle guestured for Andrea to pass him a pen.
Andrea slid her pen across the desk to Kyle. He picked it up and made a couple of notes in the margin of one of the pages, then handed it back. As he did so, their fingers brushed against one another for a moment.
In a flash, Andrea remembered how it had felt when he had held her hands the other day, how he had gripped them so tight, like the desperate clutch of someone who was trying to save themselves from falling. She also remembered the guidance that she shouldn't allow herself within arms reach of suspects, and shouldn't pass them anything they could use as a weapon…
It was so easy to slip into feeling comfortable around Kyle when he was cooperating and being more professional, less… well, less like he usually behaved. But as much as she had told herself that she should assume he was innocent for the purpose of the case… she shouldn't ignore the possibility when taking safety precautions.
Andrea took the pen and made a couple more notes, hoping that she hadn't reacted too obviously to the touch. "What about professionally?" she asked, eyes down at where she was writing. "Any enemies or rivalries there?"
"Ha, it's a competitive business, so sure. Rivals, but nothing to this degree. There is one person who seems to have a surprisingly intense dislike for me, though I couldn't tell you why…"
Andrea waited for him to say more. As the silence extended, she looked up to find him just staring at her intently. It took her a moment to realize who he was talking about.
"Me."
"Yeah, you want to talk about that at all, Ms Mason? I'm not sure what I ever did to earn your ire?"
Andrea thought about it. Did she even really know why she disliked Kyle so much? A lot of things he did were annoying… but really only so annoying because she already disliked him.
"Mr Wynn, I can assure you that I didn't frame you for murder, so we can probably leave it at that."
"Actually…" Kyle looked thoughtful, as though deciding if he was going to say what was on his mind. "I did have something I was planning on saying to you yesterday… I mean, because of everything from lunch the other day, I'd wanted to talk to you the next time I saw you, but then all this happened…"
Andrea had no idea what he was working toward, so she just let him continue.
"I… owe you an apology. Long overdue apparently. I had no idea how you felt about your clients, that you believed they were all innocent. Knowing that… I can see why you would take your cases so personally, and how some of the things I said and did as the prosecutor might have bothered you."
'That was unexpected,' Andrea thought. …Was that it? Did she dislike Kyle because she felt like he had a callous attitude towards her clients?
It was too much to think about right now. She would ponder on that later. She murmured a thanks and turned back to the papers. There was still a lot of work to do.