Page 50 of Killer Clone

Tripp shook his head. “No, nothing. There’s nothing here. I didn’t kill Patrick. I didn’t like him but…but I…I…I didn’tkill him. You won’t find anything here. There’s nothing here.”

Stacy opened a closet door. She dragged armfuls of clothes onto the floor. “You sure about that? We won’t find more computers? More phones? Maybe something with blood on it? A murder weapon, even?”

“I…no.”

Stella pointed to the laptop. “You want to explain that, Tripp? That belong to Patrick?”

Tripp had managed to slide farther up the wall so that he was sitting more comfortably, in the kind of low slouch that came so naturally to teenagers. “All right. Fuck. Yes, it’s his. Jesus.”

“Perfect. We get to add interfering with a federal investigation to the list.” Stella narrowed her eyes. “What did you do to him, Tripp?”

Tripp shook his arms, still handcuffed behind his back. “I stole his stuff. Sure. But I didn’t kill him. I swear.”

She needed to nail down his alibi. “Where were you last Friday night, around midnight?”

He looked nonplussed. “I don’t know. Dang. Getting fucked-up, probably.”

Kev’s hand shot up, like he was in a classroom and he was positive he knew the answer.

Stacy nodded at him. “Yes. Speak.”

Kev lowered his hand. “We were at Pi Phi…they were having a party. We were there all night.”

Recognition and relief crossed Tripp’s face. “Oh, yeah…we were there all night. Shit, tons of people saw us there.”

A strong sense of disappointment filled Stella. “Do you have any evidence that can confirm this?”

Tripp nodded in the direction of his cell phone. “Do you mind?”

She picked it up. “What’s the code?”

“Can’t I just look through it myself?”

“No chance.”

He shook his head. “Damn.” Then he gave her a string of numbers.

She tapped the numbers in, and the screen unlocked.

He flicked his head at her. “Check my messages. I bet you I was texting someone on Friday night.”

She navigated to the messages app and scrolled down. There, she found one from a certain “Manny da Plug” from just after midnight on Saturday morning. She showed it to him.

His face reddened. “Yeah, check that one out.”

The texts revealed an address and some numbers.

Tripp spoke before she realized what she was looking at. “That’s my dealer. I was picking up then. But look at the address I gave…that’s the fraternity.”

Stella typed the address into her own cell phone. Sure enough, it was adjacent to the university and belonged to a fraternity. They’d have to interview some of its members. But Tripp’s first alibi seemed to check out.

There was still the question of the second victim. “What about Otto Walker? What do you know about him?”

Tripp looked at Kev with a confused expression. “Nothing. I don’t know anybody named Otto. Sort of a gay name, right? I definitely don’t know any Otto Walker.”

He could be bluffing, though with each moment that passed, Stella’s suspicion that Tripp was involved in the murders diminished. Still, she pressed forward. “How about yesterday morning? Between nine and noon?”

Tripp’s forehead scrunched as he stared at the bed. Then he looked up at her hopefully. “I was in class. I swear. Between nine thirty and noon yesterday. I was in my psych lab. You can talk to my professor. She’ll back me up for sure.”

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