Page 68 of What They'll Say About Us

"I don't see how the two tie together."

"He conducted the investigation. It's possible he left some things out."

"What things?" Hale asked in a carefully neutral voice, no emotion showing in his gaze.

"What was your relationship with Ms. MacIntyre?" Barclay asked.

"She was my student."

"There wasn't a more personal relationship?"

"No," Hale said. "There was not."

There wasn't a trace of doubt or hesitation in his answer, but I still didn't believe him.

"We have testimony from other witnesses that there was something personal between you and Ms. MacIntyre."

"That testimony would be hearsay, probably spread from the rumors created by Ms. Conway." He gave me another scathing look. "Are you proud of yourself, Tessa? You haven't grown up at all, have you? Still trying to tarnish Paige's reputation even though she's dead."

He wanted to get a rise out of me, and it was difficult not to react. But I was grown up, and I knew that wasn't what any of this was about. "Did your wife know?" I asked.

His face turned red. "That's enough. This is over. If you want to speak further to me, you can go through my attorney, Detective. I have a class to teach." He waved us toward the door.

I thought for a moment Detective Barclay might resist. In fact, a part of me was hoping he'd pull out some handcuffs and take Hale down to the station, but instead, he said, "I'll be in touch."

I followed him into the hallway, watching Hale lock his office door before heading down the corridor.

"What are you doing here?" Barclay asked me.

"I wanted to ask him if he had slept with Paige."

"And you thought he would tell you if he had, that he'd admit to a relationship with a student that could probably still get him fired?" he challenged.

"I wanted to shake him up, make him feel like things were closing in on him. I didn't know he was at Detective Cabot's house. Why didn't you tell me this morning?"

As a student came down the hallway, he put a hand on my arm. "Let's take this conversation outside."

I followed him into an empty elevator and out into the warm sunshine. The quad was nearly deserted, the way campus always was in August. We stopped in the quad outside the building.

"What do you think about the fact that he was at Cabot's house?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, the timing doesn't make him the killer."

"He could have come back."

"If he did, he wasn't caught on any cameras in the neighborhood that captured him earlier in the day."

I frowned, thinking about that. "It is odd, though, that Hale would go there on the same day Cabot ends up dead. Maybe he wanted to be seen earlier so it would be clear that he was long gone before he circled back and killed him."

Detective Barclay gave me a faint smile, and I felt a little shiver run down my spine. With the sunlight on his face, he was even more good-looking, and I had to remind myself that he was a police detective who was barely tolerating my presence.

"You have a good imagination, Tessa."

"It could have happened that way."

"Or it could have been someone else."

"But Hale has a motive. If Cabot knew about his relationship with Paige?—"