Chapter 2 : The Suspect
Kaia’s POV
The police came faster than I expected.
Blue and red lights flashed through the studio windows, turning the mirrors into broken pieces of color. Officers filled the hallway. Someone put a blanket over Sable’s body. Another officer told me to stay where I was and not touch anything else. My hands were still red. They gave me wipes, but the blood had already dried in the lines of my palms.
A female detective with short gray hair and a tired face sat me down in a small office near the front desk. The room smelled like old coffee and paper. She opened a notebook.
“Name?”
“Kaia Vale.”
“Age?”
“Nineteen.”
“You work here?”
“Yes. Night cleaner. I have a scholarship. I clean to help with costs.”
She wrote everything down without looking up. “Tell me what happened.”
I told her the same thing I had told Mrs. Langford. I finished cleaning the main studio. I went to the restroom. Sable was already on the floor. I tried to wake her. I checked for a pulse. That was when Mrs. Langford walked in.
The detective kept writing. “Did you and Sable Quinn have problems?”
My stomach tightened. “She wasn’t kind to me.”
“What does that mean?”
“She made comments. About my clothes. About my job. About me being a scholarship student.”
“Recently?”
“Tonight. Before everyone left.”
The detective finally looked at me. “So she insulted you, the studio emptied, and less than an hour later she was dead with you kneeling beside her covered in blood.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“That’s what you keep saying.”
“Because it’s true.”
She closed the notebook halfway. “No one else was in the building according to the supervisor. The cameras in that hallway have been broken for two weeks. You were the only person with the body. You had motive. You had opportunity.”
“I only found her.”
“We’ll see.”
They kept me there for almost three hours. Different officers asked the same questions in different ways. Each time I repeated the story. Each time their faces stayed blank. When they finally let me go, they told me not to leave town and that they would contact me again.
I walked back to the dorm in the dark with my phone dead and my clothes still stained.
The next morning the whole campus already knew.
I felt the eyes as soon as I stepped into the main courtyard. Conversations stopped when I passed. Phones lowered, then lifted again. Someone whispered my name loud enough for me to hear.
In the cafeteria line a girl I barely knew turned to her friend and said, “That’s her. The one who found Sable. Or killed her. Depending on who you ask.”
I kept my tray steady and moved to an empty table in the corner. Two guys from my history class walked past. One of them muttered, “Murderer,” just loud enough.
I stared at my untouched food until it went cold.
Between classes the whispers followed me down the hallway.
“She was covered in blood.”
“Sable hated her.”
“They said she snapped.”
A boy from the dance program stepped in front of me near the stairwell. “Is it true you did it?”
“No.”
“Then why were your hands red?”
“I tried to help her.”
He laughed once, short and sharp. “Sure.”
I pushed past him and kept walking. My scholarship advisor sent an email asking me to come in next week. The subject line read “Urgent Concern.” I didn’t open it.
At 3:17 in the afternoon my phone buzzed with a message from the ballet studio office.
Kaia Vale,
Due to the ongoing police investigation, your cleaning position is suspended until further notice. You are not permitted on studio grounds. Final pay will be processed at the end of the month.
I read it three times. The job that kept me fed and helped cover what the scholarship didn’t was gone. Just like that.
By evening the dorm hallway felt louder than usual. People went quiet when I walked to the shared bathroom. Someone had written the word “KILLER” in small letters on the whiteboard near my door. I erased it with my sleeve and went inside.
Sleep never came.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw Sable’s face. The half-open eyes. The blood under her head. The way her mouth had looked when she called me a charity case only hours before she died. I sat up, turned on the small desk lamp, and stared at the wall until my vision blurred.
Around two in the morning I got up for water. The hallway was silent. I filled a glass in the bathroom and came back.
That was when I saw him.
A figure stood on the grass below my second-floor window. Dark clothes. Still. Looking straight up at my room. The campus lights were dim there, but I could see the outline of a tall person who did not move.
My hand froze on the curtain.
I stepped closer to the glass. The figure stayed exactly where it was, head tilted slightly, as if waiting to see what I would do.
I reached for my phone to turn on the flashlight.
When the light hit the grass, the space was empty.
No one was there.
But the feeling of being watched stayed long after I locked the window and pushed my desk chair against the door.
