"Where were you between seven and midnight last night?" the cop wonders, not for the first time.
Kevin groans, laying his head on the table in the interrogation room. "We have been over this!" he cries. "I told you already. I went for a drive."
"For five whole hours?" the cop—who Kevin had nicknamed Officer Douchebag—questions, incredulous.
"No," Kevin answers through clenched teeth, "but you know that already since I told you that a hundred times over."
"Mhm," Officer Douchebag murmurs. "Refresh my memory. You went for a ride, and then what did you do?"
"I stopped at a liquor store and bought a six-pack of beer," Kevin answers, sitting up straight in his chair to glare at the officer, not trying to hide his displeasure or disgust. "I went to the beach and had a little too much to drink, so I waited until I was sober enough to drive home, and I did just that. I drove home."
"And there's no one who can corroborate your story?"
"No," Kevin says again. "It was late, and it's October, so no one was there."
The cop nods, taking a seat next to Kevin. "And what did you find when you got home?"
Kevin lets out a long, slow breath, all the fight going out of him. "Why do we have to go over this, again? I've already told you this a hundred times."
"So tell me a hundred-and-one times. Look, Kevin, I'll level with you. You are the number one suspect in your wife's murder. We have your fingerprints and your DNA inside the house and inside her. There was no forced entry, telling us that she trusted her attacker enough to let him into the house. And then we have you, with no alibi."
Kevin balls his hands into fists, gritting his teeth as he fixes the cop in his cold stare. "I did not kill my wife. I loved her! Why the hell would I kill the one person who meant—means–more to me than anyone else?"
Officer Douchebag shrugs. "Witnesses say you and your wife fought. A lot."
"Yes, we fought. We're married, that's what married couples do." He glances down at the cop's bare ring finger. "Not that you'd know. And maybe we fought more than most couples but that doesn't mean we loved each other any less. She was my whole world! And now she's gone, and it's like a piece of me is missing, too."
"For someone who's wife was just murdered, you're strangely calm."
"I am not calm! You have the nine-one-one tape I made last night after finding her body! I was hysterical. But now I'm pissed off that you think I hurt her. I would never. I've never laid a hand on her."
"Not according to our witnesses." Kevin frowns so the cop continues. "We have eyewitness accounts of you getting physical with your wife."
Kevin's eyes widen. "That's bullshit! I have never hit my wife. Yes, we fight—mostly always about the same thing—but I would never hit her."
"I want to believe you, son, I really do–"
"No, you don't!" Kevin interrupts him. "You've already convinced yourself that I'm guilty. You're keeping me here based on bullshit evidence–"
"It's not bullshit evidence," the cop cuts him off.
"Yes, it is." Kevin sits up straighter, ticking the points off on his fingers. "You have my DNA inside my wife and my fingerprints inside my house. There's no forced entry so you automatically assume it's the husband. I may not have any alibi, but that doesn't mean that I had anything to do with what happened to her. And you have these eyewitness reports of me 'getting physical' with my wife, when that never even happened." The cop opens his mouth to say something but Kevin rushes on. "Did you find any other fingerprints in my house?"
The cop nods, almost reluctantly. "Yes, we did. We found your brothers'."
"They didn't do this, either," Kevin says, maybe a little too quickly. "My little brothers loved her like a sister. They wouldn't hurt her anymore than I would."
"Right now, that doesn't mean too much, considering you're being questioned in her murder." Kevin rolls his eyes, getting angry again. "I've seen this time and time again. Nine out of ten times, when a woman gets murdered, her husband did it."
"But I didn't!" Kevin practically screams.
Just at that moment, a detective comes into the room, holding a pair of handcuffs. Kevin's eyes widen once more and all the color drains from his face.
"Kevin Lucas," the detective says, "you're under arrest for the murder of Madeline Shaw."