Murder -- Say Something!

This was one of your transitions:

Cortez, a bookkeeper at the Okemos inn for seven years, recalls her last interaction with her victim, Kevin Blohm.

The graf tells me the key point here is that she spoke. But that's not the news; the news is what she said, right?

Think back to the football story situation we often talked about at the start of this semester. The news from a football game isn't that a game was played; it's what happened at the game; who won or lost, and why.

So instead of saying he recalled the last interaction, I'd write what she said that last interaction was; e.g., Cortez said she and Blohm talked about what happened at the restaurant the previous night before she asked him to make her some coffee.

See the difference? You tell your readers something now.