by J. S. Morin
“Until you got caught breaking into the crime scene,” DuBois added. What was he, some kind of assistant? Couldn’t Mitchell finish his own essays?
I tried to bring up my hands in the classic surrender gesture, but the handcuff chain stopped me short. “Look, guys. I got expelled. Martinez cooked up a phony plagiarism rap. I figured maybe I could find some evidence in her files. That’s all.”
Great.
Now even I was starting to think I sounded crazy, and that was without letting anything slip about the voices or seeing shadows move.
Still, for a lie I hadn’t cooked up until I started talking, it wasn’t half bad. Rather than a murderer, I sounded like an Internet conspiracy nut. At least that explanation didn’t come with additional jail time.
Dubois turned over a hand. “Back to yesterday. Start at noontime.”
Yesterday? It seemed like months ago. Who the hell keeps track of days just in case someone gets murdered?
“Well, it’s football season, so I was at work early. Pregame deliveries are big business. Tips are hit or miss, but the hits can be huge.”
“Who is your employer, Mr. Lee?”
“Pi Over Three.” They didn’t seem surprised, so I had to assume they knew it was a pizza place. I’d never seen either of the two detectives there, though.
“How long have you worked there?”
This went on for probably an hour.
I couldn’t get any narrative momentum, because Detective Mitchell was channeling Jack Weber, and his Sgt. Friday routine didn’t have room in it for color.
I’d never had my day picked apart in such excruciating detail. If Judy had asked how my delivery runs had gone, I could have summed it up in four words: “The usual, nothing special.”
You’d think these two guys had never ordered a pizza before, with the questions they asked. But I knew what they were doing. They wanted to see if I could put my whole day back together without any holes, then they could go cross-check and find out that yes, I was as boring as I claimed to be.
“At what point did you hear about Ms. Martinez’s murder?” Mitchell asked. That was the money question.
“Same time I imagine just about everyone else did. I saw the announcement at the beginning of the Shadowblood finale.”
“And what was your reaction to learning of her death?”
“Confusion, I guess.”
Mitchell leaned in. “Confusion? That’s it? The woman who spearheaded the effort to expel you from Harvard.” Seemed they weren’t going to let that thread loose until they unraveled my story or the thread snapped.
Dubois turned to his partner. “I know if it’d been me, I’d have been pretty glad to see her get what she deserved.”
I had started relaxing. The boring questions had lulled me into a routine. Now I felt my heart starting to race. “I never wanted anything to happen to her.”
“Never?”
“As in, ‘I solemnly swear,’ never,” I replied. “I just wanted her to acknowledge my talent. I mimicked her style, I predicted her plot twists, and I wrote a piece that she could have put her own name on and published.”
“According to Harvard University’s records, she already had written them,” Mitchell said, fishing a document from the folder. He mashed a hand down on it and twisted it to face me.
I’d seen it before. It was part of Harvard’s due process investigation. “Her word against mine. Go figure who they side with.”
“Time-stamped files, email correspondence with her editor…”
What could I say? I’d been over this a million times. Rolling my eyes wasn’t going to help my case, but I did it without thinking. “Faked, forged, doctored. I can’t say how they did it, but they did.”
Silence hung in the air. For the first time, Mitchell and Dubois didn’t barrel in the instant I stopped speaking. Mitchell was the first to break it. “So you’re saying there was a conspiracy against you.”
“Led by Ms. Martinez,” Dubois added.
Did cops rehearse this routine? Were they playing footsies under the table, giving signals? They were throwing jabs, setting me up for a knockout punch.
“I can see what you’re trying to do,” I remarked. “You’re trying to spin straw into gold with this motive garbage. If I wanted to get back at Patricia Martinez, I’d have sued her for defamation, not stabbed her through the back with a spear.”
When I saw the lights flick on behind those two pairs of eyes, I knew I’d said something I shouldn’t have. That bored, dutiful routine boiled away faster than wine in a French chef’s pan. “Care to elaborate on how you wouldn’t have killed her?” Dubois asked.
I held up my hands. “I was drawing a parallel. That was what happened in the episode Sunday night.”
“That detail wasn’t publicly released,” Mitchell said. “Care to tell us how you knew?”
I flattened my hands on the table to keep from clenching them into fists. “I just told you! It was on the show.”
“And you just happened to choose that particular example from a show that, shall we say, has a variety of untimely demises on a regular basis?”
They were being intentionally obtuse. These dogs had their teeth in a bone and wouldn’t stop until they buried me. “I want a lawyer.”
Chapter Nine
My new neighbor in the holding cell was shaved bald and muscled like a bodybuilder. His tight wife-beater was practically formal wear for this place. A random assortment of tattoos explained his life and beliefs in scattershot cave paintings along his arms, chest, and the back of his neck. What I got out of them was that he thought barbed wire looked tough, had fathered a child with someone named Cindy, and either couldn’t read Chinese or thought “white devil” was complimentary.
I waited. It was all there was to do.
At lights out, I scooted down the wall and sat with my knees tucked close. It wasn’t pitch dark—probably for safety reasons—but the other prisoners turned into vague shadows.
The crowd had thinned as guys made bail, drunks got dried out enough to let loose, and a few got transferred to another facility.
Sleeping space was still in short supply. The scary-looking guys got the benches to sleep on, not that those were any prize.
I was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. My adrenal glands were wrung empty. I didn’t plan on sleeping, convinced someone would try something with the smallest guy in the cell. I tried not to dwell on precisely what.
But as I began to drift off, I heard a whispering voice, so quiet that I had to perk my ears up to make out words over the scattered snores.
“Sleep. You are safe. Freedom comes.”
I wanted to argue with the whisper. After all, its advice had gotten me here in the first place. But talking to the voices in my head would have put me squarely in the camp with the crazy crucifix guy.
Instead, I just focused on staying awake. The darkness and exhaustion conspired to make my eyelids leaden. I don’t even remember dreaming.
What I’ll never forget is waking to find myself alone in my half of the cell. The benches were empty. Every other prisoner in the cell was crowded into the far corner, as far from me as they could get.
Glancing left and right, I confirmed that there was no one around me. I double-checked, holding out an arm to watch my shadow on the wall. My shadow moved like one would expect, following my arm’s movements against the fluorescent overhead lights.
The other prisoners flinched. From their reaction, I might as well have been waving a gun around.
This didn’t feel like one of my dreams. I was awake, lucid (I assumed), and stiff all through my body from an uncomfortable night’s sleep.
I pretended to ignore the discomfiture of my fellow inmates. Part of me was scared of whatever they’d been scared off by. But a giddy thrill crept in to silence my inner worrywart. For once, I wasn’t downhill of the bullying. Standing and stretching languidly, I relocated to one of the benches and waited to find out what the day was going to
bring me.
I had a feeling that freedom was on its way.
Chapter Ten
Judy looked nothing like she had leaving for work the morning before. She was wearing a zippered gray sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she’d gone back to wearing glasses instead of the contacts she broke out in case of emergencies.
In technical terms, I was a couple months older than her. Under her stern glare as I shoveled Tim’s keys and my wallet and phone into my pockets, it was like my mom was watching me. That was a hard form of disapproval to mimic, but Judy was pulling together a masterful impression.
She spoke to the duty officer, signed a couple forms, and that was it. No one had explained shit to me. I was being released on my own recognizance. There was no court date, which struck me as odd. The whole impression I got was that the jail just didn’t want me around anymore.
Cops weren’t known for being superstitious. They weren’t going to shuffle a burglary suspect and possible lead in a murder case out the door because rumor has it he’s got a case of whispering shadows.
My sudden release and Judy’s mood hinted that she had talked to my father. Dad had that effect on people.
I followed her out of the police station, not even pausing for the clichéd long breath of fresh air. It wasn’t even dawn yet.
I hadn’t been held for even 12 hours; there was probably a rule somewhere that said when you vested in jail cred, and half a day was probably still on the short side.
To be honest, it was a relief when Judy double-clicked her key fob and unlocked the passenger side as well. With my wallet back, she’d have been well within her rights to make me take the train home.
Settling into the passenger seat, I pulled the door behind me.
Like a trigger, the thump of it closing set Judy off. We were alone; this wasn’t public anymore. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I kept my head down and avoided eye contact. “They were being dense. It was a squeeze tactic to see if I’d crack and confess. All I did was mention the Saliera theory in front of them. It was a mistake, but if those cops had half a brain to share, they would have seen I wasn’t the murderer. I had an alibi.”
Judy started the ignition. “Why were you in her office in the first place? She was murdered. This isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not saying it is.”
“You’re acting like it is.”
She was driving now. Maybe on an open highway she’d have been able to spare a glare in my direction, but on Boston streets, she had to keep her eyes on the road. I looked over at her and saw those eyes were red. She dabbed at them with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
Time for a change of plans. “I’m sorry, Judy.”
“We were supposed to play Incredible Realms.”
“Yeah, didn’t mean to blow you off to go stand in the corner of a concrete box and not get raped.”
“I didn’t mean it like that…”
“I know. It’s just… hey, pull into that Dunk’s, would you? I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” If I was willing to admit it, I wasn’t thinking straight. The world would seem real again once I had some coffee and a bagel.
“Didn’t they feed you in there?”
I smirked. “Let me ask you a hypothetical. If you had the option of eating a stale bologna sandwich or nothing, and you knew that you’d have to use a toilet in a room with no privacy from twenty suspected criminals…”
“I get the idea. And ew.”
As we pulled into the drive-thru, I switched topics. Time to find out how my father ended up involved in a mundane police case. My only phone call had been Judy. “Sorry you had to deal with my dad. Any trouble getting a hold of him?”
“Your laptop had a folder labeled ‘in case of emergency.’ It wasn’t that hard. I’d never dialed a Chinese phone number before. Lucky for me, your dad’s secretary speaks English.”
“That was my cousin Jian.” Everyone associated with the inner circle of my dad’s business was family.
Judy hesitated. “Your dad… he’s not just a businessman over there, is he?”
“When he was staying in the US, he was pretty legit. The family doesn’t have a lot of political cover stateside. Back mainland? No. And he’s pretty connected. I don’t know what strings he pulled, but he must’ve cut about half the red tape in the US court system to get me sprung. Campaign donations, blackmail, who knows how he did it? But hey, I’m getting coffee and not water and toast this morning, so I’m willing to let a politician twist a little for that.”
“Can I talk to you about something?” After asking about whether my father was Chinese mafia, I couldn’t imagine what subject she’d be tiptoeing around. On second thought, I could. A fresh jolt from my newly replenished adrenal glands shot through me. Had she found the pills in my drawer?
When I didn’t answer, she proceeded. “It’s a professional habit. Quick search of your computer while I was in there. You… don’t have anything questionable on there.”
I chuckled. “And we need to talk about that?”
“It’s not normal. Just about every client we work with, storage of explicit images and videos is rampant. Usually it’s filed under something stupidly innocuous and boring like Tax Addendums or Vacation Photo Backup. It’s a huge security risk for corporate and government systems, but on personal laptops it’s 99% pervasive. I purge Tim’s monthly.”
My face was warming. I’m not sure which was worse, the idea of Judy routinely going through other guys’ porn, or the fact that she was worried that she found nothing on my laptop. “I… I just…”
“I worry about you, Matt. Ever since Darcy 6—”
“Can you stop with the Darcy thing? Her name was Amanda.” Judy had this hang-up on the name Darcy. She had only ever known two girls by that name—both because I had dated them. Subsequent girlfriends had just been another Darcy with a number attached, and breaking up with them was sending them down “Darcy Road.”
“You keep one longer than a year, I’ll make sure to remember her name. But you’ve just been moping around the apartment and working.”
“That’s a sign of my growth as a writer. I wasn’t mopey enough before, and I’m picking it up.”
“Seriously, Matt. I know you don’t like the idea of a therapist, but if you ever need to, you can come to me.”
We were five cars away from the drive-thru window. This was turning into dangerous ground, and I was starving and caffeine free.
Judy could be damn subtle at times, and I was starting to think she was coming onto me. She was hard to read at the best of times, and I wasn’t in a good state. Come to me was literal, supportive, friendly. Nothing more.
With a vague nod to acknowledge I’d heard her, I kept quiet. I just carefully adjusted my hands in my lap and waited for coffee and the mental clarity it would bring.
Chapter Eleven
A rough hand shook me awake. My first instinct was to bring my hands up to defend my face.
“Where’s my car?” the Black-Hatted Stranger demanded. Except that it was Tim, and in the brief moment before I figured that out, I was about ready to piss myself.
I gasped for air, sitting bolt upright. The overhead light in my bedroom glared down at me, stinging my eyes until they adjusted. “Jesus! I thought someone broke in to murder me.”
“You’re not famous enough to assassinate,” Tim said. “But I might pitch you out this window if you don’t tell me where you left my car. I’ve been up and down the block looking. I had to dig my keys out of your nasty-ass jeans on the floor.”
I took a sip from a half cup of iced coffee on the bedside table, trying to wash the overnight gunk from my mouth. “I was going to get it before you woke up. I had a few drinks last night and knew better than to drive it home; should have known better than to—”
“Where is it?”
Cambridge. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it out loud. “Gimme 45 minutes and I’ll be back with it. It’
s easier than giving you directions.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? I never should have let you take it. You’ve gotta get your fucking act together, Matt. I swear, if it’s at a body shop, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Cool it, man. It’s fine. I’ll just—”
“I don’t have time for this shit. I’m going to be late.”
Judy walked in on us, still in her pajamas, with pillow-mussed hair and no glasses. I had to wonder if Tim had even noticed her leave to pick me up at the police station.
“Take mine,” she offered, dangling a set of keys in front of Tim’s face. They worked like a hypnotist’s charm, drawing Tim’s attention and draining most of the ire from him.
Snatching the keys away, he shot me a glare. “A’right. See you for dinner, but it’ll be late again. Bug reports are coming in faster than we can knock ‘em out.” He tossed his own keys on the table beside my coffee.
Personally, I would have assumed that any beta release that didn’t produce that sort of bug-reporting volume was short on play testers. Probably not the comment Tim was looking to hear. The door thudded closed behind him before I could think of anything clever to say.
“I’ll go grab the car while you shower and get dressed,” I said to Judy. It was early enough that even if my 45-minute estimate for Tim’s benefit didn’t pan out, I wouldn’t make Judy late for work.
Eying me through a narrowed squint, she picked up Tim’s keys from the bedside table. “I’ll hang onto these. We’re going together to get Tim’s car.”
She disappeared into the bathroom with them, and the water started in the shower.
I stood outside the door for a minute, weighing my options.
Option number one was a double roommate foul. I could sneak in and steal the keys while she was in the shower and rush out to retrieve Tim’s Subaru before she could stop me. But that meant busting in on her while she was showering and explicitly going behind her back. Plus, it still would only delay the conversation she wanted to have.