FREEFALL (A Megalith Thriller Book 1)

by D R Sanford

  “What are you dreaming up? Don’t forget, a jury may end up seeing this, and it has to stick.”

  Walker glanced at his watch.

  “He’s been in the box for what, an hour? That should be plenty of time for me to have run to the lab and back.”

  He headed for the door, spitting his gum in the trash can on the way out.

  Directing her attention back to the interrogation room, Victoria pulled up a chair and settled in with her legal pad on her lap.

  Houltersund had barely moved since Walker left the room. His body language cried defeat, but she could not tell if it came from discovery or despair. The straight backed chair he sat in was propped against the wall opposite her. A small table stood to his left. Both hands dangled between his knees, not shifting around his body in an outward display of anxiety. His lips twitched now and then, as though he were talking to himself or playing something over in his mind.

  Typically this told her that a suspect was rehearsing an alibi or plea of innocence, but his eyes told a different story. Fixed in front of him on a spot where the wall met the floor, Houltersund’s eyes had not dodged an inch.

  Detective Walker entered the room and sat in a cushy, rolling office chair. He took advantage of his mobility and rolled to within a couple feet of Houltersund, leaning down to catch his eyes.

  “Mr. Houltersund? Mr. Houltersund.” He snapped the fingers on his right hand twice and earned a flicker from the suspect’s eyes before they drifted back to the wall.

  “I just came back from the lab, and I’d like to share some of our findings with you.”

  He opened a manila folder on his lap, fanning out photos and typed reports. Cullen glanced at the folder’s contents and closed his eyes tightly. When they opened they were again focused on a familiar spot. Victoria did spy a pooling of tears in his eyes, and she noted it on her pad.

  “The coroner’s report from the scene tells us a great deal about how your wife died, Mr. Houltersund.”

  He rolled over to the table and spread the photos on its top. Walker picked up one in particular then dropped the eight by ten glossy on Cullen’s lap.

  That did the trick, snapping Houltersund out of his trance and earning a momentary look of menace. Addressing the detective, he flipped the photo face down on the table top. “I was there, detective. I don’t need a reminder of what my wife went through.”

  “Oh no, ‘the devil’s in the details’ as they say. And although you had an ideal vantage point from the ground where you puked your guts out, I sincerely doubt you were taking a very good look.” He shuffled another photo to the table’s edge. “Take this one here. The blood spatter outside the burn zone tells us she was shot while kneeling. The report confirms a bullet entered the forehead and exited at the base of the skull. She saw it coming.

  “And here is a close-up on the victim’s right hand. If you look closely, you will see the fingertips were clipped, postmortem, in an attempt to hamper identification. Lucky for us, one of the perps dropped a digit in the snow. We were able to identify the body as your wife’s from fingerprint records.”

  Houltersund’s hands clenched between his knees. Victoria could not tell if he was remembering the act of severing his wife’s fingers or involuntarily flinching with pain empathy.

  Victoria recognized the game of cat and mouse and noted how heavy handed Walker was playing it. Reacting to the building tension in the room, the detective shifted his weight and wheeled back a few feet. He had better reel it in before he lost the suspect altogether.

  “Now, just to be clear, you are not under arrest, Cullen. I shared this confidential information with you because I hope you will be forthcoming with me. Both of us want to find who did this.”

  Houltersund’s head bobbed up and down.

  “I want to hear your side of the story, but I can’t do that unless you agree to speak with me.”

  Houltersund mumbled a response, “I have nothing to hide.”

  Victoria reached for the audio controls and bumped up the volume.

  “Let’s start over with the easy questions. Tell me about the last time you talked to your wife.”

  The widower sat back, wiping his hands on his pant legs, then rolled his eyes up and to the right. Good sign. That was a hallmark of recollection, while searching to the left accessed the brain’s imagination and ability to lie.

  “We had a normal morning. Argued over the laundry, had a few laughs. Then I saw her off to work. Later on that morning, she called to tell me she was taking on a double shift.”

  “Hmm, you’re right. That sounds horribly normal to me.”

  “Are you married, detective?”

  “God no. I have too many bad habits and don’t find laundry arguments the least bit inviting. You mentioned her pulling a double shift that night. Were you going through any financial trouble?”

  “Everyone is struggling. We’re in the middle of a recession. Legislators are deciding our futures, gas prices are through the roof, healthcare costs are crippling. Take your pick.”

  Houltersund sat up straighter.

  “That’s just everyday aches and pains. Are you upside-down on your mortgage? Do you owe some bad people a lot of money?”

  “Uh-uh. Nora just saw an opportunity to save a little money. That and she always had trouble saying no when asked a favor.”

  Walker peeked at the one-way mirror with an arched eyebrow. She agreed. They weren’t going to get anything working the money angle. He was too comfortable and needed to get bucked around a bit.

  “Was there unrest in the relationship?”

  “Like what?”

  “Could she have been cheating on you?”

  “Why would you ask that? No. The answer is no.”

  Houltersund was getting defensive. That could play right into Walker’s interrogation. As long as he was not thinking of the answers ahead of time, he was bound to slip up.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions so quickly. What if, totally hypothetical here, she was seeing someone and decided to call it off. Maybe he didn’t take it so well and decided to kill her.”

  Houltersund propped his left elbow on the table and massaged his brow. His eyes were full of contempt. He was visibly struggling to remain polite.

  “You’re hanging pretty far out on a limb with that scenario.”

  “Am I? It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “The first time for what? You having a crazy idea or something like that actually happening?”

  “Touché,” came Walker’s deadpan response. “Please answer the question.”

  “Not with Nora. I would have known.”

  “Not necessarily, Mr. Houltersund. That’s the beauty of affairs. For the most part, they’re secrets. What about you? Was there some hot little co-ed in your life that you couldn’t live without?”

  Houltersund started to say something but bit his lip instead. Victoria had a pretty good idea what he was thinking, though. She’d often had the same views when dealing with Walker, and they all had to do with him either violating himself or leaping off a bridge.

  This was getting nowhere. The detective had to change tactics soon or run the risk of hearing Houltersund push the lawyer button. Once that happened, they would have little chance of working a confession out of him.

  Walker knew it too and scratched the back of his shining head in a pre-arranged signal that would take them to the next level. She cued up the detective’s cell number on her phone and called him. He plucked the phone from his hip, excused himself for an urgent call, and entered the hallway where she and Houltersund could hear a fictional conversation.

  She had hung up the moment Walker raised the phone to his ear. Her part in their ploy was to continue observing the suspect. Houltersund cocked his head in the direction of the door appearing mildly interested but not exhibiting any heightened anxiety as Walker spoke of new evidence and another suspect.

  The detective must have been talking directly into the door crack for any
thing to seep through. Nonetheless, it was pretty convincing.

  Walker re-entered the stifling room with its bare walls and minimal furniture. Taking his seat once again, he made a show of folding the photos and reports back into the manila folder, then slid it out of the way. He rolled into a position perpendicular to the suspect, their knees almost touching. He looked down at his own hands and delivered the first line with deliberate gravitas.

  “Don’t you want Nora’s family to know what really happened that night?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then how about you tell me what really happened? I hate to break it to you, Cullen, but everything is leading back to you. Abductions and kidnappings don’t happen out of the blue.”

  “I’ll say it again. I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Did you arrange the murder of your wife?”

  “What?!?”

  “Please sit down there, Cullen.”

  Houltersund regained his composure amid a solid imitation of righteous indignation.

  “Hey, I get it. They showed up to take your wife. You had second thoughts and fought back. Sure, you had a loaded gun, but why didn’t you use it?”

  The suspect’s jaw clenched. Victoria saw the agitated rise and fall of his chest and the white-knuckled fists he contained on his lap. None of this was indicative of a man consumed with guilt. Houltersund seemed to be directing true anger at the detective’s accusations.

  Walker had one more card to play.

  “I was hoping you would be more cooperative, Mr. Houltersund. You see, I just heard from Detective Ramsey that we have a suspect in custody who claims you hired him. He’s even saying that you pulled the trigger this morning.”

  Houltersund choked upon Walker’s last words, shaking his head violently.

  “Impossible!”

  The detective rolled to within inches of the other’s face.

  “Do yourself a favor and fill us in. Look at it this way. How do you think a jury would see the guy who allegedly shot, mutilated, and burned his wife in a farmer’s field?”

  “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

  “Can you account for your whereabouts between three o’clock and six o’clock this morning?”

  Victoria could not believe her eyes as she watched Houltersund’s body and left hand drive upward in a blur. His fist snapped the detective’s chin toward the ceiling. The big man slipped off his rolling chair, crashed to the floor in a heap, and lay senseless.

  Cullen Houltersund directed a baleful stare at the mirror before him and declared, “I… did not… kill… my wife!”

  She was inclined to believe him.

  ***

  Cullen stewed in a holding cell while lawyers debated his immediate future. Did the state blame him for Nora’s murder and seek to imprison him? It didn't matter one way or the other. His whole life had just become a cell.

  That was when the black hole started creeping inside of Cullen. A swirling well of gravity that banished hope, faith, and most of what fueled his desire to live. A dense singularity wrenching within his heart, so quickly at first, then stealthily finding hidden resources of joy and stealing them away as he careened toward the point of no return.

  Cullen remembered thinking this must be what people on TV felt when their children are snatched from their homes and ravaged by a child molester, only to have search teams find them buried in a back yard. The emptiness, the loss of God, the disgrace of the human race.

  He sat, with his back against the cool block wall, wishing for the black void of his nightmare. Succumbing to exhaustion, his body and mind surrendered to sleep.

  ***

  Cullen’s eyes snapped open at the sound of the door unlocking. Disoriented at first, he took in the blank walls and the stranger stepping into the room. Recalled the day’s crushing discovery.

  A tall, professional woman analyzed him for a moment and gave Cullen a chance to get his bearings. He believed there was a flash of sympathy in her eyes when she offered a hand for introductions.

  “Mr. Houltersund, I am assistant district attorney Victoria Campbell. I’m sorry for your loss. This must be a very difficult time for you.”

  She stepped back to the open doorway and glanced outside. Cullen rose to his feet and rolled his neck from side to side in an effort to ease the tension that had built throughout the day. Judging by Ms. Campbell’s stance, it was not yet time to leave. He waited patiently, with arms crossed, as footsteps neared the room. A uniformed officer passed the doorway and receded down the hall. Ms. Campbell turned the same half smile on Cullen that she had given the officer walking by.

  “Alright, first things first,” she said. “You struck an officer of the law during interrogation. Though it is a serious offense, I don’t blame you for doing it. I actually rather enjoyed seeing it.”

  Cullen dropped his eyes to the floor, noticing the color of her toenail polish matched her blue suit and heels.

  “In fact, I convinced Detective Walker, in an effort to retain his sense of honor, to forego pressing charges. We couldn’t have stories circulating that the ‘dragon of detectives’ was caught off guard and knocked out by a mild mannered professor, could we?”

  “Dragon of detectives?”

  She waved it off. “Inside joke. Don’t call him that to his face, though. It would really burn him up.”

  “What about him telling me there is a suspect in custody? Do you have information on why Nora was taken in the first place?”

  She was analyzing him again, looking for any sign that Cullen was lying or seeking to protect himself. He hoped she could see the truth, that the only hope he had left was finding the people who killed Nora and the reason for doing it. Ms. Campbell shook her head slowly and looked away.

  “There is no suspect, Mr. Houltersund. Detective Walker was bluffing you, looking for a reaction or some admission of guilt. It’s early in the investigation, and whereas you are not an official suspect at the moment, you will remain under close scrutiny.”

  This must be what his students felt like when he had to sit them down and advise them to get back on track.

  “So, I’m not under arrest?”

  “Not today, Mr. Houltersund, but be advised, until an evidence based suspect comes to light, you are the state’s person of interest.”

  Cullen felt his pulse rise again, saying, “You can’t possibly believe that I would do this to my wife.”

  “I am not here to upset you. It’s just a piece of information. Are you ready to go now, or were you planning to spend the night here?”

  She swung the door open wide and gestured for him to step out to the left. His lawyer and mother stood at the end of the corridor. He tried to hold it together, but when his mother wrapped her arms around him Cullen broke down. Her strong embrace and whispers in his ear made the rest of the world fade away.

  THE PERSISTENCE OF TIME

  “From the end spring new beginnings.”

  – Pliny The Elder

  “Today the boys in the Sagara tribe refused to play with me until I completed their chores for them. Mom says I lost my temper and started a fight. I don’t remember it, but now the boys are following me like dogs follow a butcher.”

  – Cullen Houltersund’s journal, age 12

  —Chapter 6—

  THE CALL

  Like so many others, Cullen suffered through Nora’s funeral. To say it was uncomfortable was an understatement, yet he could hardly blame her family for the cold shoulder they turned his way. His little sister-in-law, Natalie, did approach Cullen with quivering lips to share her heartache. In the short span of a couple weeks, he was quickly tallying up the most difficult days of his life.

  Cullen requested a leave of absence and was assured the staff in the Anthropology department could pick up his slack.

  Police reports claimed that any evidence left at the scene in the woods had been destroyed in the fire. His only hopes of finding Nora’s killer narrowed down to someone coming forward with a confess
ion.

  February and March passed without any leads, and Cullen slowly turned from tireless avenger to hopeless recluse.

  Days turned into weeks and weeks to months.

  In May, he received invitations to join students celebrating their graduation. He considered of the interaction those parties would require and left the cards in a growing pile of mail.

  Cullen’s mother visited almost daily, forming a routine of eating dinner and playing card games. He had no idea when the last time was that he’d turned on the television. Books in his collection, whether fiction or historical, were more reliable companions than friends or the spiritless marionettes playing out tragedies on screen.

  Natalie visited on Wednesdays with sandwiches from a favorite deli they had frequented near the university. Cullen knew she was concerned and tried to hide it early on. Eventually they settled in and looked forward to an hour or two of trivial conversation.

  The day Natalie told him she was crushing on Laeg, who was a common fixture in Anthropology classes, his big brother instincts kicked in. He reminded her of the Irishman’s fickle tastes in women, attraction to parties, and that an underage freshman was no match for Laeg.

  Before Cullen had a chance to blow a fuse, Natalie bent over laughing, overflowing with delight for pulling him into the here-and-now.

  She left that day with a quick kiss on the cheek and texting away on her phone, saying, “Your Mom’s going to love this.”

  He tilled a large patch of earth in the back corner of the yard and planted a small vegetable garden.

  Days lost all sense of coherence.

  The nightmare of freefalling through darkness plagued Cullen, waking him mere hours into sleep. He often found himself reading at three o’clock in the morning, pulling weeds in twilight, or walking through the university green space under the light of the moon.

  The ache of Nora’s absence never left him, but Cullen decided that he would survive the wound. Her death became a puzzle that defied solution.