A Billion Little Clues

by Westlake, Samantha

  Perhaps I ought to just leave. I turned, glancing towards the door. But before I could step that way, I felt a hand at my side, holding me in place. I looked down - and saw that the detective had her hand on my arm! Just briefly, she made eye contact with me and gave the slightest shake of her head, so subtle I nearly missed it.

  What was she trying to communicate? Did she not want me to leave? Not yet? I wasn't sure what she was trying to say, but I didn't pull away from her grasp.

  And then the lawyer opened his mouth on the other side of the table and pulled in a deep, shuddering breath.

  ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

  Across the table from the detective and I, sitting next to Roman, Eddie Zinner took a deep, shuddering breath. He was still shaking slightly in his seat, and his gaze was down, on his hands in front of him. He refused to look up, to make eye contact with any of us.

  "It was an accident."

  The words were almost hoarse, choked with emotion. He was shaking his head back and forth, as though he couldn't believe he was speaking aloud.

  "It was an accident, I swear," he repeated again, still looking down. "The man was just so, so... so insistent about it! I had to come clean, I had to go marching out and, in front of all of my colleagues and the other executives, confess. He wouldn't let me do it in public, let me just take a day or two to sort things out! That was all that I needed!"

  The detective nodded. She didn't look triumphant, but I swear that, for just a second, I caught the flash of a grin across her face. Somehow, she had known this all along, had known that the man was about to break! I felt a newfound sense of respect for her blooming inside my chest. She was definitely good at her job.

  Zinn was still staring down, shaking his head. He needed a gentle push to continue, I felt. "So you hit him," I said, trying to keep my voice soft.

  That made him look up. The man dragged his eyes up to me, and I saw agony staring back, so strong I couldn't stop myself from taking a half step backwards. "I just wanted him to stop!" he shouted out. "I never meant to hit him that hard! But then he started screaming, and the bookend was still in my hand, and he was grabbing at me..."

  I looked over to Roman, wondering if he was as shocked as I felt. The expression on the billionaire's face told me that yes, he was. But as we looked at each other, the lawyer kept on speaking, the words spilling out of him almost seemingly beyond his control.

  "It all started so small," Zinn went on, no longer looking at us. He instead seemed to be gazing off into the middle distance, looking back into a hazy memory that had soured in the time since. "I just needed a few extra dollars, just enough for me to cover until my next payday. It was nothing, and I promised that I would pay it back in." He looked up imploringly at us. "No one would even know that it was missing!"

  "But it didn't stay at just a few dollars," he continued, his gaze turning inward. "The next time, I needed a few dollars more. And again, I promised that I'd put it back. But by the time I knew that I was lying to myself, that I had taken out too much to pay back, well, I didn't have any choice to keep going."

  "But then you jumped to murder!" I cut in, astonishing even myself at my bravery to confront the man.

  Zinn looked up at me with eyes that didn't seem to actually be seeing anything but his own choices. "I just wanted him to stop!" he wailed back at me. "He insisted that I had to tell everyone, and I just wanted him to stop!"

  "So you hit him," I said, not wanting him to stop confessing.

  The man nodded, looking down at his hands. "There was a bookend, right there," he reflected. "I just wanted him to be quiet, to maybe knock him out so that I could think! I didn't mean to kill him! I didn't know that he would just crumple like that!"

  I stood back, feeling satisfied. I had done it! This was a real confession, right in the interrogation room of the police station! But next to ZInn, Roman was looking aghast. He turned to Zinn, his eyes wide.

  "Zinn, you could have just told me!" he blurted out. "You could have come to me, explained your situation, and I would have helped! I thought we were friends!"

  "Yeah, some friends," the lawyer snorted back. "You with all your wealth, flaunting it around! Showing how much better you are than anyone else, jetting in, fixing things, using your money to pick up women like her!" His arm stabbed out, his finger pointing at me. "You just like using your money to be better, that's all!"

  Roman leaned back, his eyes growing even wider at the vitriol in the lawyer's voice. He looked blindsided, as though he'd never expected such a backlash.

  The detective rose up from her seat next to me, her chair clattering as it scraped backwards across the hard floor. "I think we've heard enough, here," she spoke up, her voice still cool and calm. "Mr. Wayland, given the evidence that we've heard here, I see no issue in releasing you. Instead, we will be taking Mr. Zinner into custody immediately."

  As the detective walked around to behind Roman, reaching down to grab at Zinn's arms, I had to hold back a sudden, almost ludicrous urge to jump up and cheer. I had done it! I had secured the billionaire's freedom, proven his innocence! He had been right all along to put his faith in me - I hadn't failed him!

  For the next few minutes, the room became a scene of chaos, as other officers came in to haul out Zinn, and a middle-aged man with an impressive salt-and-pepper mustache came in to speak with the detective. They were lost in some discussion of drafting confession and witness agreements, and I had no idea what any of it meant.

  So instead, I just drew closer to Roman, sidling over until I was standing just beside where he still sat in his chair. Roman still appeared to be a bit stunned by the most recent events that had transpired. He was looking down at the table, not rising up from his seat. To my amazement, he actually seemed lost, thrown off balance by this most recent revelation.

  I reached down and ran my hand over his shoulder, rubbing at his tense muscles. "Hey," I called down in a softer voice. "Are you okay?"

  The man turned to look up at me, and I could see the conflict in his eyes. "I... I wasn't expecting that," he replied, also speaking in an undertone. "I didn't want to think that any of my employees was responsible for what happened, but Zinn? I still can't quite believe it."

  Nodding, I rubbed my hand back and forth along his shoulder. For once, I wasn't thinking about him in a romantic setting. Instead, I tried to consider how I would feel if one of my closest friends ended up betraying me like this. Just the idea of it happening opened up a pit in my stomach. I couldn't even begin to imagine how shaken up Roman must feel.

  The man seemed not to mind my hand on his shoulder, however. After a minute, he leaned in towards me, seeming to draw comfort from my close presence. I felt his soft hair rubbing against my wrist as he leaned on me, and I couldn't stop a little smile from appearing on my face. It was the little touches like this that really showed me that he cared, that he thought of me as more than just a secretary or assistant.

  And besides, I had done it!

  I had come through, in the end! I'd proved that I could be capable, that I was smart - and in the end, I had almost single-handedly brought about the arrest and confession of a murderer! If that wasn't amazing, I didn't know what was.

  I don't know how long we stayed together like that, my hand on Roman's shoulder as he leaned against me. I felt my heartbeat synchronize with his, both of our heart rhythms calming down each other. But time seemed to drift away as we found comfort from each other.

  After a while, the female detective, who had stepped out of the room following close behind the mustachioed middle-aged man, came filing back in. She glanced across the table at us, her eyebrows raising up slightly in surprise.

  "What are you two still doing here?" she asked. "You know, we do have other crimes, and we sometimes like to use this interrogation room for other purposes besides your case." She sounded like she was somewhere in between irritated and amused.

  I glanced down at Roman, who looked just as surprised as I felt. "We can leave?" I a
sked the detective. "I thought that we'd need to stay here, answer more questions!"

  The woman shrugged. "I suppose that I need a statement from you, still," she said, directing her gaze towards me. "But Mr. Wayland? You're all set here. Now that you've been cleared, we have no further questions for you."

  "However, we will be following up," she added as Roman let out a sigh of relief. "Obviously, we're going to need to take a deeper look into Panther Worldwide's finances in order to figure out the extent of the embezzlement, but we will contact you when we are ready."

  Roman rose up from his seat. "Thank you," he said to the detective in a grave tone. "Seriously, thank you for your time."

  I watched as he stood up, momentarily feeling a pang of loss. Was I going to lose him already? What if he just walked out, went back to his business, and was out of my life?

  As if he could read my thoughts, however, Roman turned around and, for just a second, held my hand lightly in his fingers. "I'll be waiting for you," he whispered under his breath, before letting go of me.

  He'd be waiting? What did that mean?

  But before I could ask for clarification, Roman slipped easily out of the room. I was left alone in the room with only the female detective; I suddenly became aware of just how quiet it now was.

  I cast one last glance after Roman, almost wishing that he'd stick around. But no, it was now just the two of us. Not quite how I had hoped things would end up.

  "So," the detective began, opening up her folder on the table once again and looking through her papers. "Let's start at the beginning. Tell me about this party that both you and Mr. Wayland attended..."

  ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

  Probably more than half an hour later, by my fuzzy count, I was finally headed out of the police station.

  At this point, I was feeling like my head was about to come unscrewed. I had managed to prove who the real murderer was, and even get a confession - in front of a police detective! I considered that to be my crowning achievement. More importantly, I had figured that, after the man had confessed, my work was pretty much done. At that point, the detectives would step in and handle the rest, just like they were paid to do. From my tax dollars, probably.

  But instead, I'd found myself besieged with questions, an endless litany of requests for more information and depth and details. So many details. I was asked about everything, from the outfit I had worn to Roman's house party on that first night, to whether he'd ever insinuated anything about working on other projects outside of work with Zinn, to what sort of deal he had given me when I was assigned my shiny new office up on the twenty-eighth floor.

  To many of these questions, I could offer little more than a helpless shrug. I didn't remember everything about what everyone had said whenever they were anywhere near me! I felt like the detectives almost expected me to pull out a tape recorder, one that had been running nonstop for the last few days, and present it to them.

  The few times when I did have an answer to the question, however, I barely had time to get out more than a few words before they were already asking me the next question. I'd start to answer, feeling relieved that I finally knew one, and they'd already be on to the next on their list.

  Eventually, after what felt like at least a million questions, they backed off. "Had to go write up the statement for me to sign," they said.

  And then they left me alone in the interrogation room.

  I thought that being deluged with questions from three or four cops at a time was bad. But being left alone in that room, with nothing to do but wait, was almost worse.

  At first, I decided to take advantage of the situation by cleaning out my purse, a task that I swear that I'd been meaning to do for a long time now. With the whole open metal table in front of me, it seemed like a great opportunity. So I quickly upended my purse over the table and watched as dozens of items all came pouring out.

  I quickly realized that I probably could have, and should have, taken a less haphazard approach. Change was already rolling away, the coins spilling over the sides of the table and tumbling off to the far corners of the room in a waterfall of silver and copper. A pen came dancing across the table, nimbly evading my grab at it, and landing somewhere beneath my chair.

  Definitely not the best idea. As I stared down at the mess that I had just made, I decided that it would perhaps be best to save this task for later. I held my purse just beneath the edge of the table and did my best to sweep all of the junk back into the container from which it had emerged. This motion was well-intentioned, but most of the little ends and bits on the table missed the open mouth of my purse and instead joined their fellows on the floor with a series of clatters.

  Of course, that was when the original female detective reentered the room.

  She was good, I knew that. Even as she took in the mess that I had managed to cause in just a minute or two, the little flick of a smile at the corner of her mouth was gone in an instant. I barely even caught it at all.

  "Miss Gaines," the woman said after an instant of silence, which I was sure was due to her attempting to swallow her laughter. "I have prepared a draft of your formal statement. If you wouldn't mind reading it over, you can sign at the bottom if it appears correct."

  She reached into the folder that seemed to be a permanent part of her, tucked under one arm, and produced a sheet of paper. As I straightened up, dropping my now-mostly-empty purse on the ground by my feet, she searched for a place on the table where she could set the paper down without covering up coins, pens, gum, or (and god, this was embarrassing) tampons still in their crinkly wrappers.

  Finally, the detective just swept out a neat rectangle in which to deposit the sheet. "The door will be open, and you can simply bring the sheet back out to me," she informed me. Her eyes once more darted around the room at the mess. "We'd prefer it if you could leave the room as clean as you found it, of course."

  And before I could manage to put together a suitable response, she was gone, out of the room and once again leaving me alone.

  At least with my purse all spilled out like this, it was no trouble at all to find a pen to sign the statement the detective had set down in front of me. Yes, I did take the time at least to ride through it before I signed.

  Well, okay, I browsed through it to make sure they got all of the main points before I put my pen down to the paper.

  Well, okay, I browsed through it after I had already signed the end. I was supposed to be cleaning up, right? And that included putting away the pen!

  Well, okay, I just flicked my eyes over it. But it looked right. And I wasn't being accused of anything, and they'd already let Roman go! What else could they need to say? I had already accomplished everything, and I was set!

  With the paper signed, and the rest of the items from my purse now swept back in, I did one last quick check around the room to make sure that I had picked everything back up. And then, signed statement in hand, I opened the door to the interrogation room and stepped out.

  Time to finally get out of here.

  The reception that I received upon finally emerging from the police station out into the sunlight was decidedly more enthusiastic.

  Before my eyes had even adjusted to the bright morning sunlight streaming down from the clear skies, I felt a pair of strong arms sweep around me, lifting me bodily up off the ground. As I blinked my vision back into focus, I saw Roman beaming down at me.

  "I can't believe it!" he exulted, setting me back lightly on my feet and letting me catch my breath. "You actually did it, Melinda! You proved my innocence!"

  I brushed a couple of strands back from my forehead, hoping that my hair hadn't completely fallen apart. "Well, of course I did!" I replied, trying to brush this off like it was nothing, like I went around proving that accused murderers were innocent every day. "That's why you promoted me to be your assistant to do, isn't it?"

  Roman shook his head. "You're treating it like it's nothing," he pointed out.

  I shrug
ged. Of course it wasn't just nothing! It was amazing, a huge accomplishment! "Well, you know," I said modestly. "I mean, maybe a small thank you wouldn't go unappreciated, but no need to go out of your way."

  "It's not nothing," Roman insisted. "You just saved me from having to go to trial, from possibly going to jail - for a crime that I didn't commit!" He smiled at me, that delicious, infectious smile of his. "I really owe you my life."

  Wow. If that doesn't set a girl's heart aquiver, well, it must be made of stone. My heart was not made of stone, and those words made me acutely aware of its rapid and excited beating.

  The man had set me back down on the ground again. I noticed, however (in fact, I couldn't stop myself from noticing), that his hands didn't leave their spots on my sides, just above my hips. They had landed there when lifting me, and they didn't quite seem to want to let go.

  Not that I minded in the slightest, of course. I kind of enjoyed him holding me...

  When I next looked up at the man, I could see his eyes resting on my face, darting down occasionally towards my mouth. The message was clear. I could see in his face exactly what he wanted to do.

  So I stepped forward up to him, put my arms up around his neck, and pulled him in towards me.

  He took no further urging. His hands tightened on my waist, and his lips met mine in a hungry kiss. We didn't care about the fact that we were still right on the steps leading into the police station, that there were members of the public streaming past us in both directions. All that mattered were that his hands were around me, that his lips were on me, that his breath was flowing over me in a hot rush.

  My hands were up over Roman's neck, wrapped around at his nape and feeling the soft, very short little hairs there pricking into my skin. Every inch of my body felt overcharged with sensation, awakened as if there was pure caffeine coursing through my veins. This man made me feel excited, aroused - alive!