“Detective,” says a voice.
I look to the hallway which, presumably, leads to interrogation, holding, and regular interview rooms. The man calling my name (or title, I guess) is about six feet tall, wearing a sharp blazer that makes him look more important than he probably is. He looks only familiar at first, but within seconds, I place him: we hadn’t spoken, but he was at the crime scene when Anthony’s murder was being investigated. At that time, he didn’t do or say much. He stood on the edge of the scene, almost up against the yellow tape, with his hand on his chin, in a prolonged state of contemplation.
Now, he wears the same suit as before, but a look that is sterner than it is contemplative. He looks at me with eyes as enigmatic and threatening as the Bermuda Triangle. He has a hand outstretched, with a finger beckoning me.
I’m a mixture of nerve and curiosity, despite that I should be leaning more toward the ninety-ten ratio; I have to know what in the hell is going on. I stand up and follow his beckoning. His extended hand, formerly doing finger curls, now morphs into the ready-for-handshake position.
“Captain Brooks,” he says. I straighten up a bit and shake his hand. My nerves tighten more toward the appropriate ratio of nerves-to-curiosity now; in a city this big, the captain should rarely, if ever, have to get involved directly in investigations. If he’s here doing an interview, shit is serious. My nerves heighten ever further, but not to the extent that they reached in the farmhouse. I’m pleased to find that I have a firmer control over my jumpiness. And now, I’m as cool as can be, after my willing myself calmer.
I follow Captain Brooks into a hallway lined with myriad doors, and wonder which one conceals my boyfriend. They’re not marked in a civilian-friendly way, and for all intents and purposes, I am a civilian at the moment.
Captain Brooks opens a door marked E3, holding it open for me. Along the way, half a dozen pairs of eyes follow me. I wonder what they’re thinking, but it’s crucial to remain calm, and exploring those possibilities would be a direct detriment to that endeavor.
The room into which he escorts me is spacious, well air conditioned, and has nice, matching furniture. There’s a plant in one corner, and a water dispenser in another, both on the side of the room on which Brooks seats himself. The water dispenser has hot and cold water, and is complemented by an array of teas and ciders and hot chocolate and instant coffee, as well as cups and straws. If this is anything like Riverdell, this is the interview room designed to lull me into a false sense of security, laying pitfalls along the course of the interview, waiting for me to slip up. This is the room used for people who already have their stories made up, so we whisk them into the land of comfort and accommodation, then throw them into a hurricane of rapid-fire questions, challenging how well they perform under pressure and their mental agility in general. Beth was an absolute goddess at this technique.
Brooks motions for me to sit down and I do so.
“Thorn, you’re knee-deep in a pile of shit, you know that?”
“I didn’t know that. Might I ask what for?”
“You know what for.” His tone is almost patronizing: Come on. We both know it was you. Cut the bullshit.
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Mr. Thorn, where were you yesterday?”
I recount the great and epic misadventure of Phoenix, as well as the bits of investigation preceding it which led to its conception and execution in the first place.
“So you, in the middle of the investigation, just took off, without telling anybody? With nobody but your boyfriend?”
Well, when you put it that way …
“And then, on an anonymous tip, our police find you over the body of a dying child.”
“Wait, is he dying? Can they not help him?”
“He’s in critical condition. I’m just glad we got to him before you finished him off.”
“Don’t you think I should get a little credit? I did tell the officers on scene to call an ambulance. Doesn’t that give you a little faith in me?”
“Faith is for God, and this is not a church. Or maybe your devil-worshiping mind didn’t notice.”
“Look, I don’t know why I’m here. Why am I even a suspect?”
“Besides what I already mentioned? The same anonymous tip told us where to find you and that van. I don’t know how they knew, but why else would you have been there without backup?”
“Officers Kent and Simpson were up in this area, helping patrol graveyards. I was investigating another lead that turned out to yield some interesting results.”
“I’m sure. And why in the hell did you have a civilian with you? I don’t care if he’s your boyfriend or former police or whatever. If he’s not wearing a badge, he shouldn’t be going to a fucking farmhouse to investigate with you.”
“Someone tossed a brick through our window. It had a note identical to some that we got in Riverdell, where we moved from. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving him alone in the house.”
“He can’t handle himself?”
“He certainly can. He is a Tae Kwon Do black belt and the second sharpest shot I’ve ever seen.” Beth is the first.
“And yet you still thought he might be in danger?”
“Part of me thought so, yes.”
“And that was enough for you to let him tag along on your investigation?”
“I won’t deny that my motivation had a measure of selfishness, too. I had been up for quite some time and wanted his company. He helps me focus.”
Brooks surprises me with a laugh. I’m not sure whether to be relieved or indignant.
“Well, that’s something. But here’s the thing: there was evidence at your house that indicates that you had a hand in these murders. A big one. The big one.”
“Such as?”
“Photographs of the victim in your home, for one. A copy of his school schedule, as well as pictures of the first two victims, all time stamped within the time you’ve been in Wometzia.
“What? I wouldn’t even have known how to obtain his school schedule. And I only ever really met Stanley when I was interviewing him about Firenze Pacheco.”
“You didn’t talk to him about Anthony?”
“I never got the chance.”
“Why not?”
“I was following the lead that pointed me to Andre Romero.”
“You mean the Andre Romero who’s been in holding all day, and thus incapable of attacking anyone?”
“He’s been in holding all day? Is he here?”
“Yes.”
I’m genuinely confused. More to myself than to him, I say, “Then who the fuck kidnapped Stanley?”
The note burns in my mind: Your turn.
Perhaps this is more connected than I realize. Maybe it’s less coincidental than I originally suspected that the murders started so soon after I moved to Wometzia. Maybe the death threats that followed Todd and me all the way to New Mexico are responsible for perpetrating the deaths of Firenze and Anthony.
“Who indeed?” says Brooks. He leans forward on the desk, propped up on his arms. Here it comes: bad cop.
By the grace of Orion, the door swings open, and Brooks shoots it a look that might set the intruder ablaze.
I look to the doorway and see Officer Lund.
“Sir, we looked into getting traffic cam footage to add to the evidence,” he pauses to look at me for half a second, “but it did the opposite. On the night of Koster’s murder, he was seen driving out of town. Additionally, we looked at the footage for the night Pacheco was killed, and he was nowhere to be seen. He was, however, on the footage from Wometzia’s school. He was on a walk with Todd Love.”
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. It had been a short walk—the heat was awful. We had gone to get ice cream and someone was eyeing me. He looked familiar but I couldn’t quite place him. I hadn’t wanted to call Todd’s attention to him; Todd wasn’t in a position to look at him without being conspicuous.
In a moment, the dots fuse, coalescing
in an explosion of clarity and realization and hindsight.
“Whoever was sending the death threats is, ultimately, behind all of this,” I say.
I have the surprised attention of Lund and Captain Brooks.
“On the duct tape binding Stanley Romero, there’s a note written: ‘Your turn.’ I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but I didn’t have much time to think about it because that’s when your guys got there.”
“So? What’s it mean, then?”
“Eight months ago, I put a guy in jail for a slew of things.” I need to play this entire situation very carefully, lest I accidentally lead the cops to my past of killing.
“And now he’s out to get you?”
“Well, put me in jail, maybe. And definitely not him. But someone who was close to him. Someone we missed. We thought we caught everyone involved, but I guess there may have been one or two who got away.”
“Or more. If you missed one, who knows how many there are?”
“What does Mr. Romero do for a living?” I ask.
“He works around here, actually,” says Lund. “He’s an engineer for a tech company specializing in 3D printing.”
“He told you this?”
“I looked into him,” he says.
I turn back toward Brooks. “The stuff they found at my house, did it have fingerprints on it?”
“Yes.”
“Mine?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The parts are all there. They’re fidgeting around in my head, eagerly awaiting being fitted together in the right order, with the right composition. Additionally, I feel as though there are more pieces just beyond my reach that will become accessible once I deal with the cluster currently in my hands.
My mind skips back to the ice cream shop, the familiar face. He was a young thing, but without the zip or the charm. I don’t recall having run into him at any point thereafter, either. At once, I put a great deal of importance on recognizing this man.
“Can I talk to Todd now?”
“One question first. He hasn’t said a word. Any idea why he would give himself to us in your place? Seems like a silly thing to do for someone innocent.”
“Probably he figured out what was happening and thought that if one of us was going to be arrested, it would be more useful to have me out than him. After all, I have the badge. I can get this solved.”
Brooks takes a deep breath. “Well, then, get it solved.”
I’m not sure how, but I’m sure that, once the results come back, the fingerprints on the evidence planted at my house will have my fingerprints all over it, a thought that’s both baffling and deeply unsettling. But for now, I need to talk with Todd, and probably Andre.
I ask Lund to take me to Todd, and for the reports on Andre. He lets me into a room across the hall from me and goes to retrieve the file.
“What happened?” says Todd when I walk in.
“I’ll explain later. Listen, remember that day we went to get ice cream, a week or so after we moved in?”
“Yeah?”
“And there was someone looking at us and I told you not to look because he would notice? And you tried to get a look when we were leaving but you only got a glimpse?”
“Yes …”
“Please, try to remember if you recognize him from anywhere in Riverdell.”
Todd has the best memory of anyone I’ve ever met. He remembers virtually everything worth remembering, and organizes it in a mental calendar, and indexes it with relevant tags for later use. On our way from Riverdell to Wometzia, we ran into someone who was, to me, a passerby like any other, but Todd recognized her as a woman he’d had a brief chat with at a gas station when he and his family were on vacation in Yellowstone. That event was four years ago, but Todd remembered her name and that she had been engaged, as well as how her fiancé proposed to her. If there’s anyone who could pull off this manner of mental stunt, it’s Todd.
Todd concentrates.
“Picture him with different lengths of hair,” I say. “Or in different clothing, maybe a uniform.”
Uniform, Todd mouths to himself. When he concentrates like this, he stares into space and bites his lower lip with his brow furrowed. It’s cute.
His eyes widen.
“What is it, boy?” I say.
He ignores the joke. “Perkins. Officer Perkins. From Riverdell, yeah? Remember him?”
I do, but not much. He had been on the scene of the crime the day after I killed my father.
“It’s him, right? Isn’t it him?”
I nod. “It has to be.”
The formation and maintenance of memory is tricky and fragile, and I begin to remember, but I have no way of knowing whether it’s a legitimate memory or just at Todd’s suggestion.
Before, Peter Perkins had had a goatee, blond and trim. But at the ice cream shop, he was clean shaven, but with a mess of scraggly hair on his head. Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing him at all after that case was over.
Had he been a cohort of Keroth’s this entire time? And is he really behind what’s been going on all this time? I wonder what kind of ending this dynamic would have produced had we stayed in Riverdell. Would there have been a similar unfortunate handful of youth there, hollowed out and placed upon their grandparents’ graves?
Above all, right now, I need to find out the extent of Andre Romero’s involvement. Even if he didn’t have a direct hand in the murders, he was involved somehow, and finding out how, what, and when would add pieces to the puzzle, pieces which are becoming something of a rare commodity, now that I’ve placed the fistful that I had.
After exiting the room where Todd is, I ask Officer Lund where I can find Pacheco. Apparently he’s been refusing to speak without an attorney present, and the public defender won’t be in until Monday.
I ask to see him anyway.
Lund lets me into the holding hallway, a stark corridor with a handful of cells on one side and an off-white wall that may have started out as white on the other.
There are eight cells, abundant in my experience, but then, I’ve never worked in a city as big as Albuquerque. Briefly, my mind attempts to construct a scenario that might necessitate every cell. Mostly they involve rioting.
Andre Romero is in the second cell down, the first occupied by a middle-aged woman wearing a tearful look of hopeless resignation. Andre is in an outfit identical to the one in which I saw him on the camera. When he sees me, he looks up at me, eyes wide and pulsing with disdain. But he does not move.
“Seems you recognize me,” I say.
He nods.
“Relax, this is all off record. I’m just trying to find your friend,” I say.
“Friend?” He lets loose a hollow echo of a laugh.
“Do you mean the one who blackmailed me, kidnapped my son, and killed a couple of little boys all because of some almighty vendetta he has against you? I don’t know what you did to piss this guy off, but he’s fucking nuts.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth? Why should I believe you’re not in on this?”
“Guess you’ll just have to trust me,” he says.
I don’t. The main reason for my distrust goes beyond my personal lie detector and rests in the elaborate decoration of the murders.
Speaking from experience, getting away with murder is quite a lot of work. Add to that the labor of gutting your victim and defiling the crime scene, and that lies in a realm beyond the relatively simple endeavor of trying to frame someone. That is an act of perverted passion, one which has been thought out and savored. Sacrifice.
“Blackmail, you say?”
“Yes. You know the likes—compromising pictures. From my past.”
“And you probably won’t tell me of what nature, specifically.”
“Nope.”
“Or how he obtained the photographs?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“And why you?”
“I don’t know, buddy.”
He’s getting irritated. Anxious. Defensive. I’m getting close to important information and he knows it.
“When did he first contact you?”
“Maybe a month ago.”
“Thank you,” I say. I have more questions, but my instincts tell me that I’ve exhausted him as a source of information, at least for now. Any more time spent here will be time wasted, and time is another commodity which I can’t afford to waste.
I hasten out of the holding hallway and back into the lobby, which is, apparently, oblivious to all that has transpired in the past half hour; the clock keeps ticking, the fidgety man fidgets, the receptionist casts condescending looks and sighs, the world continues to spin.
The holding hall sits across the lobby from the interview hallway, and just as I step into the lobby, Todd, Brooks, and Lund step from the hall ahead of me.
“Anything?” says Todd.
“He claims he was blackmailed. Even if that is true, I think he’s much more involved than he’ll ever admit. In any case, our person of interest is … Perkins.”
“Peter Perkins,” says Todd. Thank god for his memory.
Todd gives them a brief description of him and they alert their officers to keep an eye out for him.
Meanwhile, we need to find more out about how and when he plans to strike next. Last time, he left a clue in the form of the fingerprints on the instruments, but as of now, I can’t think of anything left with or near Stanley to indicate who the next target might be.
A part of me dares to hold onto a hope that the game is over; he failed in his attempt to frame me and now he … what? Packs up and goes home? No, this mission is too dedicated to be without a backup plan. He has another (at least one more) play, an ace up his sleeve. Something.
After looking up the number, I call an old bed and breakfast in Wometzia, the town’s only lodging option for visitors. The owner, Eunice Barton, is well into the last decade or two of his life. He introduced himself to Todd and me before we had unpacked our first box. He gave us hugs rather than handshakes, and handed us a gift basket that contained almond bread concealed underneath an explosion of cellophane. The bread was delicious with the honey butter that Mrs. Pacheco gave us, and the man has retained his charming, open demeanor throughout our time living in Wometzia.
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