CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“COFFEE?” SBI DETECTIVE REYES ASKED James Wilde every time he arrived.
The interrogation room was isolated with dim lighting to alter their subject’s depth perception, James figured.
The low light rendered the subject more tired than they typically were, leaving them more inclined to accept a stale coffee.
It was a trap.
“No, thank you.” James declined. He knew they wanted his fingerprints, his saliva, any form of DNA they could obtain from him.
The police station trick was to offer refreshments where the subject would leave their DNA that they could later admit into evidence since the subject left the contents on the precinct property.
Not to mention, it was a way to make the subject think they were well taken care of by them.
James checked his Cartier wristwatch instead.
“Are we keeping you from something important?” The special agent next to Reyes asked him. It was the second time James had checked his wristwatch.
He checked it a third time. “I need to be in Montana.”
“The election campaign announcements for the congressman?”
“It starts at four.”
“Congratulations.” From Special Agent Pritchard’s flat tone, it wasn’t praise or a compliment. But James smiled at him, amiable.
“Thank you. I worked hard to earn the position.”
“I bet.” Special Agent Pritchard had a stocky build, short height, and shrewd eyes. He was the one who had escalated matters to a homicide investigation. “Are you celebrating?”
“Not until we win.”
That wasn’t what Special Agent Pritchard meant. He wanted to know if James was enjoying his victory lap of not being indicted or charged yet.
“Which airline are you taking to Montana?” Detective Reyes asked instead, as though they didn’t already know. The detectives had acquired his flight logs from the major airport.
“Northeast Airlines.”
“Out of Woodstock Airport?” Reyes asked to extend their time, knowing they were in southern Connecticut, it would make no sense to drive that far north to catch a plane when Tweed-New Haven Airport was right there. “Are you flying out of Bradley?”
“No, Waterbury-Oxford Airport.”
“Are you sure?”
James tilted his brow upward. “Why, do you know anything different?”
The agent passed the flight sheet to him. “You’re headed out of New London Airport. Do you care to explain why you lied to us?” Special Agent Pritchard frowned. “Do you have a habit of lying to us?”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You should take the coffee,” Reyes cautioned him, sliding the cup further. “You’re going to be here for a while.”
Pritchard kept his eyes locked on James. “Explain why you lied.”
“I didn’t lie to anyone.” James excavated his new flight details.
“I changed my flight from Groton-New London to Waterbury-Oxford when I received your call to meet you at the precinct. It sounded important.” James checked his Cartier timepiece for a fourth time, a reminder of what they could never afford.
His perfect-black Henault suit was exceptionally tailored.
“I want to make sure I have plenty of time to help you.”
“Help us?” Pritchard caught the lightly placed insult that they were incompetent, but in case he didn’t, James softly gazed over at them.
“I seem to be the only lead you have. I want to help you find Lucien Montclair. He’s been missing for weeks.”
The officer grunted. “You stabbed him between his ribcage, a few inches from the heart. Forgive me if I doubt you want to offer him your help.”
“He fell into my dinner knife.” James maintained the same narrative. “Lucien said that himself and everyone else stated that as well when the police arrived last October. It was awful. For the rest of Samhain, I was concerned for him.”
All of the students had confirmed the accident.
Lucien tripped forward into the knife. That was all.
Recently, the institution reminded them of the threat of expulsion.
If the students changed their narrative, and if any of them admitted they illegally provided a false statement to the police the first time, they would’ve been sued to ruin by the institution, therefore, everyone kept silent.
“Sah win?” Reyes blinked, struck by the word. “The hell is sah win?”
Pritchard muttered, “Their Hallowe’en.”
“Isn’t that Sam-Hane? It’s spelled Samhain.”
“No. Saw-win. It’s Celtic. Their Hallowe’en is Samhain.”
“Why would they celebrate an ancient…Never mind.” The detective shook his buzzed head at the pagan towns. He moved forward.
“Before your knife went into Lucien, what had you been discussing beforehand?” Reyes asked, for possibly the hundredth time. However, James answered as if it were the first.
He smiled a bit fondly. “We were roughhousing. We were mostly laughing, trading jokes and insults.” James retained his smile. “It was Samhain.”
“He must’ve taken the insults personally to nominate your close friend for the honorarium two months later.
Wouldn’t you agree?” The detectives slid a photograph that still made James’s intestines disintegrate.
It was taken the morning of the hibernal ceremony.
There was unmistakable hatred in his eyes. “We reviewed the footage, Mr. Wilde.”
The hibernal ceremony was not televised. However, the local newspaper, The Banebury Tribune, and the national news station, The American Patriots Report, had photographers that took coverage photos and footage there.
The police subpoenaed the information.
James watched the footage with them before, always wheeled in on an old fashioned television. Sure enough, the door opened and a clunky television was brought in. The state department in Spalder didn’t have a quarter of the opulence that Banebury possessed.
Due to the mountainous wind, and the overlapping voices of thousands, the sound didn’t carry. The outdated camera tracked Elliott, but he was quaking. He trembled in dire fear and the words were unintelligible from his shaking lips. No one could read his lips. Only James had known what he said.
James whispered in his ear and kept their faces close together whenever he said anything important to Elliott.
Except…
“There.” The detective pointed at the edge of the television screen. “You confronted Lucien Montclair on the last day he was seen alive. You were speaking furiously at him, almost accusatory.”
You are a damned liar.
“I was upset.”
“What were you upset about?”
James fought back an eye roll. “I imagine I was upset that he was taunting Elliott before he was due for death. I thought it was cruel, and I told him to lessen his taunting, that’s all.
I know how much Lucien likes to joke around, but Elliott was sensitive.
That’s it.” James knew he had to admit to at least the bare minimum.
He needed to appear human, but not murderous. “For a minute, I was angry.”
“Angry enough to find and kill him?” Pritchard questioned intently. “Especially when you already had a knife-related incident with the deceased beforehand?”
“He’s not deceased,” James said, knowing their follow up question would be where James held him captive.
“He’s missing as far as I know. I left with my friends that morning.
As you can see on the footage, we were holding hands, and chatting about the recitation.
” Asininely, James had even maintained close friendships with the actors and crew afterward.
In mid-February, for Lupercalia, he’d flown to Cannes with Iris and her understudy Pepper, tumbling into a fevered, late night ménage à trois.
“We left. I knew the hibernal ceremony was happening ahead of time. I made peace with it all.”
“You made peace with your best friend’s death that quickly?” Reyes sounded unconvinced.
“I did. I knew the hibernal ceremony happens every winter. As AEscwulf College students, we all expect it every year.”
“You knew Elliott would be chosen?”
“I knew it was a possibility.” James pointed at himself. “Even I could’ve been chosen that day. However, Lucien didn’t select me because we don’t hate each other. He didn’t hate Elliott either. It was nothing personal.”
Pritchard tried to read his gaze, scrutinizing every wrinkle of his lineament, except James didn’t have a single crease. Except where his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled. “Lucien owes me a beer, if anything. That was the worst day of my life.”
Reyes said the five syllables that made James flinch, no matter how many times he practiced a centered blank expression.
No matter how desperately he tried to become a contortionist, attempting to contour his features into their proper place, he couldn’t.
James was traumatized from the hibernal ceremony.
He was haunted by nightmares where he could’ve lost Elliott.
He was tormented by the possibility that he still might lose him.
“Elliott Archway.” It was early in the routine for Reyes to mention him. James hoped he recovered his composed expression quickly enough. “You two slept together, didn’t you?”
“Not romantically.”
“Sexually?”
“Never.”
“Did you shower together?”
“Not in the same stall, unless you count the locker room for athletics when we were younger.”
“But you slept together frequently?”
“Often. As I’ve stated, Elliott had night terrors.”
“On the tape, you embraced and kissed each other. Granted, not on the lips, but it betrayed the intimacy you shared. Intimate enough for you to kill for him?” The question was rhetorical.
Reyes went on. “Lucien desecrated his body by fire. I can’t imagine you took that lightly when you heard about it.
I doubt even further that you’d want to share a beer with him. ”
“I went home for the holidays. I didn’t hear about Elliott’s body burning until Lucien was already reported missing miles away. The strange part is…I think that’s what broke Lucien.”
“Broke him?”