“Did Sergeant Cannon read you your rights?”
“Yes.”
“Then you understand that you’re being recorded, and that anything you say in here can be used against you?”
The young man sitting on the opposite side of the table squirmed a bit. Glanced nervously around the room as though he were looking for something. A video camera, perhaps. “Yes.”
“And you’re waiving your right to speak to an attorney?”
“Yessir.”
Detective Bailey leaned back in his chair, sighing. “Okay.” He nodded thoughtfully. Jotted down a note on the pad of paper that rested in front of him. “Okay. In that case, I have some papers here for you to sign, and then—”
“I want to tell you my story.”
“We’ll get to that, Mr. Gauthier, but first—
“Brad.”
“Excuse me?”
“Call me Brad.”
“Okay, Brad. Do you understand the charges being brought against you?”
Brad nodded, his eyes still bouncing around the room.
“And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be of sound mind to answer those questions, is that correct?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Brad was looking at him steadily now.
“Excuse me?”
“We met before,” Brad said. “Long time ago? You interviewed me about the disappearance of my friend, Tony Hill?”
Something registered in the detective’s eyes. “I remember the Hill case. But I don’t remember—”
“I was the last person to speak to him the night he vanished,” Brad murmured casually.
“Mr. Gauthier. Brad. I’m not sure what that has to do with the events that took place this morning.”
Brad smiled without humor. “It’s all connected, see?”
Detective Bailey leaned forward. He rested his pencil on the table and folded his hands in front of him. “I guess it’s best if I get right to the point,” he said. “Why did you kill those people?”
Brad chuckled incredulously, as at a really dumb joke.
Bailey decided to play along. He smiled unconvincingly at the hollow-eyed young man. “Did I say something funny?”
“Yes. Yes, you did.”
“Care to enlighten me?” Bailey was already growing weary of this line of questioning. All he wanted was to go home and grab a few hours of sleep before his next shift. He rubbed his temples, feeling a familiar throbbing behind his eyes.
“It’s what you said…” Brad closed his eyes, smiling.
“What I said?” asked Bailey, louder than he had intended. He told himself to calm down, not to let this punk get under his skin. “I asked why you killed those people.”
Brad opened his eyes slowly. He looked across the table at Bailey and his smile disappeared as though it had never been there at all. “People,” he said, spitting out the word as though it tasted awful to him. “Those weren’t people.”
“No? Maybe you’d care to explain that statement to me.”
Brad smiled again. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Detective Bailey thought it likely that the maniac sitting across from him was correct. There was little reason to believe that he could ever understand how someone could pick up a gun, walk into a civilian workplace, and unload round after round of ammunition into human flesh without showing even the slightest hint of remorse. After a moment, he said, “Try me.”
An hour later, Detective Bailey emerged from the Hevven Police Department’s interrogation room with an eye-watering migraine and a harried expression on his face.
“Did you hear?” he asked the man standing behind the two-way glass.
Sergeant Cannon looked at him with an expression of disbelief. “I heard enough. Let’s go grab some coffee. You look like shit.”
“After being in the room with that psycho, I feel like shit.”
The two men made their way down the corridor to the break room. “Lemme guess,” Cannon said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “The devil made him do it.”
Bailey sighed between his teeth. “I wish it were that straightforward.”
“Well, what did he say?”
Bailey poured his own cup of joe and took a sip. “I dunno. He rambled on for more than an hour. Thinks that the people he killed weren’t really people. Claims they were some kind of shadow people in human form. Says they came here to study us, in order to prepare for some kind of invasion.”
Cannon chuckled softly and whistled between his teeth. “Do you think he’s really nuts, or is he trying to play the insanity card?”
Bailey shook his head. “I dunno. I still have to interview the survivors, but the guy’s got no priors, and by all accounts, he was a nice, normal guy up until today.”
“I’ll bet you ten bucks his girlfriend dumped him. Either that, or he just got passed over for a promotion.” He sighed through his teeth. “It’s always the same old shit, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Wow,” Cannon said, raising his bushy eyebrows. “This guy really rattled your cage, didn’t he?”
“No,” Bailey whispered. “It’s not that. I just have this splitting headache.”
“Another migraine?”
Bailey closed his eyes, nodding.
“Well, why don’t you go home and get some rest. Your shift ended, what? Half an hour ago?”
“Yeah,” Bailey said. “I might just do that. Lemme know if anything comes up, okay? I want to make sure all our ducks are in a row before they transfer him to county.”
On his way home, Bailey stopped at Buzzy’s Pharmacy in the center of West Hevven. Stepping out of his unmarked cruiser, the later afternoon sunlight sent needles of pain through his eyes. Once inside the store, the intensity of the migraine seemed to decrease by several degrees. The fluorescent lights weren’t as bad as the sunlight, but they weren’t doing him any favors, either. He found the medicine aisle and grabbed a bottle of Excedrin Migraine Headache tablets. He was on his way to the checkout counter when he caught a glimpse of himself in the sectional mirrors in the back of the store, the kind where you can look at your reflection from a variety of angles, depending on how you stand. Beside the mirrors was a rack of exotic looking sunglasses on a rotating stand. On top of the rack was a sign boasting SUNGLASSES TWO FOR TEN DOLLARS – SPRING INTO SUMMER – LIMITED TIME ONLY!
Bailey frowned at his reflection and his reflection frowned back at him. Leaning in for a closer look, he saw that his cheeks had lost their youthful color, and his eyes were sunken, bloodshot, and rimmed with dark circles that looked like bruises. Cannon was right, thought Bailey. I do look like shit.
Squinting against the glare of the overhead fluorescents, he noticed all the variations of his face—the familiar features now made unfamiliar—as the mirrors traded his reflection back and forth into oblivion. He was about to turn away toward the checkout counter when something caught his eye: the last tiny reflection, seemingly miles away and at the end of a rectangular hallway lined with myriad other versions of himself.
The other reflections were standing just as he was standing; arms by their sides, holding little bottles of Excedrin Migraine tablets in their hands, brows furrowed in pain at the onslaught of a killer headache. Only that last tiny reflection was different.
That one was waving to him.