Cassie and I both leaned forward. Our foreheads grazed the glass as though it would allow us to hear better.
“What did he ask him?” I said.
Cassie frowned at me. I presumed it was for failing to pay attention. I didn’t bother to tell her I was boggled down with her earlier concerns.
“He asked him about being at his apartment. I guess his answer differed this time.”
“What was his answer?”
She shot my reflection a look. “How have you managed to remain a detective for so long if you can’t follow this?”
“I was lost in thought. Now what’d he say?”
“Said his power went out early, so he headed to a friend’s house. The friend wasn’t there, but Seth knows where the spare key was, so he went in and stayed there for the night.”
In the interrogation room, Cervantes had positioned himself by the door. He leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest and his mouth clenched shut. He’d save his words for the right moment.
Meanwhile, Pennington continued. “So, before you told us you were home the entire night of the storm. Now you’re telling me that you went to a friend’s place, but the friend can’t vouch for you because he wasn’t there? I gotta tell you, this smells of bullshit, Seth.”
“I was scared,” Seth said.
“Scared of what?”
“That you’d arrest me for breaking and entering or something like that.”
Pennington straightened up, pointed at Cervantes, then himself. “We’re homicide detectives. You think I care about some petty ass B and E charge?”
Seth stared at the table and said nothing.
“See, the problem I have here is that you lied to me, and now you’re trying to cover it up with more lies. And all this after we found you inside your girlfriend’s room in a house where three women were murdered and one, your girlfriend, was abducted. What do you think she’d think about you sniffing her pantie drawer while she’s missing? Huh? Or maybe you were there for a different reason?”
“To hell with her!” Seth slammed his clenched fists against the table. He gritted against the unexpected pain rifling through his wrists and arms. I’d seen it happen before. “If she’d have just taken me back, this wouldn’t have happened to her. To any of them.”
Did we have a confession coming?
Pennington shot a look at his partner, then toward us. He walked in a complete circle around Seth, stopping on the other side of the table. He pulled the empty chair out and sat down.
“What happened to her, Seth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where were you that night?”
Seth looked up, but said nothing.
“We know you weren’t at home because it was rented out for the week. And we both know the friend story is a fabrication.”
Seth sat still and said nothing.
“You went over there, didn’t you? Headed out in the storm, to see Alice. Why? Were you trying to win her back?”
“There was nothing to win back,” he said. “We were still together.”
“Not according to what some of her other friends said. They told us you two had broken up over a month earlier, and that you kept showing up at her work, her classes, the house. Always uninvited and unexpected.”
The young man’s cheeks burned red, but he kept his mouth shut. An attorney would have told him to shut up long ago. The house was awash with evidence. If Seth was innocent, forensics would clear him. It was time for Pennington to turn the screws on the guy. Seth knew something that would help to unravel the mystery further.
“Guess you figured the storm was the perfect chance,” Pennington said. “Show up there with nowhere else to go. Soaking wet. She’d take you in. Get you out of those wet clothes. Dry you off. Warm you up. Next thing, you’d be in bed together while the wind howled and rain battered the house.”
“It wasn’t like that!”
And there we have it, folks. Seth had said something to implicate himself.
“Then what the hell was it like, Seth?” Pennington leaned in closer, ducking his head to make eye contact with Seth.
Seth lowered his head until his brow touched the cold metal table. His shoulders hitched up and down a few times, like he was crying, but there was no sobbing. Then after a few moments, he moaned. A high-pitched sound that bottomed out into a throaty growl. He was experiencing a physical and psychological release. The images of that night took over his every waking and sleeping moment.
“Talking will feel good, Seth,” I whispered. “Just do it.”
“What?” Cassie glanced at me.
I shook my head and said, “Thinking out loud. I have a feeling he’s about to tell us everything.”
Pennington remained silent. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. No doubt he’d seen suspects try a multitude of tactics to throw him off. The threat of life in prison leads people to do and say anything to save their skin. Speaking from experience, little surprised you after several years on the job.
Cervantes left his post by the door, whispered something to his partner, then exited the interrogation room. The door fell shut like a brick hitting the floor. Cervantes stepped into the dark chamber and stood next to me.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Me?” I said.
“Yeah, you.”
“You want my opinion?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“I thought maybe it was a rhetorical question and you’d try to throw me out after I answered.”
“Christ, Tanner. I’m trying to build bridges here. Bridges. Don’t burn them down.”
Back in the room Seth had straightened up and sat rigid. A red spot covered his forehead. He stared at the window, almost as though he were looking at me right through it.
“I think he’s full of shit,” I said. “Or he’s a psycho stalker who wouldn’t leave his ex alone.”
“So you think there’s a chance he did it?”
“You’re the one with access to the evidence, man. You tell me.”
“Really think you’d be standing here if we had something solid on him?”
I folded my arms over my chest. “No, not at all.”
Cassie said, “It wasn’t him.”
“How can you be sure?” Cervantes said.
“I can’t.”
Silence lingered inside and outside the interrogation room for a minute or so. My aggravation bled over and increased my breathing, fogging up the glass. The hazy mist grew then retreated with each breath. Could they see it on the other side? I’d never looked for that before.
Seth cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “We were broken up.”
Pennington nodded, but said nothing. No reason to. Seth had broken the cardinal rule in a negotiation. He spoke first.
“It had been a couple months, like you said. I’d go over to pay her a visit sometimes. She still let me in, but not when her friends were around. And if one of them answered the door…” He clenched his mouth tight. The muscles on his jaw stood out behind his thin, scraggly beard. “When they were around, Alice wouldn’t even see me. She’d tell them to send me away. But I’d hang around the hedges at a neighbor’s house, and late at night, when everyone was asleep, she’d open her window for me.”
“You sure it was for you?
“You calling my girlfriend a whore?”
“Ex-girlfriend, Seth.” Pennington stifled a smile. A little twitch at the corner of his mouth. He’d gotten under his subject’s skin, and that was often the moment the truth came out.
Seth’s cheeks burned red again, but not out of anger. Body language gave it away. His shoulders slumped. His chin dropped to his chest. His eyes cast downward again. “Look, man, I know she’s kind of casual with guys. That was why…that’s why she broke up with me. I couldn’t take it while we were exclusive. While I was exclusive, I guess. I yelled at her one time too many.”
“You ever strike her?”
“No, man. The hell? I ain’t like that.”
Pennington nodded. “Okay, fair enough. Let’s get to after you were broken up. Were there any confrontations the times her friends wouldn’t let you in?”
Seth shrugged, said nothing. I knew where Pennington was going with it, and hoped he’d stop short. He’d rattled the man and shaken Seth’s confidence. Any more might cause the guy to shut down and clam up.
“All right,” Pennington said. “Just tell me the truth.”
“About what?”
“Where were you that night?”
Seth glanced up. He was biting his bottom lip while clenching and unclenching his hands into fists. The raw emotions from the night of the storm were flooding in. What had he seen? What had he done? Or, perhaps, what did he wish he had done?
“If I tell you what I saw, you promise nothing will happen to me?”