“So, how long before we have to be there? I don’t know if I’m over this nausea yet.”
“You don’t need to go,” I told her. “You can stay here and rest for a while, and I can fill you in later.”
“Are you sure?” she queried. “I don’t have a photo shoot scheduled until this afternoon, so I’ve got the morning free.”
“I’m sure,” I replied. “You need to get some rest. The accent is still a little heavy.”
“Oh, stop it, then.”
“Seriously though, honey. I can call you if anything happens.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay then.”
I left her lounging on the sofa in our living room, surrounded by three cats displaying curious concern as only they can do.
I parked my truck behind City Hall and checked in at the desk. I was apparently becoming a familiar face, or I was anticipated, as the Sergeant had a visitor’s badge in hand as soon as he saw me. After checking in, I continued down the corridor and was met at the door by Ben and Detective Deckert.
“How’s Firehair?” Ben inquired, calling Felicity by one of his many nicknames for her.
“She was starting to perk up,” I told him as we continued farther into the bowels of the building. “I expect she’ll be fine.”
“Good, good,” his voice trailed off as we descended a flight of stairs, and he fell silent.
Detective Deckert’s face wore a somber expression, and his only greeting to me when I arrived had been a stiff nod. He was still silent as we rounded a landing and continued downward. It didn’t take the heightened senses of a Witch to feel the tension coming from the two. Tension directed toward me.
“So look, Rowan…” Ben finally broke the silence as we stopped in front of a heavy steel door. “I got somethin’ I need ta’ tell ya’, and I don’t think you’re gonna like it much.”
“I had a feeling,” I acknowledged. “It’s something about R.J. isn’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Deckert intoned.
Ben let out a heavy breath and smoothed his hair back. His brow was creased with apprehension as he wrestled with what he had to tell me.
“So there’s no way to sugar coat it,” he spoke. “I just got off the phone with the forensics lab a minute or two before you got here…”
“Something about that fingerprint?” I feared I knew what he was about to say.
“Yeah, that print,” he answered. “The muni that popped R.J. this morning entered his prints into AFIS, and the lab boys got an immediate hit.”
“It matched?” I stared at him in disbelief.
“Like an identical twin.”
“Damn,” I whispered. “I thought it was a partial print?”
“It was, but there was enough there to make a positive ID.”
“What about the wax from the other scenes?”
“They were clean, but that doesn’t matter. The one found last night matches. No two ways about it.”
“That’s not all.” Deckert expounded, “The M.E. came up with some long, dark hairs on the body as well as some other fibers.”
“And the lab ran a check on the semen found at the scene last night. Blood type O Positive,” Ben added. “Same as R.J.”
“If I remember correctly, O Positive is fairly common,” I protested. “Somewhere near forty percent of the population shares that blood type.”
“Yeah, it is,” Ben agreed. “But fingerprints ain’t. The lab’s gonna run a DNA analysis too, but that’ll take awhile.” He paused. “We got enough for a search warrant, Rowan… I’m sorry man, but I think R.J.’s involved.”
“What about his eyes, Ben?” I pleaded, unwilling to believe what I was being told. “What color are his eyes?”
“His eyes are brown,” he responded. “But like I told ya’, that’s inadmissible… Besides, maybe you made a mistake.”
“No,” I expressed, “I didn’t make a mistake.”
We stood in silence for a moment, Ben’s hand on the doorknob. My mind raced, trying to formulate a logical way to refute the evidence Ben had outlined. Even with my own suspicions about R.J., I was reluctant to believe he was the killer. There had to be an explanation, and it needed to be a good one.
“Are you charging him?” I questioned.
“Not yet,” Deckert returned. “We’re gonna see what turns up when we search his place first.”
Ben opened the heavy door, and we entered another corridor in the basement of the building. Fluorescent light fixtures were unevenly spaced along the acoustic drop ceiling, bathing the hallway in a harsh blue-white light. One of the older tubes would occasionally flicker into darkness then burn dull orange at each end before snapping back to life, if only for a moment. The glossy, painted, cinder block walls had aged from the original white to a sickly yellowish tone that was deepened at intervals by the orange glow. The walls felt close when combined with the low drop ceiling, and I fought back a thin wave of claustrophobia.
We continued down a cracked asphalt tile floor and came to a halt before a uniformed officer stationed at a large metal desk. Chips and gouges in the grey painted piece of furniture testified to its age and use. A green desk blotter, a telephone, and a sign-in sheet adorned its sparse surface. I couldn’t help but be somewhat amused by the fact that the pen accompanying the sheet was chained to the desk. A dilapidated drip coffeemaker, stained from years of use, sizzled and popped in the corner behind the duty officer-a careless spill being turned into yet another crusty residue on its heating plate.
Ben and Deckert surrendered their sidearms to the uniformed man, and he locked them away in the desk drawer. With a wordless grunt, he indicated the sign-in sheet, and the three of us added our names to it. With this task completed, the voiceless guard led us farther down the corridor and unlocked the door to the first interview room. We stepped in-Ben, Deckert, and finally me. The weighty door swung shut behind us, and the lock dropped back into place with an audible metallic clunk that echoed from the bare cement walls. A plain wooden table with two chairs, much like one would find in a small kitchen, was positioned near the center of the room. A bedraggled, unshaven R.J. filled one of the chairs. He looked up with a nervous start as we entered. For the second time in less than three days, R.J. was in the custody of the police. His at once depressed and fearful expression showed that he was still no more practiced at it than he had been the first time.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he ventured, looking at me.
“Why not?” I asked, advancing past Ben and Deckert then pulling out the chair opposite him.
“Because of how I acted Saturday night.” He looked at the floor then back at me as I took a seat. “I wasn’t exactly Mister Congeniality… Then, when you shook my hand and I blocked you…”
“I would have done the same,” I replied soothingly. “Hell, I had no business trying to feel you out like that. It was pretty rude.”
“I can understand why you did it,” he told me.
He seemed somewhat calmer than when we first entered, but he still looked around the room nervously, shifting back and forth from me to Ben and Deckert. He wrung his hands, and every now and again, his voice would quaver slightly. I could see, feel, hear and even smell the fear coming from him. The emotion that bothered me most though was the sensation of guilt.
“What’s going on?” he finally asked me. “Why do they want to talk to me about Ariel and the other lady? Am I a suspect or something?”
By now, Ben and Detective Deckert had moved farther into the room. Ben was standing to my right, and Deckert had propped himself in a corner, behind and to the right of R.J.
“Are you sure you don’t want an attorney?” Ben interjected.
“What do I need a lawyer for?” R.J. demanded fearfully.
As he spoke, I felt a sharp, piercing pain in the pit of my stomach. Ben didn’t reply. To an observer such as myself, it was obvious that he was using R.J.’s own fear as leverage against him. It was a wholly unpleasant and
