Detective Knox took his seat at his desk, dropping heavily the last few inches into the chair, stressing it to see if it would spring back. His body landed stiffly, the wheels creaking as the chair tried to move through the sticky varnish of grime, giving up the fight before it could budge. The chair gave him hope, as much as he allowed himself to feel. If it could endure through time and his abuses of it, there was hope that he could do the same, that he could rise up from the pit of doubt he was in to stand his ground in a war against injustice.
His interior monologue was interrupted by Detective Lane, who placed a fresh cup of coffee under his nose, leading him back into the conscious world with the temptation of caffeine. Knox was not a man of many indulgences, not that he considered coffee to be one, but he felt it an integral part of the process. Only by drinking a brew as dark and bitter as he considered life to be could one become connected with the spirit of evil that imbued the sorts of crimes he investigated. To Knox, fruit juice and murder were not conducive to one another. It had to be coffee.
“I don't know what to make of those people. They're all weird, even for people overcome by grief.”
“Well, kid, I think the problem is that they aren't grieving. They don't seem to be giving much, if any, thought to the fact that a man who was a big part of their lives is dead. You're a normal person, so you see that as bizarre. I've never been accused of being the most human of people, so I understand it a bit better.”
“Really? You do?”
“Not entirely, but to a degree. Just because you're family doesn't mean you have deep emotional ties that bind you together. When you're rich and entitled, you get separated not just from the people you supposedly love, but from people as a whole. Money rots you from the inside, so there's not really much left to feel when something like this happens. People like the Hobbes' aren't really people anymore. They're sort of living dolls that look and act like normal people, but when you crack them open, you only find empty air and corrosion where their heart's power supply died.”
“Did anyone tell you what a vivid storyteller you are?”
“Do you get what I'm saying?”
Lane bit down on his pen, hard enough that Knox expected to see an eruption of black ink. The thin plastic held, sparing Lane the indignity of tasting the dark fluid.
“I think so. You're saying they're all so detached and self-absorbed that they don't understand what really happened, and how they're supposed to react.”
“More or less, yeah.”
“That must be a trip. I can't imagine what it must be like to not be fundamentally normal.”
“Trust me, you do.”
“Very funny. But seriously, what do you make of what they said?”
“I think they're all either very good liars, or they don't know anything. Either one is likely.”
“And what about that bit about him looking sick or tired? Could that mean anything?”
“Absolutely, it could. And equally it could mean nothing. We don't know enough right now to be able to say if it's important. We'll keep it in the back of our minds, and when we get more information, it might start to make sense.”
“We've been saying that a lot. It's getting frustrating.”
“You don't have to tell me.”
Detective Knox returned to his coffee as the conversation paused, regretting his verbal engagement with Lane, as a liquid matching the room's icy temperature passed his lips. Coffee needed to be hot, because it needed to be dangerous if it was to be effective. Cold coffee might be as potent, but not nearly as satisfying as surviving the danger of being burned. Finishing a cold cup did not feel like a victory over anything, except perhaps bad taste.
Thankfully, as Knox believed, he was interrupted before he had to endure the remainder of his tepid drink. A faceless drone caught the corner of his eye, racing towards his desk with all the haste of the tortoise, as the hare napped. Knox should have known the man's name, he realized, but between his own indifference to people, and his reputation for being cold and aloof, his knowing people was not something either side was keen on exploring.
He handed Knox a file, turning before Knox had secured it in his grip, retreating hastily. The drone seemed genuinely terrified of spending more than a few seconds in Knox's presence, which was not at all an unwelcome development, but did stir a line of thought that made Knox ask if there would ever come a time when his coarse exterior would rub someone the wrong way in a time of need.
Detective Lane got up, circling around Knox so as to read the file alongside his partner. As Knox’s partner, he was well aware that he would only be given the bare minimum of information, so he sought out the rest on his own. Knox would not take kindly to the invasion of his personal space, or the lack of trust the move indicated, but he was not going to protest and create a conversation that would last even longer.
Inside the creased manila folder, dented in the shape of white fingertips clutching with the power of a racing heart, sat a single sheet of paper. It was worn thin, as though it had already been through a lifetime of handling, and the ink was a gray shadow of what a proper document should have been. Like everything else in the city, the department's printer was dying, and he held the symptoms in his hands.
Reading with the care of a frenzied beast, Knox found the key words, skipping over the boilerplate language that made every paragraph three sentences longer than it needed to be. It would have been a waste of paper, he agreed, to simply print the three lines of important information on a page, but it would have saved everyone time and trouble. Knox could feel Lane's breath on his neck as his partner pored over every word. Knox shut the folder, not waiting for him to finish.
“Hey, I was reading that.”
“Then you should learn how to read.”
“I know how to read.”
“No, you don't know how to read reports. You read every word like they're all important.”
“They could be.”
“No, they never are. You have to understand, everything that's ever on a page was written by someone who thinks their words matter. That means there's going to be a lot more of them than there need to be, just because the writer wants to justify their own existence.”
“And you know this how?”
“Observation. It's what we do.”
“So while I was wasting my time, you read the important stuff. That's what you're saying.”
“Yes it is.”
“And if I ask you what that is, you'll be able to tell me.”
“Of course.”
“Go on.”
“It's a simple blood report. The blood we found in that building belongs to the deceased George Hobbes.”
“That's it?”
“Yes, that's it. Like I said, not every word is important, but the information is.”
“Because now we know that Hobbes was in that building, so we know the kidnapping was real. It wasn't just a story.”
“Finally thinking like a detective.”
“But what does it mean?”
“It means we have a lot more work to do.”
Chapter 19
A Monolith Of Murder
Over the years Detective Knox had learned that an investigation, unlike time, is not a linear progression. Facts had a way of spinning the world off its axis, sending him careening off into unexpected places. What at first appeared simple would later turn out to be an intricate lattice of lies, trip-wires waiting to rise up and cut off an investigation at the knees. The job, Knox knew, was not just about being able to wade through the muck and mire long enough for the truth to be forced to the surface, it was about seeing every possible route through the maze.