Any satisfaction Detective Knox might feel, as he walked into the station, was entirely internal. To persevere through the hardship of suffocating doubt, to overcome the demons he had fought within himself; that was the victory that mattered most. The city would be safer with a killer off the streets, and the survivors would grudgingly admit they were relieved, but these were not the people Detective Knox worked himself to exhaustion for. He knew it was selfish, but he undertook these cases for himself alone, to test his skills and revel in being able to say he was the only person smart enough to catch killers.
He would say nothing of this to Kat, Detective Lane, or anyone else. Having them think he was so self-centered would have pushed Knox perilously close to the breaking point. They may have already had such thoughts in their minds, but like Detective Knox, they kept their judgments to themselves. It was an unwritten agreement, and each side would go on playing their role through the facade of naïveté. The act made everyone feel better, and though Detective Knox lived a life committed to uncovering the truth, he was more than comfortable failing to live up to those standards in his personal life.
Detective Knox often thought about how to best present himself in an interrogation; as the good cop who knows bad things can spiral out of control before anyone knows what happened, as the bad cop who steps over the line and uses a suspect’s nightmares against them, or as the sympathetic sounding board who knows the sensation of tasting death. Mostly, he chose to be a blank canvas, allowing the suspect to paint onto him their own worst fears. What they did not know was that Detective Knox was not pretending to be anything during their interrogations; he was naturally devoid of any feeling towards them. His entire focus was on ‘the case.’ The people who took part in it were ancillary nuisances.
Detective Knox motioned to Lane, instructing him to wait with the family and assorted onlookers, to watch through the one-way glass while he conducted the interview himself. Lane understood, realizing that a killer was more likely to let his guard down with one person, especially one who could play on his sympathies. The chances of a killer trusting multiple people with their murderous proclivities was far lower.
The door clicked shut with a satisfying, deep sound, the workmanlike grating of heavy-duty steel. The tiled walls echoed the sound, informing anyone inside that escape was impossible. The beast had been caged, and the only ways out were death or confession. Detective Knox took his seat at the table, placing the case file in front of him, leaving it closed. The pretense of rifling through the pages, placing the photographs in front of the killer, would be useless. When a killer is without remorse, without compassion, there is no reason to let them admire their handiwork.
Emerson Hobbes was calm. He displayed none of the signs of anxiety or fear that the majority of suspects could not hide. Detective Knox admired this quality in his adversaries, the ability to believe in the righteousness of their actions. There was no skill or satisfaction in catching someone who could not live with themselves, who desperately wanted to be punished for what they had done. Emerson Hobbes was not that variety of low-hanging fruit, and he could not truly believe that he was guilty of committing a cardinal sin. His sense of morality may have been twisted, but he was sincere, an important sign of character. Actions define a man, it is true, but so too does character. People who do vile things can still be men of honor, a distinction that few people could wrap their heads around. Detective Knox was one of them, in both senses of the phrase.
“Emerson Hobbes, you have been arrested for the murder of your father, George Hobbes. Do you understand the charges?”
“I do.”
“So let's start at the beginning. What made you want to kill your father?”
“The question you should be asking is why he should have been allowed to live. He was a bad man, and a worse father. He had failed on so many levels that it seemed unfair for him to be allowed to continue ruining our lives.”
“There was nothing in particular that set you off?”
“No, I had just reached the end of my rope.”
“Tell me, why did you go through the trouble of setting up this elaborate plan? Why not just kill him and argue self-defense? If you were smart enough to stage a locked room murder, surely you could have done that.”
“He didn't deserve that.”
“How so?”
“He deserved to die without anyone knowing how or why. He would just disappear, and become a faded memory somewhere down the line. No one would care about who killed him, or why. He would become a footnote on the obituaries page.”
“So tell me how you came up with your plan.”
“Dad's plan for me was to be a doctor, before I refused to play his little game. I had a couple of pre-med classes, and you'd be amazed what an evil mind can do with that kind of knowledge.”
“I've seen almost everything.”
“You hadn't seen this before.”
“You're right, I hadn't. You did show me something new.”
“Thank you. So I snuck up on him while he was distracted and knocked him out. I took him to that building, and I enjoyed what I did to him. It was all I could do not to cut his heart out then and there so I could feel it take its final beats.”
“But you didn't.”
“No, I stuck with my plan. I stitched him back up, and brought him home. I went out and got drunk, then got myself arrested to make sure I had an alibi. All I had to do then was wait for the call telling me he was dead.”
“And you don't feel bad about what you did?”
“Of course not. The only thing I feel bad about is getting caught. Having this make the front page, with the books and movies that are sure to tell the whole story ad nauseam, ruins everything I was trying to do. He's not going to die an anonymous lump of flesh. People are going to care now.”
“Where is the murder weapon?”
“There isn't one.”
“That's being semantic. Where are the medical supplies you used?”
“I drove halfway across the city and threw them out. They're probably in the dump by now.”
“Do you have anything I should tell your mother and your sister?”
“Tell them I did this for them. We all wanted him dead; I was just the one willing to go through with it.”
“Thank you for your confession.”
“You make it sound like I'm not proud of what I did.”
“I was being semantic.”
* * *
Exiting the interview room, Detective Knox was met by a familiar face. Anna Summers stood in front of him, her head tilted to one side. He could see confusion in her eyes, their bright colors dimmed. He put a hand on her shoulder, doing the best impression of a father he could manage, and pulled her aside.
“Detective, I saw all the police cars outside, and then you leading them all out of the house. I came down here to see what was going on, and I heard what he said in there. I can't believe it. I can't believe he killed his own father like that.”
“I know it's hard to believe, but you never can tell who's capable of doing those kinds of things. People get pushed too far, and before you know it, they find themselves covered in blood, wondering what just happened.”
“I'd prefer not to think about that.”