He didn’t look worried. Was the person at the desk not one of the Knights?
We passed by desks and officers in cubicles, and I managed to sneak a glance at the bottom-right corner of a computer screen, seeing the time. Nine in the morning.
I was led back to the interrogation rooms and sat down in the same room and spot I’d been in before. He shut me in.
I had no way to track the passage of time. Evan didn’t turn up, and I worried he’d returned to my cell to find me absent.
He and Duncan Behaim were a little too close to one another.
This was hell. Being made to stay still, being confined, trapped… it was everything I loathed. I’d run away from home to escape a kind of pressure very similar to what I felt right now.
A sick feeling welled in my gut, as I imagined being sent to prison, facing this each and every day, knowing I had ten or fifteen years before I would get out.
I knew this was about mind games, tricks, manipulations, to make me look more guilty, or to put me in a position where I’d maybe make a mistake. Just as they’d done when they’d pressured me in terms of my personal space, the very layout of this room.
I knew it, but I was having trouble distancing myself from it.
It didn’t help that every single second that passed was one second that I theoretically needed for tonight. For taking on the lesser demon, the abstract thing.
By the time the door opened, sneaking suspicion told me it had been a minimum of an hour, on top of my wait in the cell.
“Good morning, Mr. Thorburn,” Mrs. Harris said.
“Good morning, ma’am,” I said. “I appreciate your coming.”
“No choice in the matter, not really. But you’re welcome,” she said. “I’m hoping you’re a little more helpful to the officers and yourself today.”
“Exercising my rights,” I said.
“Just because they’re there doesn’t mean you need to exercise them,” she said.
She was followed by Duncan and Max. I could tell that people were filing into the other room, on the other side of the one-way mirror.
I wasn’t sure what was going on.
“A few questions, if you will,” Max said.
“Questions?”
“It’s fine,” Mrs. Harris said. “Answer to the best of your ability?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I still have the right to remain silent?”
“Section eleven,” she said. “Yes. You still have all rights and privileges afforded by the law. Nothing has changed.”
Evan appeared, walking through the wall. He stopped beside me.
He seemed clearer. Were we closer to his body?
He saw Duncan, on the far end of the table, and his eyes went wide. An expression that was recorded from his time in the woods.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Alright. Let’s do this.”
I glanced at Evan. “Let’s all do this.”
He stayed.
I could see Duncan frown a bit.
“Yesterday, you were asked to visit the woods. By who?”
“The lady said her family asked you to go,” Evan said.
What?
She’d lied?
“I believe I refused to name them?” I asked.
Buying time, time to think.
“Perhaps a night in a cell has given you a chance to reconsider?” Max asked.
I made a bit of a show of sighing. “A family at a convenience store a little bit away wanted my help. I maybe got one partial name, nothing useful to you.”
I saw Duncan’s expression change. A deeper frown.
“Elaborate?” Max asked.
“Let me think,” I said…
“I needed some advice from them, for a project I hoped to tackle today… a project I still hope to tackle today, given the chance. I’m… I’m not sure exactly what happened to them. I do know that they lost someone in their family. The man I talked to, his son lost a girlfriend, maybe? It was vague.”
I was thinking a hell of a lot more clearly than I had the night prior.
I had an advantage here, and Duncan didn’t like it, going by the look on his face.
Trick was figuring out how to get the most out of it.
They were all looking at a single piece of paper.
“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to buy time before the next set of questions.
Mrs. Harris said, “Someone came forward to give you an alibi. We’re making sure the details match up.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do you need to know?”
It was Duncan who spoke. “Last night, you suggested you see goblins and demons…”
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“You answered all questions, until you adamantly refused to answer questions pertaining to that,” Duncan said.
“Can we get back to my alibi?” I asked.
“I don’t see the point of this,” Mrs. Harris said.
“Mr. Thorburn,” Duncan said, ignoring her. “Do you believe that particular group of people you talked to last night are affiliated in any way with the supernatural?”
“Do you?” I asked.
“Don’t be combative,” my lawyer said.
“Yes or no?” Duncan asked.
“I think they’re-”
“Yes or no,” he interrupted.
“Now who’s being combative?” I asked.
“You’re not doing yourself any favors,” my lawyer said.
Fuck you, I thought. I couldn’t let him control the flow of this discussion. I continued, heated, “The family said something about being involved in board games or something like that. Maybe it was a Dungeons and Dragons or Weaver Dice thing, maybe it was an Ouija Board thing. I don’t really know. But you could probably stretch the definition. Yes, if you have to ask.”
“Do you associate with the supernatural in other ways, Mr. Thorburn?” Duncan Behaim asked me.
“What’s with this line of questioning?” I asked. “I thought we were talking about my alibi.”
“My suspicion is that there was a supernatural or pseudo-supernatural element in young Evan Matthieu’s death-”
“So you do believe in crazy stuff like that?” I cut in.
“Quiet,” Officer Max said, a little hostile.
“I believe that errant teenagers can and do get involved with such nonsense, leading to the harm of unwitting bystanders,” Duncan said. “We searched your apartment and found ritualistic drawings on clothes and at the border of the apartment.”
Balls.
But I was a little more mentally agile than I had been last night. Enough that it worried me. There was only one good source for the power I had at hand, and it boded ill for the donor. “Much of what you saw on the floor was done by artist friends of mine, and not by me. The building landlord can put you in touch with the guys who did the tape thing.“