Chapter 3

The interrogation room was a sterile, gray box. It felt smaller from this side of the table. The two-way mirror felt like a hundred accusing eyes. My hands, cuffed to a ring bolted to the table, were cold and numb.

They sent Jennifer in first. A tactic. Good cop, bad cop? No, this was something else entirely. This was psychological warfare. She sat across from me, her hands clasped tightly on the table, her face a carefully constructed mask of professional detachment. She was Dr. Hughes, the forensic psychologist, not Jennifer, my wife.

"Scott," she began, her voice clinical. "We need to understand why."

"Why?" I laughed, a harsh, ugly sound that bounced off the concrete walls. "You want to know why? I want to know why my wife, my partner, and my captain have all lost their goddamn minds! A music box? You're arresting me because of a reflection in a goddamn music box?"

"It's more than a reflection, Scott, and you know it," she said, her composure unwavering. "Three people saw the same thing. Three people saw you."

"They saw what you told them to see!" I shot back, leaning forward as far as the cuffs would allow. "You're a psychologist, Jen. You know about the power of suggestion!"

"And you're a detective," she countered. "You know about evidence. Caleb Benton is a witness. He saw you."

"Caleb Benton is a liar!" I roared, slamming my cuffed hands on the table. "He's the killer! He ran!"

"He said he ran because he was scared," she said calmly. "He saw a decorated Chicago detective murder his father. Who wouldn't run?"

I stared at her, searching for any flicker of the woman I loved, any hint of doubt. There was none. Only a cold, heartbreaking resolve. The weight of her parents' murder had finally broken her, and she was taking me down with her.

After she left, they sent in Clark. He didn't sit. He paced, his hands behind his back, the weary father figure disappointed in his wayward son.

"I never thought it would be you, Scott," he said, his voice thick with regret. "Of all people. After all this time, hunting this monster... to find out he was sleeping in the bed next to Jennifer. My God."

"It wasn't me, Clark," I said, my voice low and steady. I had to be the calm one. I had to be the sane one. "Think about it. Logically. Where was I? I was on a stakeout. You have the logs. You have the surveillance. I have an alibi."

"Alibis can be faked. Timelines can be manipulated. You know the tricks better than anyone," he said, stopping to look at me. "Maybe that's how you got away with it for twenty years."

The accusation felt like a physical blow. He thought I had killed Jennifer's parents. That I had lived with her, loved her, comforted her through her grief, all while hiding the most monstrous secret imaginable.

Finally, they brought in Caleb. He sat opposite me, flanked by Andy. He was still twitchy, his eyes darting around the room, but there was a new, shaky confidence about him. He was the star witness now.

"Tell me what you saw, Caleb," I said, my voice dangerously soft.

He flinched. "I... I saw you. You came out of my dad's house."

"From the front door or the back?" I pressed.

"The... the front door," he stammered.

"The front door," I repeated, a cold smile touching my lips. "Interesting. Because the first officers on the scene found it locked from the inside. They had to force it open. How do you explain that, Caleb?"

He paled. "I... I meant the back door. Yeah, the back door."

"The back door," I said, nodding slowly. "The back door which opens into my yard. My yard, which has a motion-activated floodlight that would have lit you up like a Christmas tree. My wife, who was sitting in our living room right by the window, would have seen me. Did she, Caleb? Did she see me come in through the back?"

Caleb looked wildly at Andy, who just stared at the table. "I... I'm confused. It was dark. It happened so fast."

"You said you saw me kill him," I said, my voice rising. "Now you can't even remember which door I used? You're lying, Caleb. You're lying, and they're letting you."

I looked past him, at the mirror, at the people I knew were watching. "This is weak! Your whole case is weak, and you know it!"

A few minutes later, the door opened. It was Jennifer and Clark.

"This isn't working," Jennifer said, her gaze hard. "His story is shaky. A good defense attorney will tear him apart."

Clark nodded. "We need something more solid. Something we can take to a prosecutor."

He looked from Caleb, who was sweating profusely, to me. A plan was forming behind his eyes.

"We're going back to the scene," Clark announced. "All of us. We're going to have Mr. Benton walk us through it. Step by step. Sometimes being back in the environment jogs the memory."

I knew what he was really saying. They were going to pressure him. They were going to feed him details, coach him, until his flimsy story became a prosecutable testimony. They were going to build a cage of lies around me, and they were taking me back to the scene of the crime to help them do it.