Naive Charles Royce (great novels .txt) 📖

C h a p t e r   8

“Then I took a cab, came home, opened the door, and I told you the rest.”

Micah exits his dreamlike state of remembering the normalcy of the night … how everything was beautiful and right, and then shattered in an instant. Of course, Micah has hit only the highlights outlining the evening aloud to Detective Penance. He doesn’t feel the need to go into the details his mind tends to embellish.

“Can you think of anyone who would want to harm him?” the detective asks. “Maybe this Josh character. What’s his full name, and who is he to you?”

Micah pauses, then answers.

“Josh Harrison. He had an affair with Lennox two years ago.”

“Hmm.” Detective Penance jots down the name.

“Josh is harmless and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Besides, he was there at the party. He was in charge of the whole freaking event.”

“Still. We’ll check. How about the Élan CEO you mentioned? What was his name? Mr. James West?”

“James West, yes. I only barely know James,” Micah answers. “Although he was very serious when he said he wanted to talk to Lennox. I still have no idea what that was about.”

Lily leans forward and whispers something to Detective Penance, who then moves the conversation in another direction.

“That brings us back to you, then,” the detective says. “There’s no blood on the light switch. Can you explain that?”

“Excuse me?” Micah asks.

“You said it was dark. But Officer Palino was the first on the scene, and he says the lights in the living room were already on.”

Detective Penance pauses for an answer. Nothing. He grows impatient and slightly raises his voice.

“There’s blood everywhere you touched, but there’s no blood on the light switches. Can you explain that, please?”

Again, Micah does not respond in the timely manner that Detective Penance would like, and the detective grows weary of what he takes to be consistent avoidance. He decides to shift his questioning to get Micah’s attention and almost yells. “Why did you pound on your husband’s mutilated body when you knew he was still alive?”

“Sir, I told you, I was freaking the fuck—” Micah stands up, but then he discards his momentary anger and pauses. He looks up at nothingness, then looks down.

“Geez, oh man, did I …?” Micah locks eyes with Detective Penance, then the two-way mirror, then Lily. They all become nameless, faceless people in the seeming blur that is this moment.

“Did … did I kill him?” Micah asks, to anyone who would answer. He places his hands around the temples of his forehead, slumping back in his chair. “Oh, dear God, I killed him myself.”

The door to the holding room opens.

“Fellas, that’s enough.” A new face enters the room. “Shawn Connelly, I’m the lawyer for Mr. Breuer.”

Detective Penance looks up, collects his belongings, and stands up.

“Yes, and he’s gonna need you. He’s just confessed to murdering his husband.”

C h a p t e r   9

A cockroach scurries in front of a heavily worn cardboard box, back and forth, back and forth, like a night watchman keeping guard over the contents inside.

A tiny hand slowly peels a small sticker from a dirty white sheet of paper, and places it on a small, sealed plastic bag of light brown powder.

“How’s this?” the ten-year-old voice asks, proud of his clumsy sticker placement.

“Almost.”

A larger hand takes the bag from the smaller hands, peels the sticker off, then centers it on the bag. Ghost throws the branded heroin into the cardboard box with the others. The cockroach scurries away.

The ten-year-old speaks again.

“Thanks, Daddy.”

C h a p t e r   1 0

“We need to find out what’s going on with the drugs that were found. Any leads on what scumbag uses this ghost logo?” Detective Penance is in his office, already dissecting the evidence while Micah consults with his lawyer in another room.

The old-school clock plugged into the wall of Detective Penance’s office reads 3:20am. The room is dark, with an overhead light bulb illuminating the paperwork on his desk. This is tense, but electric, just like I like it, he thinks.

“Nothing in the database on initial search, but we’re still looking,” Lily says, knowing that the “we” she is referring to is most likely only herself.

“I want this Josh character followed up on, and this CEO of the company they all work for as well,” Detective Penance orders, prompting a nod from Lily. “Apparently, there’ve now been two murders in the same night, and both victims are from the same company. This one is within our jurisdiction, so let’s get on it. The computers and phones found at the scene … once they get to the station, make sure we get the passwords we don’t have already, then make goddamn sure everything is in order, logged, and organized. I need to read and listen to these messages the suspect says he left on the victim’s phone, I need transcripts and recordings of the 9-1-1 call, and I want any and all phone records of both the victim and the suspect. Plus anything else they find on this cold-blooded murderer.”

◆

“They think you killed Lennox in cold blood?” Shawn asks Micah, as if it were the furthest thing from any earthly realm of expectation. He reaches out to touch Micah, who seems to flinch at first, but then accepts the gesture. Micah feels safe. After all, Shawn Connelly is here.

A balding straight man, short in stature, but tall in experience, Shawn is both the butt of his friends’ jokes about ego-inflated lawyers and their unabashed cockiness and the defender of his friends’ mistakes, especially when they need him most. He first met Lennox at Harvard Law School, before Lennox decided to switch from law to business. Since Lennox had always been drawn to outgoing extroverts, he and Shawn hit it off and had remained best friends despite their differing paths.

Shawn went on to become quite adept at criminal