Page 69 of The Villains of Winter

“You seem…afflicted. Your hair. You’re clothes. Your eyes.” She watched him barely eat their shared dinner of king-sized hamburgers and fries. He kept glancing at the payphone hanging on the wall as though he wanted to call to check in on Elliott. “You seem fine whenever the Lucien Montclair news is on the television. However, when I mention Elliott, you start to get agitated without him.”

“I am not agitated.” James frowned, releasing his stern grip on his fork, picking up the menu instead. He didn’t even like milkshakes. He just had to be seen with milkshakes by the private investigators, which was why he gave most of his drink to Kitty. He was not raised with fattened hamburgers. James needed to appear like a personable, caring young man. A loving man looking after his late friend’s little sister and making sure she enjoyed small things in life as she picked up the broken pieces. Milkshake and fries. Grief counseling. Ice skating at the park rink.

“Did you still want to watch the anniversary of Cruel Women?” He asked.

“Do you mean Mean Girls?” Kitty had no idea how he wasn’t fifty years old. But she couldn’t concentrate on a film. She nibbled on a fry instead. “What did the police want?”

“What?” James lifted his head from the menu. He glanced around at the swarms of diners, the rollerbladers that filled their gullets with grease, the teenagers that awkwardly flirted on their first dates. The tired parents with infants.

“Everyone saw the police search your dorm room for the second time. What did they want?” Kitty asked, oblivious she was sharing an order of hot fries with a killer.

“Nothing. They’re hung up over the October incident.”

Kitty sipped his milkshake. As soon as he felt the private investigator’s eyes on him, as though the investigator could hear their conversation, he finished the milkshake after her. He had other matters on his mind.

She was right that he wasn’t disconcerted over Lucien.

He was composed. That was exactly what made the SBI detectives suspicious of him. Even though they had no hard evidence, no eyewitnesses, and no statements otherwise, James was too at ease with the discussion of manslaughter. He didn’t flinch. He never grimaced.

He remained unfazed, bored even.

He was a murderer and they’d been in the presence of countless murderers. He had the aura of one. There was simply no human body to force him into a criminal trial.

There was no murder weapon.

Without a murder weapon, without a body, there was no case.

​​ CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“COFFEE?” SBI DETECTIVE REYES ASKED James Wilde every time he arrived. The interrogation room was isolated with dim lighting to alter their subject’s depth perception, James figured. The low light rendered the subject more tired than they typically were, leaving them more inclined to accept a stale coffee.

It was a trap.

“No, thank you.” James declined. He knew they wanted his fingerprints, his saliva, any form of DNA they could obtain from him. The police station trick was to offer refreshments where the subject would leave their DNA that they could later admit into evidence since the subject left the contents on the precinct property. Not to mention, it was a way to make the subject think they were well taken care of by them. James checked his Cartier wristwatch instead.

“Are we keeping you from something important?” The special agent next to Reyes asked him. It was the second time James had checked his wristwatch.

He checked it a third time. “I need to be in Montana.”

“The election campaign announcements for the congressman?”

“It starts at four.”

“Congratulations.” From Special Agent Pritchard’s flat tone, it wasn’t praise or a compliment. But James smiled at him, amiable.

“Thank you. I worked hard to earn the position.”

“I bet.” Special Agent Pritchard had a stocky build, short height, and shrewd eyes. He was the one who had escalated matters to a homicide investigation. “Are you celebrating?”

“Not until we win.”

That wasn’t what Special Agent Pritchard meant. He wanted to know if James was enjoying his victory lap of not being indicted or charged yet.

“Which airline are you taking to Montana?” Detective Reyes asked instead, as though they didn’t already know. The detectives had acquired his flight logs from the major airport.

“Northeast Airlines.”

“Out of Woodstock Airport?” Reyes asked to extend their time, knowing they were in southern Connecticut, it would make no sense to drive that far north to catch a plane when Tweed-New Haven Airport was right there. “Are you flying out of Bradley?”