“We’ll need to verify everything you say,” Nate said, a subtle warning that the truth would out. “It’s better if you confess what you’ve done as soon as possible. Judges prefer that. If you’re ready, we can go down to the precinct and get everything down on paper, get it wrapped up nice and easy. There won’t even be a trial if you plead guilty.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Abel insisted. “I was just coming backstage to wait for my turn to audition, and this crazy lady jumped on me!”
Laura took affront at being described as a ‘crazy lady.’ “You were stalking your next victim with a knife in your hand,” she said. The knife itself was sitting on her lap, wrapped up safely in an evidence bag. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t moved to take Abel Clarkson to the precinct immediately: she had shut down the theater instead, sent everyone out and had a caretaker lock the doors to only admit members of law enforcement, to give them time to examine as much physical evidence as they could. “That’s pretty conclusive, Abel. You’re fighting a losing battle here.”
He burst out a laugh, forced and loud.
“You’re crazy!” he said again. “Come on, man. She’s crazy! I couldn’t kill anyone with that knife!”
“Why did you bring it to an audition, Abel?” Nate asked calmly. “To peel apples?”
“No, to act with,” Abel said. “Read the goddamn script. It calls for a death scene! I thought it would be more effective if I had a prop with me, instead of just pretending to stab someone with my hand like a loser!”
“So, you were planning to stab someone live on stage instead,” Nate said, raising an eyebrow.
“With a prop knife,” Abel insisted. “Test it! Go on! The blade slides into the handle!”
For the first time, Laura felt a flash of doubt, of fear that she had somehow managed to get the wrong guy. None of his protest had rung true in her ears so far, but this was different.
Could it really, possibly be that she was wrong?
She took the knife and tested the point gingerly through the bag. It was sharp, even without pressing directly against her skin. She applied a small amount of pressure, as much as she dared, and then stopped. Nothing had happened. The knife was staying stable.
“Not like that,” Abel said, tossing his head impatiently. His hair was dark and long enough to cover his eyes, and he had to keep flicking it back out of them. “Let me show you. It slides sideways.”
Laura looked up at him long enough for him to feel her scorn at the idea that she would just hand him a knife and tested pushing the blade sideways. It was sharper on one side than the other, and when she pushed from the blunt side, it slid across and down until it fitted back into the handle.
“That’s not a prop knife,” Laura said incredulously. “It’s a switchblade!”
“Yeah, well, it was what I had at home,” Abel shrugged. “I was just going to flip the blade shut right before the stabbing action, so it would look real. He has to wave it around a bunch before – the character, I mean.”
“You’re expecting us to believe you brought a real knife to an audition at a time when people associated with the acting world are being murdered, and you were just going to use it like a fake knife,” Nate said, his tone clearly allowing his skepticism to be known.
“Yes!” Abel exclaimed. “I don’t earn a lot. I don’t get a lot of jobs. That’s why I’m here. My last prop knife got stolen at another audition and I don’t have enough in the bank to buy another that looks good, so I thought this would have to do!”
“And you were just walking up behind a woman, wielding a knife, stalking her, by coincidence?” Laura said. “Or was that all part of the character as well?”
“I wasn’t stalking her,” he said, his tone going surly again. “I… I like her. I was thinking about asking her out and I didn’t know how to do it. I was trying to get up the nerve to go and talk to her.”
“I don’t think asking her out with a knife in your hand would have made the best impression,” Nate said.
“I…” Abel hesitated, his shoulders sagging. “I’m not good at that kind of stuff. I get all nervous and I say the wrong thing and it all comes out wrong. I guess I shouldn’t have been holding a knife. I was just so nervous, and I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Nate stared at him for a long time, longer than Laura thought could really be necessary. She wondered what he was doing, but she didn’t ask. There was a level of trust you had to have in one another when you were facing a suspect. You couldn’t show any doubt in one another’s work or methods. You had to be a team. Any sign of doubt between you, and the suspect could burrow into that hole and widen it until nothing would get him to talk anymore.
“Abel, stand up,” Nate said, doing the same. The killer stood up, hunching his shoulders as he had been doing before. He was taller than Nate by a good few inches, maybe six-four or five. He had the physique of a man who spends all his time bending down to listen to others, to get onto their same level. His back was probably permanently curved as a result.
But he was very tall, Laura saw that. Nate beckoned to her, asking Abel to wait there, and they left the room.
“I came with Sergeant Thornton,” he said. “Let me just go get her. She can take him in and continue the interrogation.”
“Wait,” Laura said, reaching out. She wanted to catch him by the sleeve and pull him back, but at the last minute, she dropped her hand. She didn’t want to trigger that shadow of death, not right now. Not when the case was solved, and everything felt good. She wanted to enjoy that for just a bit longer. “Why don’t we take him in? Why Thornton?”
“Just hold on a moment,” Nate said, turning and walking away. Laura lingered outside the door. If Abel Clarkson tried to make a run for it, she wanted to be on the scene. To be able to stop him. To foil any attempt that he made to get away. She waited with a variety of doubts surging up inside her. What was Nate playing at? Was this all because he felt he could no longer trust her? Was this the beginning of the end for them as partners? Was it finally happening?
Thornton and Nate came back together, the pretty young officer laughing at something he was saying. Laura felt a surge of jealousy. Would she and Nate ever be close like that again, or had she ruined everything?
Nate waited, avoiding her eyes and ignoring her attempts to talk to him, until Thornton had led the killer away and pushed him into a squad car, taking him back to be processed. Then, and only then, when they were alone in the deserted theater, did he finally turn to her to speak.