“We visited your home this morning,” Laura said, plowing on as though she was undeterred, not wanting him to sense any weakness. “You weren’t there, as you surely realize.”
“What’s so urgent you couldn’t wait?” Barton asked, his eyes flashing anger at her. “It looks bad. If I get fired, I want your badge numbers so I can report you!”
“This is extremely urgent, Mr. Barton,” Nate said evenly, using the power of his low, rumbling voice to impress on the suspect exactly who was in charge of the room. “We’re investigating a double homicide.”
“Homicide?” Barton said, frowning. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Do you know a pair of twins? Ruby and Jade Patrickson?” Laura asked, watching his face closely.
“Yes,” he said, his frown deepening. “How are they caught up in this?”
“They’re the victims,” Laura said quietly, waiting for the penny to drop.
It did, and it did so visibly. Barton stared at her, the anger and any other trace of emotion dropping off his face like a slate being wiped clean. There was only shock remaining behind, a particular kind of blankness behind the eyes as he struggled to process what she was telling him. A blankness that looked, to her expert eyes, real enough.
“The victims of what?” he said, as if he couldn’t understand it.
“They’re dead,” Laura said. “They were murdered last night. You haven’t seen it on social media?” Both of the twins had already received plenty of in memoriam messages from their friends commenting on their last ever posts. Anyone who followed them had to have seen it, unless they hadn’t been on social media at all today.
“I…” Barton stopped, putting a hand to his mouth. He turned half away, then back, then away again, as if he couldn’t figure out what to do with himself.
“Take a seat,” Nate suggested.
Barton turned and found one behind him, then sank into it. The wheels of the office chair squeaked as he rolled back slightly, a stunned expression on his face.
He wasn’t bluffing. Laura had seen real shock and fake shock. She’d seen psychopaths playing pretend, even ones that were really good at it. This wasn’t that. He hadn’t known until they’d told him.
Or he had known, but he was shocked beyond measure at the fact that they’d managed to connect the dots to him so soon. It was hard to tell.
“You didn’t know about it?” Nate asked, when Barton seemed to be regaining a little color.
He looked up as if he’d forgotten that Nate and Laura were in the room. “No,” he said. There was a pause. “No, I’m not on social media anymore.”
Laura frowned. He’d been prolific in his messages, and his account clearly hadn’t been banned—the messages were still visible when she and Nate had looked at them. “Why not?”
“I quit,” he said. “I just quit and deleted everything off my phone.”
“Why would you do that?” Laura asked, pressing him. She had a feeling this was connected somehow. It had to be.
“They…” Barton stopped, his jaw tensing and his face blanching again. “Aw, man. No—it wasn’t me, okay? I didn’t have anything to do with this. I swear!”
“Why did you quit social media, Mr. Barton?” Nate asked. “You know we’re going to find out sooner or later. You may as well tell us.”
Barton swallowed, looking at the ground. “They posted my messages on their feeds,” he said. “Ruby and Jade. And then I had to quit because people kept sending me… things.”
“Things?” Laura prompted.
Barton shrugged his shoulders, more of an expression of hopelessness than an answer. “Threats. Insults. Telling me how wrong I was.”
Laura folded her arms across her chest, eyeing him closely. “We read those messages,” she said. “They weren’t pretty.”
Barton swallowed hard again. “I know how it looks,” he said. “I’ve been known to shoot my mouth. But that’s all it was. Just venting.”
“You told Jade she was going to get what was coming to her,” Laura said.
“I didn’t mean I was going to be the one,” Barton said, his voice taking on a pleading whine. “I just meant… like someone was going to break her heart someday, and she’d know what it felt like.”
Laura wasn’t buying a single word he said. This innocence act—it had to be just that. An act. There was no way he was all butter-wouldn’t-melt in person and spewing hate like that online. Especially given that he already had an in-person relationship with the twins. It didn’t track.