CHAPTER TWENTY
As soon as May pushed the door open, William Sime, who was sitting at a desk on the far side of the room in front of an enormous screen, swung around in his chair to stare at them.
He was a tall young man, and although slouched in his chair, she could see his limbs were long and wiry. He had a shock of dark hair, piercing eyes, and a cruel twist to his mouth.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Disturbing as his demeanor was, May was even more distressed by what was playing out on the screen behind him. She heard Owen give a gasp of horror as he stared at the footage.
"The hell is this?" Owen murmured.
On the screen, May saw a young woman, pleading for her life in between two men who were holding her down. On the screen, another hooded man appeared. He was holding a knife.
The man with the knife brought it up to the young woman's throat.
"No!" May screamed, feeling a surge of fury race through her. The man was about to plunge the knife into her neck when the video froze.
May braced herself, realizing that this video was not yet finished. All that had happened was that William had paused it.
"It's a snuff movie," May said to Owen, in a voice that was suddenly hoarse. "He's watching a snuff movie. Turn it off, please," she ordered him, recovering enough to speak after having seen the terror in that girl's eyes. "We're taking you in for questioning, Mr. Sime."
She couldn't bear to stay in this room, in this apartment, a moment more.
William stared at them with a mixture of amusement and annoyance. He didn’t look worried by the presence of two police in his dark, untidy, and smelly bedroom.
"Are you busting me for watching a movie?" he asked.
"We need to question you in connection with a series of crimes," May said.
William shrugged. "So ask me here. You're cops. Surely you're used to this stuff. You want me to play it again? What happens next is great. Educational for you, I should think."
"No!" May practically shouted.
William gestured to the TV. "Sure. If that's what you want, Officer. I don't see what difference it makes. It's not like I just killed someone."
There was a smile on his face, and a cruel glint in his eyes.
"You seem to think that killing is funny," Owen said. He walked over to the computer. With a quick, sharp jerk, he pulled the plug and the screen fizzled into darkness.
"Hey, watch it, cop," William said, getting to his feet.
"No," Owen said, turning to face William. "You watch it."
"You want to take me on?" William asked, a smirk on his face. "I could take you on. I'm stronger than you, and I'm faster than you. That I’m sure of."
Owen stepped forward.
"I think we could take you down without much effort," he said calmly. "But if I were you, I wouldn’t get into a fight, because it's going to count against you. And right now, I guarantee, you don't need anything more doing that."
May didn't miss the threat in his words.
"You don't have a shred of evidence for anything I’ve done," William said. "Who are you? Some metro cops in some backwater town. You're nobodies. I'm immune to you. You can't touch me."
"We've seen what you're watching," Owen said. "It might well be relevant, since we’re here to investigate the string of murders in and around the county. Murders involving explosives. That’s what we need to ask you more about, since your foster mother was killed in one of them. Mrs. Vining.”
May noticed that William didn’t seem shocked at all by the mention of his previous foster mother’s name.
“I didn’t like Mrs. Vining. And it doesn't bother me to kill. She’s dead. So what? She deserved what she got. You want to ask me about it? Sure, I’ll tell you. I killed her. I killed the others, too. So come on, bring me in."