Hatched

Chapter Seven

"Well, there's one thing that's been buggin' me," he drawled, shrugging his bulky weight out of the chair "did you figure out what that thing was they caught?"

Quinn's eyes widened in alarm. "Thing? Could you be more specific, please?"

"I'unno what it was," Boggs continued, shrugging "they pulled it up in a net earlier. Wasn't nothin' I'd ever seen before. Couldn't get a good look, that woman shooed us off before we could ask too many questions." He jerked his thumb to the side, toward the direction of Lynne's office.

"Interesting. Was this before or after Stan was murdered?"

"Before."

"Thank you. You may go." Quinn stood and accompanied him out, processing this new piece of information. He gestured to Shepp to fetch the second interviewee, hoping the next had more pertinent information than the last.

---

"It was a monster." The thin, twitching man opposite Quinn leaned closer, his eyes wide and wild.

The agent fought to keep his lips from curling into a smile. "Come again?"

"A monster." The man whispered. Quinn rubbed his eyes in agitation, glancing toward Shepp, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

"That's quite enough, you may leave." Quinn gritted through clenched teeth.

---

"People keep dropping like flies." The next man, who looked almost identical to Boggs except for the lazy eye, waved his arms for effect. "They just disappear!"

"Where do they disappear to?" This was now the seventh person Quinn had spoken to, and all of them spun the same story: a monstrous fish of unknown origin was terrorizing the workers, who kept turning up missing.

"I don't know. Nobody does."

Quinn was rapidly tiring of this line of questioning. "Somebody knows where they went." He fought to keep the frustration out of his tone.

"Talk to Tony." The man offered, wringing his hands. "That's all I know."

"Get out." Quinn hissed, firmly jabbing his finger into the recorder's button. It switched off, the soft hiss it emitted ceasing.

Shepp eased forward, face unreadable. "I'll go fetch Tony then."

Quinn smiled. It pleased him that his men could predict his actions without so much as a word.

---

Tony was burly, tanned and young. It surprised Quinn to see that he had an air of defeat in his dark eyes. Usually, virile men such as himself strutted around with a chip on their shoulder, eager to prove their masculinity. In a profession such as his, where men were queued to be the top dog, Quinn wondered what had made him so forlorn.

"Mr. Perez?" He began, wheels turning in his head as his watchful eyes deciphered Tony's body language. He sat slumped in his chair, which indicated disinterest, though it was feigned, judging by the subconscious jerking of his leg. His fingers were also tapping nervously on the arm of his chair, another tell that he was deflecting some hidden information.

"Yes." Tony answered, voice deep and disturbed, like the trembling of the earth before a quake.

"Please relax, Mr. Perez. Or would you be more comfortable if I used your first name?" Quinn liked to offer this option, because the answer would give him more insight into the person's mind. If they chose the formal option, they were compartmentalizing one reality from the other: who they were versus who they were perceived to be. Or, they were trying to upstage the questioner by asserting their own dominance, through title, effectively controlling the mood of the interview.