The Luxe

[ ONE ]

The both of them, their hands shook. 

I was standing without speaking nearby, my back against a wall that held more lies within it than most people have told in a lifetime. I was waiting for a sign. The dim atmosphere stifled sound, keeping the cold room silent but for two quiet voices and my pen against the smooth surface of my notepad. I wrote names. I wrote places. I glanced from time to time at the steel cuffs caging their wrists, and their hands. Their hands that trembled.

    She had spoken to the girl minutes before, whose drained features gleamed yellow in the weak light of the bulb hanging from the shadowy gallows of a stippled ceiling, shadows under her eyes like layers of dark circles, almost as noticeable as the red birthmark taking up half her face. The girl cried and cried, tears leaking down her dirtied cheeks and finding their way over the bloodstains on her polo. Soon we let her go. And soon we’d let him go too. 

    An uneasy feeling finding safety in the deeps of my stomach told me we’d let the case go as quickly as it was picked up. 

    “Where exactly were you, last night at 10 pm?”

    My partner’s worn-out voice lacked sympathy, holding nothing but a want to get through with this and reach the promise of a break on the other side. The frazzled wreck of a man on the other side of the table blinked twice, then opened his mouth.

    “Sixteenth and twelfth, at the old Grady building party. I told you this before. You’re not listening to me,”

    “What were you doing, that night, Mr. Giovanne?”

    “I don’t remember exactly, it was a blur.” An exhale. “I was… drugged.”

He lifted his cuffed hands to fumble with the collar of his dress shirt, the half opened front boasting torn buttons and marks of alcohol stains and burn marks. 

“Were you aware of the fire?”

“Yes,” He swallowed hard. “Afterwards,”

“And you survived,”

“I survived,”

The interrogator and I shared a glance. 

“You had help leaving, at around… 10:24, approximately? By who?”

“Yes,” He blinked again, flashing a light coating of glitter smeared haphazardly over his eyelids in the dim light of the room. “By a friend,”

“I see,”

The same words, the same letters spilled across the pages of my notepad. Help from a friend, a friend who didn’t make it. A friend whose body was found burned in the case of Mr. Henri Giovanne, and slashed of Ms. Celene Fortuna. Proven, yes, exactly as they said they would be. Just not as lucky as the two witnesses recounting their experiences through quivering lips, and shaking hands tapping their fingernails into the surface of the table. 

    The door snapped shut behind us. 

    “I still don’t understand why we were assigned both these cases,” She held the file under her arm and I followed the click of heels against long marble hallways, past rooms smelling of must and heavy closed doors.

“A coincidence, yes, but I’m certain they have more holding them together,”

    “Holding them together? Nothing holds them together, they’re completely separate,” She wrinkled her brow. “They don’t honestly think that just because the crimes happened at the same time they’re connected,”

    “It’s not just that,” I pushed open a door and we began our ascent up a flight of stairs. “Same middle name for both the only witnesses in a fit enough state to be questioned though no relation, same mannerisms, same drug in their systems. The only thing they don’t have in common is the place the crime happened, and the cause of death,”

    A laugh.

    “And you think the prime suspects are a twelve year old girl and a clueless drunk?”

           "I didn't say they were the suspects, but they're certainly hiding something. They talked of the same darkly clothed figure, didn't they? Maybe when the other witnesses are in a fit enough state for interrogate we'll find out,"

            "You're not hinting at this being the work of the Dale, are you?"

    “It’s possible,”

    “You’re delusional.” She spared me a sideways glance, and I shrugged. “I would think you’ve been around for long enough to know these conspiracies are quickly dropped,” 

    We walked in silence for a little ways, the breakroom up ahead announcing it was time to let the subject go. 

    “You don’t think it’s strange-”

    “I do, I really do. Get some coffee Leblanc. We can talk about this more when I'm less sleep deprived,”