“So what you're trying to say is . . .”

“We have one of those old-fashioned locked room mysteries.”

Hell was about to rain down on him.

Chapter 4

A Necessary Evil

Anna slammed the door with all the force she could muster, still barely enough to shake the floor with the intended authority. Her bile was not reverberating throughout the apartment, instead she glanced back at the entry with narrow eyes, the intransigence giving no help in calming her. She held her breath, trying to keep herself from screaming, from admitting she had no ability to bend life to her will.

“What the hell did you tell him all that about the old man for?”

Craig was taken aback by the outburst, uncomprehending. Instinctively, he took a step back, not wanting to be within range should she have developed the ability to spit fire. Safety, he realized, was found in distance.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Anna didn't suffer fools gladly, and was especially intolerant of stupidity in one of the few people she let into her life. People bored or infuriated her, and few were deemed worthy of her attention. Their ability to disappoint her was not depressing because of what it said about them, but because if she granted them access to her valuable time and energy, and then turned out to be less than she had believed, it was a black mark on herself. Clearly, she knew, it meant she was not the judge of people's lack of character that she thought herself to be.

“You know exactly what I'm talking about. You went ahead and told that detective you were half expecting him to be murdered. Why did you get involved?”

“When something bad happens and I can help, isn't that what I'm supposed to do?”

The question was genuine, but Craig was not sure he wanted to hear the answer. Anna was not normal, he had long since found out, but he could live with that as long as she maintained a basic sense of human compassion. Giving her the opportunity to dispel such an old-fashioned notion was not optimal.

“No, it's not what you're supposed to do,” she said, emphasizing the last syllables to wring out every ounce of disgust in her voice. “What you're supposed to do is not get involved.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't see why getting involved is a bad thing.”

“Of course you don't, because you never think ahead. Now that you've talked to them once and given them a crumb, they're going to keep coming back to us over and over again looking for more. You've gone and tethered us to this until they figure out exactly what happened.”

Anna's words did not wipe away the doubt in his mind, did not reveal a new source of clarity. He registered what she was saying, but could not understand how she could say such things with a straight face. A piece of her must be missing, he thought, otherwise she would understand the absurdity of her words.

“So what if they call and ask to talk to us again? It's worth a little bit of an inconvenience if it can help them figure out who killed the old man.”

“Sure, it sounds good when you say it that way, but what happens if they can't figure it out, and every word that we say becomes the basis for their entire case. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to live with the pressure of knowing that my words might be used to put someone in jail.”

“You're overreacting. Our words won’t be enough to solve the case. Trust me.”

Anna had attempted trust before, a practice that no matter how often she tried to ingrain it would not become natural. She was a solitary creature, and though she knew other people were necessary in order to make it through life without losing what threads of sanity she had left, they were still more a burden than a blessing. Even the best of them did little to move her.

“You don't realize how ridiculous you sound.”

“How am I ridiculous?”

“You live in this little bubble where you believe people are good, that justice always prevails, and that we don't live in a salacious hell-hole. Have you even read the news lately? There's a vigilante killer on the loose leaving bodies scattered around town like breadcrumbs. Excuse me, but I don't want to have my name attached to anything that could give someone like that a reason to know I exist.”

“Now you're being paranoid.”

Anna thought about that word, what it meant. Comics had made a living mining the thesaurus of paranoia, and while she sympathized with those who regarded it as something more than a dysfunction, the time was not appropriate for a bit of dark humor.

“No, I'm not being paranoid, I'm just not wearing rose-colored glasses.”

“There's nothing to worry about. They're probably never going to call us, there is no vigilante killer coming to get you, and nothing terrible is going to happen to us. We did what little we could to help. We did our civic duty.”

“That's not going to win me over.”

“There has to be something more to this than you're letting on. Come on, just tell me.”

There were countless things she had yet to tell, innumerable cards still pinned inside her sleeve. To Anna, keeping secrets was a satisfaction. There was power in the knowledge that she was the only person in the world who possessed a piece of information. That was true power, and to Anna, it meant everything.

“Fine. Did you ever stop to think about what it would mean if you were wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything you said is an assumption. We don't really know what those people are like. We hear whatever comes through the walls and the windows, but impressions can be deceptive.”

“Like how anyone listening to us now would think that you hate me.”

The look on Anna's face said more than any words. Craig read the expression immediately, and regretted the words even before they left his tongue. Perhaps, he thought, she was baiting him into proving her point.

“Just because we hear yelling doesn't mean they hated him, nor does it mean that any of them wanted to kill him. We assume those sorts of things because it's amusing to make up little scenarios, but this is real, it’s no longer a game. The minute you spoke, it suddenly became very real. Now, because of us, they're all going to be looked at to see if they have murder in their eyes. Because of what you said, all those people are now under suspicion.”

“I didn't think about it like that.”

“Of course you didn't.”

“But what do you think the odds are of us making any difference to the case? There has to be all sorts of evidence that will make us irrelevant.”

“I'm not a gambling woman, so I'm not betting on it.”

“I still say we'll be fine. Trust me.”

“We'll see.”

Anna walked into the next room. She nudged the door artfully with her hip, letting it slowly click into place. That sarcastic gesture was more of a statement than a slamming door would ever be

Chapter 5

The Myth Of Safety

Detective Knox preferred the corners of rooms, a vantage point that allowed him to survey his surroundings without being subjected to unwanted prying eyes. From a corner, he could exercise control over a situation, a futile attempt on his part to fight the forces of fate. He knew it made no difference what protestations he made, but the ashes of the dormant fire that remained inside him would not let him succumb without daring a challenge.

The words loomed in his head, an aural ghost staking its claim to his consciousness. This case would be the death of him, he thought, if he didn't think death would be a preferable alternative to living out the pressure of the chase.

“We have one of those old-fashioned locked room mysteries.”

The words loomed in his mind.