Chapter 4 - The Interrogation Room
The visitor’s room at the 14th District precinct smelled of wet wool, stale coffee, and floor wax that failed to hide the underlying scent of decades of human misery.
I sat on a metal folding chair, my purse clamped tightly in my lap, watching the heavy metal door. Across the room, behind a thick sheet of scratched plexiglass, sat Brandon.
He was wearing an orange jumpsuit that looked absurd on his broad, well-groomed frame. The handcuffs around his wrists clicked softly against the steel table whenever he moved his hands. Yet, despite his surroundings, his face was calm, his posture relaxed, as if he were sitting at a coffee shop waiting for a friend.
When he saw me enter, his eyes lit up with a warmth that made my skin crawl.
"Camila," he said, his voice coming through the small metal speaker in the glass wall. "Thank God you came. Are you okay? How is Chloe?"
"Don't talk about Chloe," I said, my voice cold, clipped, stripped of all warmth. "Don't you dare speak her name."
Brandon’s expression softened into an expression of gentle sorrow—the exact same look he had given me when my father passed away. It was so convincing, so heartbreakingly familiar, that for a fraction of a second, a part of my brain wanted to believe this was all a terrible nightmare.
"I know how this looks, Cam," he said softly, leaning closer to the glass. "I know what that woman Vance told you. I know what the police are saying. But you have to listen to me. You have to remember who I am."
"Who are you, Brandon?" I asked, leaning forward, my voice dropping into a harsh whisper. "Are you the man who cooked dinner for me every night? Or are you the man who built a tomb beneath our floorboards six years ago?"
Brandon didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He just stared at me with those clear, honest brown eyes that I had trusted implicitly for half a decade.
"The building was built on an old industrial site, Camila," he explained patiently, as if he were explaining a complex math problem to a child. "When we were doing the foundation work six years ago, the excavation crew found old waste material in the soil. Medical waste, old industrial runoff from the forty-fives. It was buried deep in the ground. The developers didn't want to report it because it would have shut down the project for months and bankrupted the firm."
He took a deep breath, looking down at his hand hands in his lap.
"I was young, Cam. I was the site supervisor. I was told to cover it up, to pour the concrete over the old drainage junction and keep my mouth shut. I did what I had to do to save my job. I didn't know what was in that soil. I swear to you on Chloe's life, I didn't know."
The explanation was brilliant. It was logical. It accounted for the building's history, the construction timeline, and the presence of organic material deep within the pipes. If I hadn't seen Gabi's face—if I hadn't seen the three photographs on my mother's dining table—I might have believed him.
"And the cleaning?" I asked, my voice trembling slightly. "The three times a day, Brandon? The rage when the plumber touched the drain? The lye? The bleach?"
Brandon smiled—a small, sad, self-deprecating smile. "I was terrified, Cam. Every time the rain got heavy, I was paranoid that chemical runoff from that old industrial site would seep up through the pipes and poison my family. I couldn't tell you because I was bound by a non-disclosure agreement with the development firm. I didn't want you to worry. I didn't want my wife and daughter living in fear. So I cleaned it. I kept it disinfected. It was an obsession born out of wanting to protect you."
I stared at him through the plexiglass. He was brilliant. He was a master craftsman of lies, weaving truth and fiction together so seamlessly that the seams were invisible to the naked eye.
"That's a very good story, Brandon," I said softly.
"It's the truth, Camila," he insisted, his eyes searching mine with desperate intensity. "You know me. Five years. Have I ever laid a hand on you? Have I ever raised my voice to Chloe? Have I ever been anything less than a devoted husband?"
"What about Sarah Lin?" I asked.
The name hit the small room like an electric shock.
For a fraction of a second—a tiny, split-second burst of reality—the warm, devoted husband vanished. His eyes narrowed, his pupils dilating until his irises looked almost black. The muscles in his neck tightened, and the smooth, relaxed posture disappeared, replaced by a rigid, predatory stillness.
Then, as fast as it had come, the mask slipped back into place.
"Who?" he asked, his voice smooth as silk.
"Sarah Lin," I repeated, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it would break through my chest. "The girl from Evanston. And Rebecca Vance. The real estate agent."
Brandon looked at me for a long moment. The warmth was gone from his eyes now, replaced by a deep, calculating coldness that chilled me to the marrow.
"You've been talking to Detective Miller," he said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
"I signed the authorization for the Indiana storage facility, Brandon," I lied, testing his reaction.
The reaction was immediate. Brandon stood up so fast his metal chair screeched violently against the concrete floor. The two guards standing by the door instantly stepped forward, their hands resting on their holstered weapons.
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Brandon didn't look at the guards. He pressed his hands against the glass, his face inches from mine, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying rasp that I had never heard before in my life.
"You shouldn't have done that, Camila," he whispered. "You have no idea what you've opened."
