4  

The interrogation room wasn’t like the ones Aaron had seen so many times on his mom’s favorite crime shows. There was no mirrored pane of one-way glass. No good cop teamed up with a bad cop to break him down. He sat alone in a gray room, listening to a leaky pipe drip incessantly from the ceiling behind him. A tripod-mounted camcorder stood watch from across the table.

Occasionally, the woman who had brought him in peered through the door’s barred window. She was taller than average and thin, with blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a black suit and sharp-heeled boots that clicked on the tiled floor when she walked. She was stylish, and she was badass, but her skin was almost gray, and every one of her facial features was pointy and grim; when she looked at Aaron, he was reminded of an eagle searching for prey.

On the ride in from Cutter’s Wedge, she’d told him that her name was Detective Gale, and she was taking him to the police station in Wennemack—but that was all. She ignored him when he asked for his parents.

They’d kept him here by himself, in an isolated part of the precinct, for what seemed like hours. Aaron worked silently through scenarios in his head and tried to stay calm.

If Quinn’s body had been found, surely he’d know by now. But with only circumstantial evidence, it was unlikely that any formal charge would be filed against him. He used this knowledge to keep panic at bay. And one crucial fact comforted him in this mess: the police had not brought Reggie in with him. Aaron planned to keep her out of it.

Drip. Drip. Drip went the leak behind him.

Finally, the door squeaked open and Detective Gale walked in. She set down her briefcase and clicked on the camcorder. A red light flashed as she trained the lens on Aaron.

“I have some questions for you,” Gale said.

“Where are my parents? And I want a lawyer.”

“We’re just talking here. Relax. You’ll get your phone call when we’re done. How well did you know Quinn Waters?”

“Not very,” Aaron replied. “Superstar. Geek. Our species don’t really mix.”

“But you did favors for him, right? Wrote his term papers?”

Aaron grimaced. Someone had ratted him out.

“Is that why you brought me in?”

“Answer the question.”

“I helped him out sometimes… like a tutor.”

“But he paid you. You wrote the papers, he turned them in with his name on them. You had a scam going.”

“No, it wasn’t like that—”

Gale interrupted and folded her hands in front of her.

“You’re a smart kid. Top of your class, attentive at school, on your way to a great college. But you have another side to you, don’t you?”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“Your parents. Your teachers. They see the Aaron Cole who gets straight A’s, takes all the hardest classes, is a member of the Quiz Bowl team. The good kid,” Gale said. “But then there’s this other Aaron Cole. The sneaky one. The dishonest one.”

“Are you trying to scare me with this?”

“The one with a morbid fantasy life.”

“What? No, that’s just a hobby—”

Gale leaned forward.

“Paging through books like A History of Demonic Possession and The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is a hobby?”

Aaron squirmed in his seat but said nothing.

Detective Gale opened her briefcase and took out a manila folder. She arranged a series of photographs from it in front of Aaron. They depicted a red Mustang being hauled from a lake. In addition to damage probably caused by being sunk under water for a long period of time, the entire back end was smashed in.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked.

“It looks like it could be Quinn’s car.” Aaron tried to keep his voice calm, but it cracked anyway. “Can I get some water or something?”

“In a minute. We pulled it from one of the chain lakes up near Fredericks. Based on plant life growth found in the car, my investigators think it was submerged for about six months,” Gale said. “How about that? Six months. Right around the time Quinn disappeared.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“Most of the time, when a car’s been in the water that long, all trace evidence is gone. But sometimes we get lucky.”

Gale paused and crossed her hands in front of her, waiting for a reaction from Aaron. He hoped that he gave none.

She went on. “We know something big and heavy took out the back of this car, like an SUV. So we compared the size and shapes of the dents in the Mustang to every other SUV in this county. And we came up with an exact match. What’s more, there were paint scrapings on the fender. Just trace amounts, but enough to analyze. GMC Silvercube. And of all the students who attend Cutter High, only one family has this particular GMC SUV, in this particular color.” Gale smiled. “Guess whose?”

That was it. The blow he’d been hoping wouldn’t come. He didn’t need to guess.

“I want to call my parents.”

“What happened, Aaron? Did Quinn promise you something besides money in exchange for papers? Status? Popularity? Did he fail to deliver?”

“It was not like that at all,” said Aaron. “And I think I’m done answering questions.”

“Did he go back on his promises? Keep ignoring you in the hall? Rag on you? Maybe you just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“I want my phone call.”

“We’ve called your parents already. They’re on their way, but the roads are a mess because of the storm. There’s a flash flood warning, too.” Gale gestured to the ceiling, where water dripped from a few more places. “See for yourself. This place is leaking like a sieve.”

Aaron’s trepidation turned to anger.

“I’m a minor. You can’t do this. You’re trying to pin something on me, but I’m not going to give you what you want.”

“I think you will.”

Gale stuck a hand in her jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. She put them on, then reached into the briefcase beside her and drew out a pocketknife in a plastic evidence bag. She took the knife out of the bag, and with a snap of her wrist, the blade clacked open. Aaron chilled.

“We found this out at Cutter’s Lake.”

Gale held the same knife he’d taken from the glove box of his mother’s car and used to slash Quinn’s feet; two quick cuts that had reddened the snow with blood and prevented the Vour from chasing after Reggie.

Water dripped from the ceiling all around, faster now and more steadily.

“His blood was found in the hinge joint of this knife, Aaron. He must have been cut up pretty bad.” She set it down on the table, pointing toward him. “It will go better for you if you confess now. The DA is willing to cut a deal. No one wants to see a promising kid like you go down for Murder One.”

The words struck him like an ax. Murder One. Aaron looked away from Gale, feeling the camera’s cold stare and the detective’s probing eyes bear down on him.

Her voice dropped to a wicked purr. “If we find your DNA on this, there’s nothing more I can do for you. I’ll give you a few minutes to consider.”

Gale stood and left the room. The camcorder stayed on, red light flashing. Aaron sat back in his chair, shaking. His mouth was dry, and only made worse by the incessant drip drip drip behind him. It echoed in his head, louder now, like a stampede of thoughts. Murder. Guilty. Prison.

The knife shone dully on the table. Maybe Gale wanted him to attempt something crazy. Maybe she just wanted him to put his fingerprints on the knife. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

Something touched his hair. He looked up, and a fat drop fell and splashed onto his forehead. The leak had spread across the entire ceiling, the water stain creeping across it like a morphing Rorschach test. Droplets showered onto the table and tiles, kicking up spray as they landed. Soon the photographs of Quinn’s Mustang were soaked through, and they began to warp and bend.

Aaron glanced about, confused. Water now streamed down the walls all around him, collecting in pools on the floor. Then he felt the room shake, like an earthquake had hit. Aaron leaped out of his seat.

“What’s going on?” he called out.

Streams of red trickled from the knife and oozed across the tabletop, the dried blood mixing with the water. With no drainage in the room, the water level rose quickly, and soon it sloshed around Aaron’s shins. It was brown and dirty with the rust from the pipes, and it smelled of mold and iron. He splashed over to the door and started pounding on it.

“There’s a flood! Hey! Let me out of here!”

Aaron heard the sound of creaking metal, and a pipe in the ceiling above him exploded, bursting a hole in the drywall. Dark water gushed through the gap, and he pressed himself against the wall. Horror ripped through him at the sight of the filth now up to his thighs.

Just beneath the surface, it surged and undulated with life. He felt something whip around his legs, and his knees nearly buckled. He thought he saw red eyes glowing in the murky water. The creature surfaced: it was a rat the size of Aaron’s shin. Its fur was slick and greasy, its teeth like daggers, and it padded at the water with sharp claws. It swam around Aaron once, then disappeared beneath the surface again.

The water was above his waist. Waves moved through the interrogation room, and more rats plopped down from the broken pipes. Aaron felt them bump against him, their small paws clawing at him. He tried to kick them away, but then a stab of pain shot through him as a pair of fangs bit into his thigh. He screamed.

The camcorder buzzed and shorted out. Aaron tried to regain control of his mind and push the terrors away, but the teeth continued to tear at his legs, his arms, his chest. He shrieked until the flood reached his mouth, the water rank with his own blood, drowning him in a sea of hell…

The digital camcorder relayed the feed from the interrogation room to the station’s security control center. A few officers stood around, observing the Cutter High boy’s disturbing behavior. Minutes earlier he had begun pounding on the door and clawing at the walls, shouting about a flood and drowning and rats. But the only water was just a tiny leak in the corner.

“Guess he’s going for the insanity defense,” said one officer, taking a sip of coffee.

“The kid is truly screwy,” said another. “Gale’s going to have her hands full with that nutjob.”

They all nodded, but none of them noticed that, in the corner of the screen, the video showed Detective Gale standing behind the reinforced window. A smile played about her otherwise dull and dead-looking face as she gazed intently at Aaron, watching his descent into madness.

But Aaron noticed. Before the sludge engulfed him completely, before he drowned in water that wasn’t there, he glimpsed her through the glass and saw a wisp of smoke drift from her nostrils.