Chapter 169: A Rough Patch (1/2)

”How long did you know her for?” Nash asked softly.

”What are you guys… is this something—” he cut himself off as he made wild gestures with his hand.

Bill had been a cop for decades. He was wise to the fact that acting oblivious to the unusual development of the situation would be a complete red flag in the eyes of the investigators.

Guilty suspects will often try and act naïve to confrontation as a means to avoid it altogether. Truthful suspects would immediately catch on to this and immediately clarify the doubt or confront the investigators about why they were insinuating something like this.

”You said that you were asking about a case, but here I am…” His breathing was slightly heavy as he stared between the two of us incredulously.

”Director-General. Please understand, your name was mentioned in the passing and we just wanted to clarify some things about the victim.” This was a sharp turn that I took from the almost interrogative tone I had earlier. Now, I was consoling and coaxing Bill into believing that we were on his side in this matter. ”If we went up to you to your desk and asked those kinds of questions. You know how up there people can see everything?” I gave him a sheepish look.

”Well, that's okay…” Bill's voice was calmer now.

”So, we wanted to give you some privacy… some confidentiality while talking to you about this.”

”Okay,” Bill kept interrupting.

”We know that you are married to a wonderful woman and talking about this in front of people might have been bad… you know how gossip spreads across the station,” Nash injected into the conversation.

I saw a flicker of panic in Bill's eyes and then he looked at the two of us with relief.

”We wanted to talk to you in a setting where other people don't listen in. That's all…” Nash reassured.

Whether it was shock or the total reluctance to accept the situation, the Director-General wearily accepted the assurance without further inquiry.

”So, what was the question again?” Billy reorganized himself.

”How long did you know her?” Nash reminded.

I decided to take a back seat as Nash was the more friendly one. He could flatter his superiors much better than I could ever expect. I had a disdain for hierarchy, so I was a lost cause.

”Wow. It was a really long time ago. What time is it now? I was still a patrol and on-call officer at the time so…” he pretended to jog his memory. Grimacing and shrugging every other second, the exaggerated motions making him look rather comic. ”I knew she had some underlying feelings for me at the time. But I was married and I am sure she moved on from her feelings for me.”

Nash hummed. ”Understood. But roughly how long would you say your acquaintance with her was?” Nash let out a small cough and reached down to take his bottle of water. He unscrewed the cap and took a sip as we gave Bill the time to come up with a reasonable answer.

This was not about rapid-fire questions at him. This was about the long game.

”I couldn't even say…” he trailed off. He went off into a tangent, explaining things that he didn't need to explain and saying things that weren't asked. He was in a state of hyper-arousal.

By this behavior, he would go off on unrelated tangents as a means to gain momentary relief. He would go into trivial details things would afford him some time as the eventuality of what was happening revealed itself to him.

This was common in interrogations where the suspect was facing serious charges. In this case, first-degree murder… multiple murders. It was a subconscious coping mechanism according to academic studies.

He was talking about how old she was, how much he knew about her… things of that nature.

”So, what you are telling me is that the nature of your acquaintance was a little more than just solitary Samaritan helping someone else out?” Nash asked, sounding a little bewildered.

”Uh…” he didn't know how to answer that and answered something completely different. ”Geez, I'm trying to think what happened around that time. I think I was going through a rough patch in my marriage at the time and things in the job front were also not looking promising,” he looked down towards the far end corner of the room's floor. ”Let's see…”

I had to frankly say that I was a little impatient and we needed to shut him down before he went into completely inconsequential mumbo-jumbo. ”So, before her death, you hadn't talked to her for a long time?”

Bill shrugged. ”Yeah. I hadn't talked to her in a long time. I couldn't even tell you how long it had been.” Again, he started to throw out years and dates which wouldn't really help us catch him.