Page 13 of Vigilante Twink and the Cop

He’s dressed like he’s arriving for a photoshoot rather than a police interview, fitted black jeans and a soft cream sweater that’s definitely cashmere and definitely not high street, his hair styled in that careless, expensive way that takes far longer than it looks like it does. He looks rested. Glowing, even, like whatever happened last night agreed with him completely, which feels deeply unfair given the state I dragged myself in here in.

There’s a faint bruise just visible above his collar, low on his throat, already purpling at the edges. My first thought, God help me, is wondering if I put it there. My second thought is that I have absolutely no business having a first thought like that in this room.

“Detective.” His eyes flick over the room, the camera in the corner, the recorder, and something delighted sparks behind them before he can stop it. “There must be easier ways to see me again.”

I don’t smile. I make myself not smile, which costs more effort than it should.

“This is a formal interview in connection with two murders,” I say. “You’re not under arrest. You’re free to leave at any point, and you’re entitled to legal representation if you want it.”

Something shifts behind his eyes, fast, like a light going out in a window two streets over. The cheek drains out of his face in real time, and what’s left underneath it is small and frightened in a way that doesn’t look performed this time, or performed so well I genuinely cannot tell the difference anymore, which might be worse.

“Two murders,” he repeats, very quietly.

“Your DNA was recovered from the crime scene at the old hospital.”

“You know I was in the hospital.”

“Your DNA was found in the room with the dead body.”

His face pales and his eyes grow even wider. “I told you. I climbed in through the side gate, I never touched…”

“You told me a lot of things.” It comes out harder than I mean it to, and I watch it land, watch something in his face crumple and then immediately fight to put itself back together. “I need you to walk me through exactly what you did inside that hospital, from the moment you arrived to the moment I found you.”

He does, and it’s the same story, urban exploring, the side gate, wandering up through the building toward the noise, except this time his voice shakes on the edges of it, and twice he has to stop and start a sentence over, and I cannot tell if that’s fear of being caught or fear of not being believed, and the fact that I cannot tell is its own kind of professional failure.

Farah asks the procedural questions, calm and precise, the ones I should be asking and can’t quite make myself ask first. Where exactly. What time. Did you touch the window, did you open it, did you go near it at all. Micah answers everything, fast, eager, the same easy cooperation he gave me in a derelict corridor with my badge in his hand, except now eager reads differently. Now eager reads like a man who knows exactly how bad eager looks and can’t stop himself doing it anyway.

“I didn’t kill anyone.” He says it straight at me, ignoring Farah entirely, like the only verdict that matters in this room is mine. “You have to believe that.”

“I don’t have to do anything.” I hate how it sounds the second it’s out of my mouth. I hate it more because some part of me wants to take it back and say something gentler, and that wanting is exactly the problem.

His eyes go glassy, just for a second, and then he blinks it away and the cheek comes flooding back in, defensive and brittle. “Careful, Detective. You’re starting to sound like you actually suspect me.”

“I do suspect you.”

“No you don’t.” He leans forward, slow, deliberate, every line of him suddenly less frightened boy and more something else entirely, something with teeth. “You don’t actually believe it. I can see it on your face.”

He’s right, and the fact that he’s right, and that he knows it, and that he’s using it, is the most frightened I’ve been of him since I met him.

For one unsettling second, something flickers across his face that has nothing soft in it at all, something assessing and patient, the same quality I’ve seen in men who’ve spent a very long time getting away with things. It’s gone as fast as it arrived, smoothed back over by the same easy charm, and I genuinely cannot tell if I imagined it or if I just watched a mask slip and reset itself in under a second.

“Where were you the night of the eleventh,” I ask, flat, no warning, the way you ask a question you actually want to see land.

Micah blinks. “I don’t know. I don’t really keep track of which nights I’m not murdering people.” Then, almost instantly, his face folds into something stricken, like he’s heard the joke a half second after it left his mouth. “That was a horrible thing to say. I’m sorry. I don’t find any of this funny. I think I just cope with being frightened by saying stupid things at the worst possible time.”

I don’t know which version of him just spoke. I’m starting to suspect that’s exactly the point.

Farah’s phone buzzes. She glances at it, glances at me, and steps out into the corridor to take the call, and the second the door clicks shut behind her the whole temperature of the room changes.

“Alone at last,” Micah says, and somehow manages to make it sound filthy and devastated in the same breath.

“This isn’t a joke.”

“I know.” His voice cracks on the second word, small and real, and whatever armor he was wearing thirty seconds ago is just gone. “I know it isn’t. I just don’t know how to do this with you.”

I should say something professional. I should say nothing at all. What I actually do is sit there in silence for three full seconds while my entire career quietly catches fire.

“Oh, I know!” Micah says suddenly, sitting up straighter in his chair where he’s been getting progressively smaller.