Chapter Twenty-Four: The Usual Suspect

I sat alone in the interrogation room where the sheriff’s deputies had left me. Shortly after Evan accused me of murdering Ruck, the scene ended. The NPCs were filing out of the stadium as I was being asked “nicely” to come with the cops.

The interrogation room was a small, sterile chamber with stark white walls and a single fluorescent light fixture hanging from the ceiling. The only furniture in the room was a metal table and two chairs, one for the suspect and one for the interrogator. The table was bolted to the floor, and the chairs were made of hard plastic with no padding, designed to be uncomfortable and unwelcoming.

There were no windows, no decorations, no distractions of any kind. I don’t know if the room was soundproof or if the characters outside were just silent because they weren’t on-screen.

A two-way mirror on one wall allowed observers to watch the interrogation without being seen. I wondered if they were watching me right then.

They had not handcuffed me so technically I should have been free to go but this world went off movie rules not actual constitutional law. This was a scripted scene. My status was Captured. I wasn’t going anywhere.

As I sat there all I could think about was how Evan knew that I had been at the frat house at the time of the murder. If I understood the tropes and timeline at play, then the only person who should have known I was there was Ranger Danger.

It was true that Evan had been antagonistic to me, but I didn’t know if that was because I was typecast as a loner with a frightening and scary hobby, or if it was because he was the bad guy. Was this whole thing an attempt to frame me for his crime?

The needle on the plot cycle was nearly vertical. Given my understanding of how the Rebirth phase worked, soon we would receive a revelation that would allow us to go on the offensive and start hunting down the bad guy. In the Astralist storyline, that revelation had likely been the discovery of Doctor Halle’s weakness. I didn’t know what it was going to be in this story.

All I could hope was that soon we would find some information to either prove Evan’s guilt and motive or to rule him out altogether.

Soon, my status changed. I was still Captured but the Off-Screen status flicked off. The “camera” was rolling.

The only door to the room opened and a man entered. His name was Detective Marcus Blackwood. He was an NPC. His plot Armor was 50. That was the highest I had seen for an NPC, but that was not the thing that concerned me the most about Detective Blackwood.

He had enemy tropes.

Normally, I didn’t know if an NPC had tropes because my ability only worked on enemies. But Trope Master did work on Detective Blackwood. The problem was I couldn’t actually see what his tropes were. With fifty plot armor, he had enough savvy to drown out my measly five points. Due to the level mismatch, I had no idea what his tropes were. To my eyes, they were just grayed-out posters on the red wallpaper.

Detective Marcus Blackwood was a tall, lean man with a commanding presence. He stood at about 6’2″ and had a chiseled, angular face with piercing blue eyes that seemed to scrutinize everything around him. His salt and pepper hair was kept short and neat, and he sported a well-groomed mustache. He wore a tailored suit, which emphasized his sharp features and gave him a professional air. Despite his intimidating demeanor, he moved with a grace and fluidity that hinted at some trace of athleticism despite being in his fifties.

“Good morning,” he said. “I hate that we have to meet this way, but the circumstances demand it.”

Was it morning already? I didn’t respond.

“We thought it was best to get you out of there,” Detective Blackwood said. “We were worried that the crowd might take things into their own hands if we didn’t.”

He flashed a weak smile.

Again, I said nothing. I’d like to tell you that I was just being a hard ass but truthfully there was something about Detective Blackwood’s presence that took away my ability to think. All I could do was hope that the direction this scene was taking wasn’t going to get me locked away in prison.

“We’ll get right to it then,” he said, “What were you doing at the Delta Epsilon Delta house? Your accuser said that you were not invited is that true?”

“I went there with my friends,” I said. Truthfully, I thought that I was a member of the frat but apparently my character was just crashing the party. How embarrassing. I was playing a loner. Not a far stretch for me.

“Your friends?” Detective Blackwood asked. “I see. We’ll get to them later.”

“How do you know Russell Johnson?” He asked.

I didn’t know what my character was supposed to know. I didn’t know my back story. “I met him at the party.”

“The party that no one invited you to?” Detective Blackwood asked.

“I told you I went there with my friends.”

Blackwood ignored me.

“Russell Johnson. 22 years old. Sports medicine major. Numerous parking violations, a suspended driver’s license, and DUIs, but nothing recent. A list of grievances from other students a mile long. Russell was a bit of a troublemaker, wasn’t he? But I don’t see anywhere that he’s had a run-in with you until last night.” Detective Blackwood watched me with his piercing gaze.

“What run-in, we barely talked to each other? Ruck might have said five words to me last night in total.”

“Did he ask you why you were at the party?” Detective Blackwood asked.

What was this guy’s deal? “I went to the party with my friends. It’s a perfectly normal thing to do.”

“And how many college parties would you say you’ve attended?”

Truthfully, after three years in college, that was my first one. I know, lame.

“Not many,” I said.

Blackwood crossed his fingers and leaned forward to the table, “So what made you decide to go to this particular party?”

“I told you I just went there with my friends. They were going and I went with them it’s not that complicated.” I was getting worked up. Was that the effect of one of his unseen tropes or was I just irritable?

Suddenly, my Moxie dropped by one point.

Guess it was a trope. Did he debuff me by asking me a question repeatedly?

For a moment he didn’t ask any more questions. He just stopped and stared at me with his piercing blue eyes.

He said. “I’ve asked around. I know all about you and your… friends.”

The way he said friends at the end… it was like he was calling into question whether they really were my friends.

“I see here that you went to high school with both Camden Tran and Anna Reed.”

I nodded my head. Was this interrogation about my character or was it about me?

“However, I can’t find any evidence that you maintained any relationship with them into college. You had no classes together, you were in no clubs together.”

He paused to let me respond. I didn’t.

“You don’t share a major and I can’t find anyone who remembers seeing you at any party or event that they’ve been to before this one.”

He wasn’t just talking about my character. He was talking about me. Real-life me.

“Look Anna was my neighbor; we grew up next to each other. Camden was my best friend.”

“Was?” Detective Blackwood asked. “I thought he invited you to the party?”

“I didn’t say that he invited me to the party I said that we went to the party together.”

“So, you went to the party with Anna Reed who was your neighbor as a child, and your former best friend from high school? Or was it middle school?”

What did this guy know? How did he know it?

Camden and I had been best friends in middle school but when high school came, he got popular, and I didn’t. It happens. When we went to college we didn’t really hang out until he reached out to me a week before we came to Carousel and asked if I still liked scary movies. Apparently, that’s what I was known for.

Anna had been my crush since I was a little kid, but I wasn’t about to talk to this guy about it. I didn’t care what tropes he had or how high his Moxie was.

“So, you tag along to a Delta Epsilon Delta party with Camden Tran and Antoine Stone, who are actual members of Delta Epsilon Delta, and Anna Reed and Kimberly Madison who are members of their sister sorority Epsilon Epsilon Kappa?”

He leaned back in his chair.

“Are Antoine and Kimberly old friends too?”

“No,” I said. “Recent friends.”

That was close enough to the truth.

I don’t know what debuffs this guy had, but as he dug into my past and friendship insecurities, my Moxie, Savvy, and Grit had all dropped by one point again. It took everything I had just to concentrate.

“So, you used some old ‘friendships’ as a way to get into the party, and then what? What did you do once you got there?”

“Nothing,” I said. What was I supposed to tell him that I spent the whole time looking for a killer? That I combed the house over for information that I might need in the final battle?

“You didn’t talk to anyone?”

“Yes, I talked to people.”

“I thought you said you did nothing?”

I couldn’t even answer, I was growing so frustrated. I couldn’t form the words.

“Who did you speak to? Because I asked around and the other partygoers said that you were a loner.”

That was false. “I talked to my friends.”

“There you are calling them your friends again. Do you think that they will appreciate that term when we haul them in here for questioning? Or do you think that when we turn up the pressure, they’re going to tell us the truth: that you weren’t actually invited?”

I didn’t respond. Luckily this threat was empty given the circumstances. Anna, Camden, Antoine, and Kimberly weren’t going to play along. He was just trying to antagonize me. He knew my insecurities. Probably figured them out with an insight trope.

Suddenly I realized what this character actually was. He was a secondary antagonist. He wasn’t the bad guy that went around killing people, but he did cause problems for the heroes. Well, he caused problems for me at least. Scary movies were full of cops like this.

“If you were there for innocent reasons, I have to wonder why you didn’t leave when every other person at the party did. You didn’t care that the field was being torn up? Or were you—”

The door to the interrogation room opened. A low-level NPC police officer walked in and said, “We’ve got a match to the paint found at the crime scene up on Turn Around Road.” He produced a manila file folder and handed it to detective Blackwood.

“Thank you, Officer Peters,” Blackwood said. He gave the man a warm smile.

The officer left and closed the door. Blackwood turned to me; his smile disappeared instantly.

“Did you kill Russell Johnson?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“But you were around him at the time he died and no one else was. You didn’t see anyone else, did you?”

How was I supposed to navigate this? If I said no, then I’m admitting that I was alone with the victim at the time of the murder. If I say yes, then I have a lot of explaining to do as to why I hadn’t said anything before.

“I saw Ruck arguing with a chick named Amber. He also argued with some guys from SMU. Have you brought them in?”

Detective Blackwood shook his head. “I’m aware of those altercations. Those occurred long before Mr. Johnson was murdered. Amber Terry weighs a hundred pounds at most. She could never have subdued Russell.”

I almost said But he was asleep when he was killed, but somehow held my tongue. I think Blackwood set that trap on purpose. He would have known there was no struggle.

“I’ll ask again was anyone else there with you around the time Russell Johnson was killed?”

“No, it was just me. I didn’t even know that Ruck was in the backyard. I thought he had gone up with everyone else to the field. I was just… eating cereal.”

I expected him to hone in on my weak alibi, but he didn’t.

Detective Blackwood said nothing. He just stared at me. The silence was louder than any question. I was certain that he was employing a trope against me.

It was the strangest thing. The longer the silence lasted the stronger my desire to confess grew. Not to confess to the murder of course. I hadn’t done it.

Words started to well up in my throat that I had to say. Detective Blackwood had already debuffed my Moxie by two points—not that he needed to. There was no way that Detective Blackwood with 50 plot armor had less than four Moxie. I was powerless. He had me beat.

“Ranger Danger,” I said. I couldn’t help it.

“Excuse me?”

Now that I had said the words that his trope had forced me to, it was like I couldn’t stop. I just had to avoid saying too much. “Someone dressed in the Ranger Danger costume was at the house.”

“You’re telling me that the mascot for SMU murdered Russell Johnson?” He looked away from me up toward the mirror on the wall. No doubt whoever was up there was having a good laugh. Detective Blackwood himself couldn’t conceal a smile.

“I didn’t say that Ranger Danger killed him I said someone dressed as Ranger Danger was at the house. Ruck stole the costume and they had it hanging from the balcony when I got to the party. Someone had taken it down and was wearing it when I left.”

“The jury is going to love that,” Detective Blackwood said.

“You’ve got to believe me,” I said, with every bit of sincerity I could muster. Now that was a cliche line. I wondered if I said it because I wanted to or because of Ranger Danger’s They’ll Never Believe You trope.

“I did not kill Ruck. I had nothing to do with it.”

The pressure to be seen as innocent was so strong even though I knew that Detective Blackwood would never, well, believe me.

All I had to do was hold on until the end of the scene.

The entire time we had been talking my Off-Screen status had flicked on and off. Much of this conversation had been on-screen but now, the light stayed lit. I was free. The scene change was coming on.

Apparently, Detective Blackwood wasn’t as interested in my horror movie-watching hobby as Evan had been because he didn’t even ask about it. I think the entire point of the scene was to establish that I was an untrustworthy loner and force me to confess having seen Ranger Danger. I wondered how that was going to come into play down the line.

The next thing I knew I was being walked out of the station.

Detective Blackwood kept close to me. When we left the station—a large building only a few blocks from campus—my friends were there, eating sub sandwiches. I guess for them it was a break and they used it to grab a bite to eat. Good for them.

“Oh look,” I said. “My friends are here to pick me up.”

Detective Blackwood didn’t say anything.

Suddenly, we were On-Screen again.

“We’re going to have some more questions for you,” he said. “Don’t leave town.”

Very funny.

The steps up to the police station were very large. It was surrounded by benches and well-kept greenery. There was a set of steps down to the street. A man stood at the bottom.

“Detective Blackwood!” he said. He was a man in his late 40s or early 50s. He wore a plaid shirt and jeans along with some very well-worn boots with dirt clinging to the sides and stuck in the treads. He wore a green cap on his head that reminded me of the ones that would say John Deere in the real world.

“How come you got the whole police force out looking for someone who killed some drunkard but you ain’t sent but one squad car over to find out what happened to my Nelly?”

Detective Blackwood recognized this man. “Mr. Birch, that’s simply not true. We are investigating your daughter’s death with every resource available to us. In fact, I am working on her case right now.”

He held out the manila file folder he had been given during my interrogation as if it were proof of how hard they were working.

Mr. Birch wasn’t having it. He reached out and attempted to grab the file but only succeeded in knocking it to the ground right in front of Anna. It opened, revealing a ghastly picture of what remained of Nelly Birch, some papers with biographical information and witness statements, and a small baggie filled with little orange specks.

“How come this frat kid gets a candlelight vigil with news crews? You all couldn’t pay attention to her for more than a few hours before some other kid becomes more important? She was a student too! She was taking business classes. Why didn’t she get a candlelight vigil? Why didn’t you say anything at all?”

“Mr. Birch we are doing everything we can to find out what happened to your daughter. The vigil was something that the university put on. A student dying on campus from cold-blooded murder got people worried. They needed reassurance.”

Camden gently nudged Anna out of the way and bent down and picked up the file, glancing at it for only a few seconds. He held it out for the detective.

Detective Blackwood quickly retrieved the file folder and continued talking with Mr. Birch, leading him away from us as he did.

“So, are you going to prison?” Antoine asked.

“At first, I thought I was. But then the scene was over and suddenly he just wanted to get me out of there.” I would fill them in on the interrogation later.

“So did you see anything important in that file?” I asked Camden. He had only seen it for a few seconds, but his Eureka ability would have shown him everything important.

Camden seemed to be working something over in his mind.

“Yeah,” he said. “That girl who died…”

He paused, thinking.

“What about her?” Anna asked.

“I think Ruck killed her.”

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