“Have you made an arrest, agents?” one of the reporters called out. “Is this one going to be the real killer?”
There was a pointed note to the question, obviously trying to insinuate that they hadn’t managed to do their jobs before.
“Reports say that you dragged this man out of a conference where he was giving a talk,” another said. “Were you trying to arrest him as publicly as possible to make up for your previous failures?”
Paige did her best to ignore that. She knew that the only way to deal with all of this was to successfully solve the case. Before she and Christopher did that, nothing they said would be good enough for the waiting press.
Julius, of course, had plenty to say. “My name is Julius Bryant! I am a famous author, and these federal agents are arresting me to try to silence my art!”
Paige and Christopher hurried him inside. In there, Paige saw Julius looking around with nearly infinite curiosity as they marched him through to the interrogation room.
“All of this is fascinating,” he said. “I tried to get access before, of course, but they told me that ‘wanting to see it all for a book’ wasn’t a sufficient reason.”
He looked around as if making mental notes of everything he saw there.
“I still don’t see why you had to take my laptop from me,” he said. “I demand my laptop.”
He said it with such arrogance, as if he expected Paige and Christopher to do exactly what he said through all of this.
“In here,” Christopher replied, taking him into the interrogation room. “Do you want to exercise your right to a lawyer? Do you have a lawyer, or do we need to call for a public defender?”
“I have no need of a lawyer,” Julius said. “You have nothing on me, and I have nothing to fear.”
Paige wasn’t convinced by that. As far as she could see from the evidence they had on him, Julius had plenty to fear.
“Are you sure that you don’t want a lawyer?”
“I can represent myself better than any mere lawyer can!”
Paige raised an eyebrow at that. In the absence of a psych evaluation saying he wasn’t competent to make the decision, Julius had the right to refuse counsel if he wished, but it would make their jobs more delicate. Paige had no wish to see anything they got from him thrown out of court.
She gestured for Christopher to talk to her out of the room. Julius made to follow them.
“You stay here,” Christopher said.
“But how am I meant to write all of it then?” Julius demanded. “No, that simply won’t…”
Christopher shut the door to the interrogation room, locking him inside.
“You’re worried about whether we can interview him,” Christopher guessed.
Paige nodded. “If he’s delusional, then interrogating him without a lawyer present might get all the evidence thrown out of court.”
“Is he delusional?” Christopher asked. “As far as I can see, he’s utterly narcissistic, but he’s aware of what’s happening around him, intelligent, even manipulative.”
Paige had to admit that he had a point.
“All right,” she said. “And he has explicitly turned down a lawyer, but if he shows signs of not understanding what’s going on, we’ll have to stop.”
Christopher nodded. “Let’s just hope that in the meantime, we can get him to admit to what he’s done.”
“How are we going to approach this?” Paige asked.
“I’ll have the techs go through his computer for any evidence. He doesn’t seem to have this misericord dagger on him, so we’ll send a search team to his house to toss it and try to find it. In the meantime, we’ll just talk to him, see if he’s prepared to admit anything. He seems to want to talk, so let’s see if he’s willing to talk about what he’s done.”
Paige followed as Christopher led the way back into the interrogation room. Julius was there, and looking pretty irate.
“How dare you cut me out like that? How am I meant to write all of this if you won’t allow me to see crucial parts of it?”
“Mr. Bryant, our focus isn’t on making it easy for you to write a book; it’s on trying to catch a murderer,” Christopher said. “You understand that we believe you are that murderer?”
“Based on what?” Julius demanded.
Paige was starting to worry again about all of this, and not just because anything Julius said might or might not be admissible. He was so grandiose and arrogant that it was going to take real work to get anything out of him.
“Based on what you wrote,” Paige said. “Your serial novel is written as if you are claiming to have committed all of the murders. You include details of the murders of Gisele Newbury, Meredith Park, and Peggy Cane.”
“I can write what I wish!” Julius replied. “I will not be held back by your petty morality around such things.”
“And does not being held back by morality extend to committing murder?” Christopher asked.
“Is this how the FBI interrogates someone?” Julius countered. “They just ask them over and over again if they did it? Honestly, I could write far better. I will write far better, once you return my laptop.”
“You’ll get it back once our tech teams have been through it to look for evidence,” Christopher said. “But you could save us all some time if you tell us whether they’ll find anything incriminating in there.”
“Why would I save you time?” Julius asked. “I am getting more than enough out of being here. Scenes that will help my work and plenty of free publicity. At last, the press will give me the attention I deserve.”
Paige tried to think of a question that would actually get him to engage. That was the hardest part of all of this, trying to get him to actually talk to them, rather than going off on his own tangent.
“And what attention is it that you think they should give you, Julius?” Paige asked. “What should they remember you for?”
“For being the greatest writer in the world today, of course!” he replied. “For pushing literary boundaries that others dare not push!”
Paige had half hoped that he would talk about wanting notoriety, or even come out and lay claim to his crimes. She knew that he had plenty of reasons not to admit to murder, but even so, it seemed a little strange that someone who had killed for what seemed like narcissistic reasons would be so reticent on that aspect.
“Tell me about Meredith Park,” Paige said.
“The second victim?” Julius’s attention seemed to have been caught again. “She was a most fascinating woman. Beautiful, of course, but I was more interested in the attention that so many people gave to her. People watched her, and she was always so nice.”
“You watched her, didn’t you, Julius?” Paige asked.
“Me?”
Christopher jumped in then. “We have footage of you from the restaurant at the Renaissance Faire, staring straight at her shortly before her death.”
“Like I said, I found her fascinating. Of course I stared at her,” Julius said. “She was… there was something about her that even I found it hard to pin down with words.”
He said that as if it meant that no one could have caught that part about her, because surely if he couldn’t, it was impossible.