Read Southern Lights for Free Online

everything that was said, and she sat in the darkness, watchful and tense. She wanted the interrogation to go well. Quentin took a long drag of the cigarette, exhaled a billow of lazy smoke, and then turned to precisely the spot where Alexa sat, as though he sensed her, and could feel her, and knew without question she was there. Through the darkened one-way glass, his ice-colored eyes met hers, and he smiled a small wicked smile, meant just for her. He knew almost certainly that she was there. The word that came to mind for Alexa was “insolent.” She wasn’t sure if he meant the look to be a caress or a slap, but it felt like both to her. She straightened in her seat, and without thinking, she reached for her own cigarettes. There was no one there to see it. She smoked occasionally and watched Quentin intently as she did.
    “Tell us where you’ve been for the last two years,” Jack asked him without expression. “What cities, what states.” They knew exactly where he had been for the last six months, and Jack wanted to see if the suspect would tell them the truth. He did. He rattled off a list of towns and cities, in all the states they knew. “What have you been doing there?”
    “Working. Visiting guys I knew in the joint. I’m not on parole. I can do what I want,” he said cockily. Jack nodded assent. They knew he had taken jobs as a laborer, unloading freight, and in one of the farm states, he had picked crops for a few weeks. His size was in his favor and always got him a job. It wasn’t in the favor of his victims and had cost them their lives. They knew that as well. Quentin looked arrogant, but there was no threat of violence in his demeanor, and he had had no history of it in prison or before that they knew of. Luke was said to be a peace-loving man, but would meet the challenge if attacked. He had been stabbed once, when trying to break up a fight between two rival gangs, but he had had no known gang associations and kept to himself.
    Quentin was known to be a jogger in prison. He ran track, and jogged daily in the yard. And he had continued running once he got out. They had watched him in parks several times, and it was often where the victims were found, but they still couldn’t tie him to them. There were no witnesses to the crimes. The fact that he had run in the same park didn’t mean that they had died at his hands. There hadn’t been a single drop of sperm in any of the women, which meant that he had used a condom or had a disability of some kind, which maybe led him to rape. He was brilliant at what he did, if it was him.
    Quentin was arrogant, but not a braggart. He waited for their questions and offered nothing else. He met their eyes, and from time to time glanced at the window where Alexa watched with a serious expression. Without realizing it, she had smoked half a dozen cigarettes by then.
    “You know I didn’t do it,” Quentin said after a while, looking straight at Jack and laughing at him. His eyes had drifted past Charlie, dismissing him with a glance. “You guys just need someone to pin it on, to make you look good. You’re playing to the press.”
    Jack decided to dispense with the amenities, as he met Quentin’s eyes. There was nothing there, neither guilt nor fear, nor even concern. The only thing he saw there was contempt. Luke was laughing at them, and thought they were fools. He hadn’t even broken a sweat, which suspects often did. The lights were hot. All the cops in the room were perspiring profusely, while Quentin looked cool. But they were wearing street clothes and bulletproof vests, he was in a thin jumpsuit, and totally at ease.
    “There was blood in the dirt on your shoes,” Jack told him calmly.
    “So what?” Quentin looked completely indifferent. “I run every day. I don’t look at the ground when I run. I run through dirt, dog shit, human excrement every day. I could have run through blood. It wasn’t on my hands.” And it wasn’t on his clothes.