Vandermein

XXIII

Marie was sitting up, curled into herself. Hey eyebrows were furled, concentrating, trying to make sense of the past few hours. Clearly, things had not gone the way she had anticipated. 

"I'm going to talk to her first," Boone told us. 

"Is that really a good idea? Don't you think you're a little too close to the situation?" I offered that bit of wisdom, selfishly hoping I'd be the one to begin the interrogation. I had so many questions and none of the patience for him to first get through his emotional baggage with his ex. 

"I'm a professional, Frank."

"I haven't slept with the suspect, Bill." 

As we were glaring at each other, Ji-Min squawked and waved her hands between us. "Both of you go! Ask your questions! Be quick!" 

She was right, there'd be no clean resolution as long as we were competing for dibs. We'd need to go in together, get this over with. With a lipless smile and a slight nod, we were understood. I wondered, which one of us would be the bad cop? Which one would be the good cop? Did we need to both fill one or the other archetypes, or could we vacillate between the two? Or, maybe, we were both some slurry of good and bad, sloppily aligned with no clear demarcation of where the goodness started and the bad ended. 

I was overthinking this. 

Ji-Min swiped her hand on the wall next to Marie's cell and a portion of the glass mirror opened, hinges that had not been there before. Boone walked ahead of me. 

"Marie," he gave his curt salutation. 

"Mrs. Boone." I gave mine. 

Her gaze was venom and spite, sharp eyes piercing into her ex-husband. "Is this the part where you kill me?" 

Neither of us dignified the answer.

"Marie, what were you doing on the ship that sank in the harbor?" The detective seamlessly melded into his familiar role. He did the stoic frown, the furled eyebrows. 

"Why were you not on the ship, Boone?" She retorted. Her eyes bounced back and forth from Boone to me. "Interesting company you're keeping these days."

The detective was unflinching, despite the barbed words. "I have video of you aboard the ship in your...outfit. What were you doing there? Who are you involved with?"

"Ha!" Marie's laugh was harsh, more a violent volley than a voice. "The detective shows his true colors and yet here he stands with the enemy." 

I was about to reply I'm not your enemy, but I was. I was an enemy to everyone in the room. I felt as if I had nothing to offer in the conversation, that my questions were suddenly inappropriate, out of line. 

"Today's been a strange day, Marie. It seems no one is proving to be who I thought they were." 

"Your man here," she nods to me, "is tied up in all this you know. It was his boat full of kids." 

"I'm not asking about his affairs. I'm asking about yours. For the sake of argument, let's assume I've already been asking questions of our mutual acquaintance."  

"I was there doing what you should have been doing," she answered through clenched teeth. 

"And what is it that I should have been doing?" 

"Investigating!" 

"I was investigating!"

"You were sabotaging MY INVESTIGATION!" 

"Hold on!" I shouted between the feuding couple. "Why were you trying to kill your ex-husband?" 

Her mouth suddenly closed. Her eyes darted away. "When he blew up the ship, I knew it was only a matter of time before he found out I was still alive. It was me or him. Still is."

"When I blew up the--" the statement confounded the detective. "You think I did this?" His composure was compromised. 

"Doesn't it add up? It's the perfect crime. You and the narcissist here have been in cahoots the whole time, running an underground human trafficking ring, playing the part of hero and villain for the public while dealing under the table. You kept cameras on the ship, keeping a close eye on your loot. That's why you weren't there with me investigating, because it was your whole idea in the first place." 

The detective's mouth was agape. "How can you think that of me?" 

She gestured to me. "You are literally working with the boat's owner. How do you know you're not falling for one of his schemes? Besides, I was in your computer. I saw all the detailed schedules you kept. It's only information an insider would know." 

"Or maybe I'm a good detective, Marie!" 

"Wait," I interjected, "Marie, are you telling us that you are not in on this crime? You had nothing to do with the trafficking or the kids or he explosion or any of that?" 

"Of course not. I was there to stop it." 

"How long have you been... you know... fighting crime?" 

She smirked. That wasn't a question I'd see answered. But as much as she "fought crime," she was no hero. She had tried to carry out an assassination on Boone earlier that same day. In the business, we call these people "vigilantes." They're outside the law, working for some notion of "the greater good." But was killing one's ex-husband truly a greater good? I wasn't quite ready to invest my trust. 

Marie looked to Boone, who was rubbing the back of his neck. He'd been keeping something from me. 

"Did Boone ever tell you how we met?"