Arabella Academy: Perfectly Imperfect

25. Interrogation

Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you.

~Anonymous

***

Maxwell glared at the eight people looking at him daggers. "You need to let me go, otherwise my superiors will come looking for me, and it will not be good."

Stevens stepped up to scrutinise the man. Not too handsome, hair that looked like it hadn't been combed for years, he wore decently, but not expensively, and looked too much naughty to go around spying on people. Anger suddenly rose up within him and he gave a man a blow, knocking him over.

"That is for Sheila you asshole," he barked at him.

All of a sudden the man started laughing, a laugh that surprised everyone, and made them look at him with fear. If he was laughing about killing a girl, God knows what he would have done to the four had Luis not confronted him. Clement finally reached boiling point and he couldn't take it anymore.

He grabbed Maxwell by his shirt, lifting both him and the chair he was tied to. He pushed him against the wall and stared threateningly at the man's frightened eyes.

"Listen here you dipshit, do you see anyone here joking? Tell me? DO YOU SEE ANYONE HERE JOKING?" He yelled. Maxwell was so scared he was this close to starting crying. He had chosen a bad reaction to Stevens' action and wondered what they were talking about. He slowly shook his head at Clement, asserting that he was sure none of them was joking. It was then that Clement put him down.

"Maxwell Griffin, a mechanic at Bob's New Garage, and an errand man for The Shadow, in the code name of Redhound. What really surprises me is that you actually have a degree in software engineering. I guess this is where unemployment takes people," Calvin said. Since the last time he had seen Marcus and company, he had decided to take it into his own hands to find out who Redhound was. He had worked all week and just as he found a picture of the alleged man, Michelle had called him to say that a man attacked them, the same man who killed Sheila.

Michelle was the most shocked of all of them. There, in front of her, was the man who killed her best friend. She could feel all the negative emotions racing through her veins, waiting to explode any minute. She struggled to control herself, not because she was afraid of how she would react, but because she was afraid of what she would do to him. She approached him, slowly and carefully, until she was close enough to smell the man's fear.

"Why did you do it? Why did you kill Sheila?" Michelle asked, tears in her eyes.

"Oh! The girl," Maxwell remembered. "What if I tell I wasn't the one who did it?" he replied, his eyes showing back the sadness.

That statement took everyone by surprise. It was a shocking twist to what they had expected out of him. Marcus was the first to react.

"What do you mean you didn't kill him?" He gasped.

Clement stepped back right at him, prompting Maxwell to move backwards. He held Maxwell by the back of his neck and said, "So this is how you want us to go?"

"I swear, I didn't kill her. I was at Arabella Academy that morning, but I wasn't the one who killed the girl. I had gone to search for hidden spots at the school where the necklace might have been, That's when I heard the girl scream. I got afraid and ran away, and when the news said that a girl had been murdered at the school, the gang was already congratulating me for finally being brave. I simply just couldn't tell them that it wasn't me," he defended himself, then looked down in shame.

"Wait, so Sheila was killed on a morning, and you are claiming you did not kill her?" Marcus inquired.

"Got any other lies to tell us," Michelle asked. She was the most hurt and felt worse by the lies that this man was telling them.