how to catch feelings

20

"Marcus being a dick?"

"Mmhmm."

"Of course."

"What's the ETA on nuggies?"

I checked my phone. "Oop. Seven minutes."

"That's so longgg."

"Better than eight minutes. Or nine minutes."

"Fair."

"Who wants to go meet the delivery guy?"

"I will. I need a walk." Jess stood up.

"Me too."

"Why don't we just all go?"

So we all got up and walked down the hall to the outside entrance to wait for our food. We sat on the stairs in front of the auditorium.

"You think this Adam kid has info about the murder? Or do you think he's just gonna talk about what a cool guy Dax was?"

"Who knows."

"I'll bet a chicken nuggie he doesn't actually know anything useful."

"Just one? That's awfully low stakes."

"I don't want to risk more."

"Nuggies are worth more than cash." Jess got up to meet the delivery guy at the door.

Back to the office to eat.

Yeehaw.

***

Adam Hopper arrived at our office door at one o'clock on the dot.

Our sports editor, closest to the door, let him in.

"How about we sit in the conference room?" I suggested.

Jess opened the door and we filed into the other room.

"We don't mean to seem like we're ganging up on you, we were just putting this week's issue together. No pressure."

"So what's up?"

The guy nervously rubbed his hands together. "Um, well, Dax and I were roommates. This would've been the fourth year of that."

"Oh." Jess grabbed her phone. "Sorry – Before you go any further, can we record this conversation for future reference?"

"Uh, sure."

"Okay. Please state your name and permission to record."

"Adam Hopper? I, uh, give you permission to record?"

"Awesome. Thank you."

"So you and Dax were roommates?" I prompted.

"Yeah." He looked around at all of us.

Good grief, were we going to have to coax the words out of him?

"Can you tell us about that night?"

"I guess, yeah. Um. We all moved in that day. There was a party across the street. I went to that with our other two roommates. Dax stayed back. He said he wasn't feeling great."

"Did that seem unusual to you?"

"Dax skipping a party? Yeah. But he was being weird that day."

"How so?"

"I dunno. Quieter than usual?"

"Maybe something was bothering him."

"Oh. Yeah. He mentioned something about an argument. He got into it with someone that morning."

"Did he say who?"

"I... I don't think so."

"Okay. But so you guys went to the party without him. What time was that?"

"Maybe eight-thirty?"

"What time did you go back?"

"I dunno. Two-thirty in the morning, maybe?"

Close enough to the initial police brief.

"And they still haven't said anything to you?"

"Not really. They told us the next day that he'd been murdered. They talked to each of us individually. I guess our alibis were good enough."

Or the police had reason to believe it was someone else, someone obviously not one of Dax's roommates.

"I know you responded to our Facebook post – was there anything else you wanted to tell us about?"

Adam shrugged.

Real talkative guy.

"You can always email or DM us if you think of something else. Or we're always in here on Sundays."

"Okay." He stood up, rubbed his palms on his pants. He headed for the door, but then he stopped. "I just... I just want justice for Dax. He could be a dick, but he was a good guy. He didn't deserve to be murdered like that."

Jess barely glanced my way before saying, "We received a photo the other day. A photo of Dax after he'd been... you know. Did you know anything about that?"

He stared for a moment. "No. A photo? Of...? No. I didn't know. Do you know who...?"

"No. It was slipped under our door overnight. No note."

"Oh. Okay. Well. I think I'm gonna go."

"Thank you for talking to us. We really appreciate it."

"Sure."

"Could you maybe see if your roommates would want to talk to us as well?"

"I guess so." He looked like he couldn't wait to get out of there. Sure enough, when no one else spoke, he took the opportunity to duck out of the room.

"Did anyone else notice?" Jess asked.

"Notice what?"

"His crazy amount of sweating?"

"Chill. He was nervous."

"No, not the sweating. Well, not just the sweating. His body language. He wasn't telling us everything."

"You're saying he knows something."

"Something more than he's telling, yeah."

"Hm."

We all sat back in our chairs.

And then I sat up again. "Okay, well, I'm gonna go do final edits real quick and send the pages in. Jess? Final run-through?"

"Sure."

"Otherwise, y'all are free to go."

"Alright. See you later, then."

"Yup."

We returned to the other room. The section editors gathered up their things and headed out.

I did my check and punched people's wordcounts into the payroll spreadsheet. Jess rolled over to look at design elements, and once those were approved, I exported the files to email to our printing company.

Another one down.

*** ***