Spooky Business (The Spectral Files #3) - S.E. Harmon Page 0,100

got on my finger, and I gave it a lick. God, that was fucking delicious—

“Christiansen,” Danny called, without turning around.

I sighed and dropped my fork. “Right behind you.”

Chapter 26

A couple of hours later, Milo was in interrogation room two, dressed in ripped jeans and a blue shirt with a glittery paw print on the front. Underneath the paw, it read: Adopt a friend for life. Judging from the amount of dog hair on his shirt, they’d probably picked him up at work. A lock of curly blond hair fell into his eye, but he didn’t bother to brush it back.

It was hard to believe that this man, with the perpetually blushing cheeks, had shot his boyfriend, execution-style. And yet, here we were. He watched my every move as I took the seat across from him and got organized. My pen and legal pad went next to my coffee cup, and a folder labeled Wakefield, C. next to that.

I slid a sweating can of Mountain Dew across the table. Milo stopped it with his hand and murmured, “Thanks.”

“No problem.” I could feel his gaze on me as I wrote the time, date, and his name on the top of the legal pad. “You should know that your uncle came forward at the news of your arrest.”

He swallowed. “Is that so?”

I nodded slowly. It wasn’t a bluff. Danny was in the next room with good old Uncle Greg. As someone who’d been on the receiving end of a Danny interrogation, I knew the process wasn’t going to be pleasant. Or quick.

Apparently, Milo’s uncle had suspected him for years. Two weeks before the murder, Greg’s gun had disappeared from a shoebox in his closet. He didn’t report the gun missing because he’d been on parole. The gun had reappeared two months later, right back in the shoebox.

“He surrendered the Berretta, and we sent it down to ballistics,” I informed him. “He was afraid it was a murder weapon, so he hasn’t used it since, not even for target practice. We’re hoping to pull a print.”

He didn’t have anything to say about that. Instead, he flipped the top on the soda and took a couple long swigs.

“A lot of people remember to wipe down the gun. Not a lot of them remember to wipe the bullets.” I paused to give him a chance to think about that. “It’s hard to commit a perfect murder, Milo.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said. “I don’t know how that concerns me, though.”

“Don’t you?” I flipped open the folder and pulled out an eight by ten of a lovely woman with the longer version of Milo’s curly blond hair. “Let’s talk about Bee Williams.”

He stiffened. “You leave my mother out of this.”

“Why should I? She’s the catalyst for you shooting Joey, is she not?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I put both elbows on the table and leaned in. It was a simple but effective tactic to enter the suspect’s zone of intimacy, to crowd his personal space and make him overly aware of my proximity and less concerned with any information he might reveal.

“Joey’s father abducted your mother when she got separated from a group of her friends at Zappa Fair. He lured her into his car, promising to take her home.” I kept my voice level and matter-of-fact. “He never had any intention of taking her anywhere but that little shop of horrors in his basement.”

“I know the story, Detective.”

“He tortured her for six fucking days, for no reason other than to sate his sick appetites. Then, he killed her and sent your father a dozen roses.”

“I think that’s enough.”

“You were young at the time, but not young enough to avoid the fallout.” I’d done a lot of research since we’d left the café, and most of it was heartbreaking. “Your father became a raging alcoholic and shipped you off to live with your grandparents, who died a year later. Your father passed two years after that.”

“My childhood sucked,” he said defensively. “So what?”

My throat tightened as I thought of Milo as a small, curly-haired, pink-cheeked little kid, methodically losing everyone who meant anything to him. “You went to live with your aunt, who had six kids of her own and not enough time or attention to go around. Her eldest got pregnant when you were fifteen, and they decided the house was getting too crowded. That you had to go.”

“I said that’s enough!” his voice rang off the walls of the interrogation room. His eyes were