Page 70 of The Villains of Winter

“No, Waterbury-Oxford Airport.”

“Are you sure?”

James tilted his brow upward. “Why, do you know anything different?”

The agent passed the flight sheet to him. “You’re headed out of New London Airport. Do you care to explain why you lied to us?” Special Agent Pritchard frowned. “Do you have a habit of lying to us?”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You should take the coffee,” Reyes cautioned him, sliding the cup further. “You’re going to be here for a while.”

Pritchard kept his eyes locked on James. “Explain why you lied.”

“I didn’t lie to anyone.” James excavated his new flight details. “I changed my flight from Groton-New London to Waterbury-Oxford when I received your call to meet you at the precinct. It sounded important.” James checked his Cartier timepiece for a fourth time, a reminder of what they could never afford. His perfect-black Henault suit was exceptionally tailored. “I want to make sure I have plenty of time to help you.”

“Help us?” Pritchard caught the lightly placed insult that they were incompetent, but in case he didn’t, James softly gazed over at them.

“I seem to be the only lead you have. I want to help you find Lucien Montclair. He’s been missing for weeks.”

The officer grunted. “You stabbed him between his ribcage, a few inches from the heart. Forgive me if I doubt you want to offer him your help.”

“He fell into my dinner knife.” James maintained the same narrative. “Lucien said that himself and everyone else stated that as well when the police arrived last October. It was awful. For the rest of Samhain, I was concerned for him.”

All of the students had confirmed the accident. Lucien tripped forward into the knife. That was all. Recently, the institution reminded them of the threat of expulsion. If the students changed their narrative, and if any of them admitted they illegally provided a false statement to the police the first time, they would’ve been sued to ruin by the institution, therefore, everyone kept silent.

“Sah win?” Reyes blinked, struck by the word. “The hell is sah win?”

Pritchard muttered, “Their Hallowe’en.”

“Isn’t that Sam-Hane? It’s spelled Samhain.”

“No. Saw-win. It’s Celtic. Their Hallowe’en is Samhain.”

“Why would they celebrate an ancient…Never mind.” The detective shook his buzzed head at the pagan towns. He moved forward.

“Before your knife went into Lucien, what had you been discussing beforehand?” Reyes asked, for possibly the hundredth time. However, James answered as if it were the first.

He smiled a bit fondly. “We were roughhousing. We were mostly laughing, trading jokes and insults.” James retained his smile. “It was Samhain.”

“He must’ve taken the insults personally to nominate your close friend for the honorarium two months later. Wouldn’t you agree?” The detectives slid a photograph that still made James’s intestines disintegrate. It was taken the morning of the hibernal ceremony. There was unmistakable hatred in his eyes. “We reviewed the footage, Mr. Wilde.”

The hibernal ceremony was not televised. However, the local newspaper, The Banebury Tribune, and the national news station, The American Patriots Report, had photographers that took coverage photos and footage there.

The police subpoenaed the information.

James watched the footage with them before, always wheeled in on an old fashioned television. Sure enough, the door opened and a clunky television was brought in. The state department in Spalder didn’t have a quarter of the opulence that Banebury possessed.

Due to the mountainous wind, and the overlapping voices of thousands, the sound didn’t carry. The outdated camera tracked Elliott, but he was quaking. He trembled in dire fear and the words were unintelligible from his shaking lips. No one could read his lips. Only James had known what he said.

James whispered in his ear and kept their faces close together whenever he said anything important to Elliott.

Except…

“There.” The detective pointed at the edge of the television screen. “You confronted Lucien Montclair on the last day he was seen alive. You were speaking furiously at him, almost accusatory.”

You are a damned liar.

“I was upset.”