AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You might not have intended to shoot a person, but you purposely left a boy to die. And you meant to do that,” Cheryl said.
“You have to do something,” he snapped. “You’re my lawyer.”
“I could argue diminished capacity, but then you blew that out of the water because of the technical aspects of your job, and the fact that you acquired false identification to hide what you went there to do. All you can do is wait and see what they have on you, and we go from there,” she said.
Nyles sulked.
“I wanted a man,” he muttered.
“So do I,” Cheryl snapped. “But the only ones I seem to come in contact with these days are either flat-out mean, or total dumbasses on their way to prison.”
Nyles knew what category fit him best and said no more.
And then the detectives came in.
Nyles tried to read their expressions, but they gave nothing away as they introduced themselves to his lawyer, then sat down on the other side of the table. He eyed the files they’d brought with them, wondering how much of his story they could already refute.
Detective Sosa turned on the recorder, gave a date, time, and location, and named all of the people in the room, and then the questioning began.
“Mr. Fairchild, would you please state for the record your name, occupation, and where you’re from.”
“I’m Nyles Fairchild, from Alexandria, Virginia, and I work at the Library of Congress as a cataloger.”
“How long have you held that position?” Sosa asked.
“A little over twenty years,” Nyles said.
“Thank you. Now, I’m going to ask you some questions that we’ve already asked you before. But this time, it’s for the record, and if you need to change your answer, keep in mind there are consequences for lying under oath.”
Nyles glanced at his lawyer. She’d pretty much said the same thing to him earlier.
“Mr. Fairchild, have you ever been to Jubilee, Kentucky?”
“No,” Nyles said.
“Have you recently purchased hiking gear and a metal detector?”
“Yes, but I explained what—”
“Yesis sufficient,” Sosa said.
“Do you know a man named Dirk Conrad?” Sosa asked.
“No, I do not,” Nyles said.
“Then why did you go to your bank and add the name Dirk Conrad to your personal banking account, and request a debit card in his name?”
His face flushed. “Uh, that was a friend who—”
“You told the bank it was your cousin,” King interjected. “We have security footage of Dirk Conrad walking into the bank to sign papers authorizing him access to your money. We have record of him receiving his debit card. We have records from your bank of that same card being used when Dirk Conrad checked in at Hotel Devon in Jubilee, Kentucky. How do you explain that?” Sosa asked.
Nyles froze, then looked at Cheryl Vlasek in a panic as if to ask,What do I say?She was furious. Just as she’d expected, he hadn’t told her the whole truth. She just raised her eyebrows.
Nyles glared at the detectives. “No comment.”
Sosa unloaded another barrage of facts in Nyles’s lap. “The footage of Dirk Conrad at your bank matches the man in the footage from the Hotel Devon, and that man has been identified by Charlie Raines, the boy who wasshot and left for dead, as the shooter. That same man has also been identified by another witness as dropping a leather-wrapped bundle, which turned out to be a missing journal from the place where you work. The same journal with your fingerprints all over it. How do you explain that?”
“No comment,” Nyles said.
