Ezra looks pale in the fluorescent lighting, his cheeks gaunt and his green eyes rimmed with redness. He sits straight up in the chair, his hands palm-down on the table.
When he looks up, his gaze is unfocused, and he sways slightly. “Where’s Julian?” he asks when Angel and Wild walk into the room.
“Agent Quinn is observing this interview but has declined to partake, considering your connection,” says Wild. He straightens his tie against his stomach as he sits, the metal chair scratching against the linoleum floor.
Angel settles in next to him and places their notebook on the table, turning to a blank page with a pen poised to take notes. Angel runs through the basic questions, from establishing personal relationships (“How did you know the deceased?”) to alibi (“Talk me through your day”).
Ezra is clearly nervous, though he is forthright and honest in his answers. He speaks quietly and adjusts his seat every few minutes.
At one point, he runs a hand through his hair and rests his elbow on the table as he cradles his head, trying to remember where he was earlier. “I went to work and then headed to my brother’s. He lives off of Chestnut.”
“Do you live with your brother?”
“No, um, I live with Harvey. Harvest.” He swallows. “We had a fight last night, and I crashed at my brother’s place.”
“Why did you return to Ms. Rosenbloom’s apartment?”
“I needed to grab some things I forgot last night. Harvey wasn’t answering her phone, so I figured I’d just stop by and grab them. I didn’t expect to find her there. I didn’t expect anyone to be there.” He pauses, looking down again.
“How did you enter the apartment?”
He looks up sharply. “I used my key.”
“Tell us what happened when you walked inside.”
“I couldn’t,” he says. “The wards… they wouldn’t let me through, so I dismantled them. I was angry.” He scoffs. “I thought Harvey had tried to lock me out.”
“How did you dismantle it?”
“Fire. It runs in my family.”
Angel nods. “Was there anything else amiss in the apartment?”
“No, I just walked into the bedroom and found Hazel.” He says it as if he’s just now remembering, as if it was a dream he had weeks ago. “There was blood.”
“Did you attempt to administer any first aid?” asks Wild.
He shakes his head. “I touched her arm. Her skin wasn’t—it didn’t feel right. And then Harvey and Julian were there.”
“How long would you say you were in the apartment before they showed up?”
“A couple of minutes. Not long.”
“Did anyone see you enter the apartment?”
“Mrs. Halloran, probably. The neighbor downstairs. She’s always looking out of the window.”
“We’ll be sure to speak with her,” says Wild, although he has already done so. She confirmed when Ezra entered the apartment, noting that Quinn and Harvest followed four minutes later.
When he asked how she could be so exact with her times, Mrs. Halloran sniffed, clearly offended. “I pay attention,” she said, a fact that she seemed to take great pride in. Although her pride was slightly hampered by her inability to pinpoint when the victim entered. “I must have been in the garden out back,” she supplied, so readily that Wild was disinclined to believe her.
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“How did you get the cut on your eyebrow?” asks Angel.
Ezra gives a short laugh, taken aback by the question. “Harvey.”
“Harvey attacked you?”
“Harvey threw a ring at me.”
“Why did she do that?”
“We were fighting.”
“Sounds like it was pretty heated. What was it about?”
He looks like he is going to laugh again, but he just shakes his head. “Hazel. We were fighting about Hazel.”
“Did you have any negative feelings toward Hazel? Did you have any arguments with her?”
The question seems to hit Ezra physically, and he jerks back, eying them warily. “What do you mean? I haven’t seen Hazel in two years.”
“But you were angry with her for leaving you, is that right?”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“We have a witness statement that you were quite angry with Hazel last night. There were a few…derogatory words spoken about her and her sister.”
Ezra’s gaze darkens as he recalls the night spent drinking with Quinn, and how easily he let his anger flow in the presence of what he assumed was a friend. “Julian told you that,” he says, his voice steady yet roiling with an anger that he seems unable to keep hidden any longer. He looks up at the camera in the corner, knowing that Quinn is watching from afar. He lowers his gaze back to Angel.
“Can you tell us what you said?” Angel asks him, pen poised above the blank page as if they don’t already know the answer.
“Sure. I said Hazel was a manipulative bitch and that I could kill her for coming between me and Harvey.”
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Quinn frowns and crosses his arms over his chest. Harvest sits next to him, watching Ezra’s interview on a television screen in a small meeting room down the hall.
The room is barely larger than a broom closet, and her shoulder brushes against his as she leans forward, elbows resting on her knees.
“He was exaggerating. He would never kill her,” she tells him.
Quinn nods, his attention still on the screen. “I know.” He tears his eyes away and looks at Harvest. “But we have to rule him out. He was loud at the bar last night. Other people heard him. If I didn’t bring it up, someone else would have, and it would look even more suspicious.”
Harvest sighs and sinks back into her chair, rubbing her eyes with little regard for her mascara. “Are you going to tell him it’s not Hazel?”
He hums in thought but doesn’t answer.
“I’m sure it’s not her,” she says, interpreting his hesitance as a lack of faith in her abilities. She looks at him sharply. “I’m certain,” she says again.
He nods, the movement slight but noticeable considering their proximity. “Then we’ll tell him.”
“The times don’t work either,” she points out, looking back at the screen. A fuzzy Ezra is shaking his head, looking away from Wild and Angel. “We know when Ezra walked into the apartment. If the victim was still alive, there wouldn’t be enough time for him to do anything besides be surprised. I think the wards were trying to tell him something.”
“I know.”
“Although we still don’t know how the victim got into my apartment. And anyway, illusions aren’t really Ezra’s style. He’s not very good at them.”
“Indeed.”
“I think whoever it is already had the illusion applied when they entered. And if the theory is that the victim and Ezra argued because he thought it was Hazel, and it turned violent, why would he make it look like a suicide anyway? It would have been a crime of passion, something spontaneous. I think the victim was already in the room, and I think they were already dead when Ezra got there. Someone is trying to fake Hazel’s death.”
She finally looks back at Quinn, whose mouth is curled to the side in amusement. “You know you don’t work for SDS, right?” he says.
She lifts a shoulder. “Then transfer me. I want to work on this. You have the authority to requisition additional employees, if their qualifications will aid in your investigation.” There is a pause, and then she says, “I need to a—”
She doesn’t have a chance to finish her sentence. There’s a knock on the door, and Wild pokes his head inside. “Hey, boss. Ezra wants to speak with Harvest. He says he won’t say anything else until he sees her.”
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The interrogation room is just a few doors down, and when Harvest enters, she’s met with the dull thrum of gray concrete.
The room is cold and impersonal, and Ezra, who is normally a vibrant vermilion orange as warm as the summer sun, seems just as gray as the walls.
He jumps out of his seat when he sees her. Quinn hovers in the doorway for a second before leaning casually against the doorframe. Ezra ignores Quinn and reaches out to grab Harvest in a hug. She reciprocates but pulls back a second too early, aware of the camera in the corner still recording their every movement.
Ezra looks drawn, his exhaustion and grief making him look older. “I didn’t do this. I wouldn’t.”
“I know,” she says. “Agent Quinn is just doing his job. But we should be able to get you out of here soon.”
At the mention of his name, Quinn pushes himself off of the doorframe and moves further into the room. “I’ll have to ask you not to leave town, of course. We may still need to ask you some questions.”
Ezra’s expression hardens, and he looks like he is going to say something, but he closes his mouth when Harvest squeezes his hand. “There’s something else,” she says. “The body we found wasn’t Hazel.”
Ezra takes a deep breath and, for a moment, seems unsure if he should be happy or annoyed. He settles for something in the middle, a vague sort of acceptance clouding his eyes.
But what Harvest sees, in the depths of his pupils and the minute shift in his body, is a kindling of relief and she can’t help but think that he’s still in love with Hazel, despite his past declarations to the contrary.