Page 30 of So Silent

“So far, she’s admitted to evading law enforcement and reckless driving. She refuses to answer any questions before talking to a lawyer.”

“We’ll try talking to her,” Faith replied. “It’s worth a shot, at least.”

Wanda frowned, clearly upset at the potential of having her thunder stolen. She didn’t protest, though. “Go ahead. And good luck to you.”

The three agents entered the interrogation room. Turk trotted to Elena's side and sat, watching her closely, tail switching back and forth. He had managed to escape the crash without even minor injuries, and his body was coiled to strike.

Elena wouldn’t give him any trouble. She seemed desperate to shrink into her chair as much as possible. Her lips trembled, and she refused to meet Faith’s eyes as she sat across from her. Michael positioned himself behind Faith, his arms folded.

Faith decided to start on the offensive. “Three women are dead, Miss Vargas. Do you understand that?”

She shifted in her chair. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

Well, she was talking, at least. That was good.

"I'd like to believe you," Faith replied. "But I have you linked to all three of them. All three of them were lured with high-frequency sound waves outside of the range of normal human hearing. Sound waves that could have been produced by equipment you sell."

“I sell equipment to a lot of people.”

“Not many of those people have enhanced hearing,” Michael said. “In fact, almost none of them do. In fact, it turns out I can count the number of your customers with enhanced hearing on one hand and have two fingers left to throw up a peace sign.”

Elena stiffened slightly. “I’d like to talk to my lawyer.”

Faith folded her hands on the table and leaned forward. “Here’s the thing: you’re not acting like an innocent person. See, you didn’t even talk to us when we showed up at your house. You didn’t even give us a chance to say that we were there to see you. You took one look at our car and fled the scene. That looks very bad. You want a lawyer, and that’s your right, but you didn’t tell us that until after you led us on a car chase through city traffic, nearly causing multiple accidents before the chase ended when you couldn’t hop on the Interstate and flee north. Were you heading to Canada?”

“No! I mean… I want my lawyer. I’m not answering any more questions until I get one.”

Faith sighed. “I want you to think about how this looks. We come to talk to you. We don’t even get to introduce ourselves before you lead us on a car chase. You flee and force us to literally hit you head on to stop you. Now you won’t talk about the three murdered women, all with enhanced hearing who were lured to their deaths by high-frequency sound equipment that you sell. There are a lot of things adding up here to make you look really bad, and if this goes to court, you’re going to see your name attached to everything I just said all over the evening news. This is your chance—your one chance—to convince us that you didn’t kill those women. Otherwise, we’re looking at pressing charges. Then you’ll get a lawyer whether we want you to have one or not.”

Michael cocked his head. “You’re hiding something else, aren’t you?”

Elena flinched. “I want my lawyer.”

Faith raised an eyebrow and sat back in her chair. Michael nodded and said, “You see that camera?” He pointed at the camera in the corner of the room behind and to his left.

Elena didn’t respond.

“Watch that red light,” Michael said.

He left the room, and Faith and Michael sat in silence, watching her. Faith resisted the urge to keep pushing. They were nearly out of options but to give Elena her lawyer, and Faith wanted to give Michael a chance to run with whatever he was trying before they gave up and let her make the call.

Elena gasped, and Faith turned to see the red light had blinked off. A moment later, Michael walked back into the room. He smiled at Elena. “See that? That camera’s off now. It’s just us talking to you. One thing you’ll notice about us is that we’re the FBI. We’re not the Redmond Police. We’re not the Seattle Police. We’re here for one case: the murders of Maria Gonzalez, Rebecca Wells and Emily Chen. Anything else that might have occurred, any other reason you might have run, that’s nothing we care about. Now, if you murdered these women, the next words out of your mouth need to be your favorite phrase: ‘I want my lawyer.’ Because if you murdered them, our job is going to be pursuing consecutive life sentences, and you’ll want to hope your lawyer’s very good at their job so you can enjoy as many days in the sun as possible before that happens.

“On the other hand, if you didn’t murder them, you need to convince me now that that’s the case. You need to show me that you’re innocent so we can stop wasting our time with you and go find a killer. I truly could not care less about anything else you might or might not have done. You understand?”

Elena was silent for a long moment. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “You… you’re only here for the murders.”

“Just that,” Michael replied.

She nodded. “I didn’t kill them. I… You need my alibi, right? For last night?”

“Yes,” Faith replied. “We’ll start with last night.”

She took a deep breath and looked back up at the camera. The red light remained off. “And you’re not going to tell the police what I’m about to tell you?”

“I won’t repeat a word you say,” Michael promised.

Elena sighed and sat a little taller. “I was in Eureka.”

---