Page 18 of Outside the Room

"Product," Sullivan repeated, leaning back slightly. "Like Marcus Whitman? Was he just 'product' that needed moving?"

Bradley's brow furrowed, genuine confusion crossing his face. "Who?"

Sullivan slid another photo across the table—Whitman's official customs ID photo. "The customs inspector you murdered and left in a shipping container to freeze to death."

Bradley looked genuinely startled, his eyes widening as he stared at the photograph. "The customs guy? That's what this is about? I didn't kill him!"

Isla studied Bradley's reaction carefully. His shock appeared genuine—not the calculated surprise of someone caught in a lie, but the honest confusion of someone confronted with unexpected information.

"Where were you two nights ago, between eight p.m. and midnight?" Sullivan pressed.

Bradley looked to his lawyer, who nodded. "On my boat. We were running tests on a new sonar system before the ice closes in completely."

"Can anyone verify that?"

"GPS tracking on the Northern Star will confirm it," Bradley said. "I was ten miles out when we anchored for the night. Didn't dock until four a.m."

Isla reached for the phone in the observation room, dialing the evidence team to request verification of the Northern Star’s GPS data. If Bradley was telling the truth, they'd need to pivot their investigation away from him as Whitman's killer.

In the interrogation room, Sullivan changed tactics. "Tell me about your operation. Who do you work for?"

Bradley hesitated, glancing at his lawyer, who whispered something in his ear. He shook his head firmly.

"Look," he said, leaning forward. "I'll talk about the guns. I'll admit to moving packages across the border. But I don't know names. It's all anonymous—offshore accounts, blind drops, and coded communications. I never met the people in charge."

Sullivan's skepticism was evident in his raised eyebrow. "Expect me to believe you're smuggling military-grade weapons and pharmaceuticals without knowing who's buying them?"

"That's how it works!" Bradley insisted. "Think about it—if I get caught, like I just did, I can't give up what I don't know. That's the point. I'm a courier, not a partner."

Sullivan opened another file. "Let's go back to Whitman. He questioned you recently about your fishing yields, didn't he?"

Bradley nodded slowly. "Yeah, about a week ago. Standard inspection stuff, I thought. He was always thorough, but nothing unusual."

"Did you see him as a threat to your operation?"

"No," Bradley said firmly. "Look, we've been running guns and pharma packages for six months. Whitman had inspected my boat dozens of times and never found anything. The compartments are too well hidden."

"So why kill him?"

"I didn't!" Bradley's frustration was evident. "Why would I? If I thought he was onto me, I'd change routes or lay low for a while. Killing a federal inspector just brings heat we don't need."

Isla noted the use of "we"—confirmation that Bradley was part of a larger organization, despite his claims of ignorance about its structure.

Sullivan gathered his photos, his expression unreadable. "We'll verify your alibi. In the meantime, you can think about whether you want to spend the rest of your life in prison or start giving us something useful about who's really running this operation."

He stood, gathering his files. Bradley looked up, a flash of genuine fear crossing his face.

"You don't understand," he said quietly. "If I tell you what little I know, I'm a dead man."

"You're not in a great position either way," Sullivan observed coldly before leaving the room.

Isla met him in the hallway, where an officer was waiting with an update. "Both of Bradley's crew members have alibis for the night of the murder," the officer reported. "One was at a hospital in Superior with his wife, who was giving birth. The other was at a hockey game at UMD—plenty of witnesses and security footage confirms it. Neither of them boarded the Northern Star until yesterday morning."

Sullivan nodded, absorbing this information. "And Bradley's GPS data?"

"Being verified now, but preliminary check shows the Northern Star was indeed anchored offshore during the timeframe of Whitman's murder."

Isla processed this, pieces shifting in her mental map of the case. "So, we've stumbled onto a weapons and pharmaceutical smuggling operation, but it's not directly connected to our murder case."

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