The Silent Partner

The Silent Partner    

“Okay, let’s start with something easy. What’s your name?” Aberdeen asked it with faked sincerity as she leaned forward bringing her elbows up onto the table, drawing her face closer.

The man across from her lifted his eyes only as high as her mouth, “Winston Churchill.”

“Really? Winston Churchill. That was the best you could come up with?”

Church shrugged, “What can I say, you’d be better off taking it up with my mother.”

The corners of Aberdeen’s mouth drew into a frown, she leaned back and crossed her legs. “Fine. Do you go by Winston then?”

“Church actually.” He managed to raise his gaze to her eyes. They were pretty eyes, blue with flecks of brown in them, but they were cold.

“Church then.” Aberdeen paused and tapped her finger to her lips. “So Church, do you know why you are here?”

Church licked his lips and shifted in his chair, testing the links of metal that surrounded his wrists, “I suppose it is because you think I killed someone.”

Aberdeen leaned in again at that, her lips parting slightly, “And did you Church?” She paused for effect, “Kill someone that is?”

“Of course I didn’t!” Church strained against the table, jerking his chair back a few inches. “Why would I kill Lucy?”

“I could tell you what I think?” Aberdeen reached out and traced the manila folder on the table.

Church squared his jaw, “You go ahead and do that.” The words were sharp, but Aberdeen just smiled coldly.

“Lucy was cheating on you – ”

“I didn’t kill her for that!” Church shouted forgetting himself as he tugged on his wrists again.

“She was going to leave you.” Aberdeen pressed, spasmodically ripping the folder open to spill the three photos into the space between them.

Church deflated instantly his eyes roaming hungrily over the smiling woman in the middle and studiously avoiding the picture on the end that showed the same woman…not smiling. “I wouldn’t hurt her.”

Aberdeen picked up the rightmost photo and slammed it down, “Look at it Church and tell me you didn’t do it!”

“I didn’t.” Church couldn’t look at it, “I didn’t kill her.”

“She was cheating on you. You found out and then you confronted her. Things got out of hand. The knife was just lying there on the counter. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her Church. Maybe it was an accident.”

“I going to be sick.” Church looked up to the flickering ceiling light.

“She was going to leave you. She told you she was pregnant with another man’s child and she was going to take everything from you. That would have made anyone angry.” Aberdeen soothed stacking the photos back to leave the leftmost photo on top.

Church whimpered and bit his lip, “Yeah, I was angry alright. It’s like you said, anyone would have been. She told me that night…about…him.” His jaw tightened, his gaze darting back to the photo of another not so smiling man.

“You had a fight. The neighbors heard it Church. Lucy ran from the house crying. You followed her to her boyfriend’s house. You argued again, the knife was just lying there.”

“Stop it!” Church jerked his wrists again, “Okay, we argued so what? I’m not denying that. She came home and told me…she told me…and I was supposed to be okay with it? No. Did I want to hurt her, maybe I don’t know. Just not…not like that, okay? We argued and she left. That’s it.”

“And you have no alibi, no one who can confirm this?” Aberdeen was still tracing the photograph.

“No.” Church breathed, “I went for a drive. To clear my head after she left. I needed to be alone.”

Aberdeen reached into her folder again and pulled out another photo, “This is you Church. A security camera picked you up two blocks from Lucy’s boyfriend’s place.”

“So what?” Church squirmed, “That’s a major intersection.”

Aberdeen placed the photo down and then shifted it so the non-smiling man was staring blanking up again, “Did you even know his name?”

“What?” Church’s eyes darted down and then away.

“His name was Simon Gray. He was an investment banker who made more money in a day then you do all year Mr. Churchill.”

“So what?” The haughtiness in his voice sounded forced.

“So surely you can see why a woman like Lucy would prefer a man like him to a man like you.”

“Shut up. You didn’t know her. I…she wasn’t like that.”

“Like what exactly?” Aberdeen’s voice dripped honey.

“Like some…tramp, who was only after money. Lucy was smarter than that.”

“Too smart for someone like you?”

His finger’s clenched into fists, “Yeah, too smart for someone like me, but you know what I loved her and fool I was thinking she…loved me back.” His face was twisted as he shook his head slowly.

“But she didn’t. Isn’t that right Church. Did you follow her to teach her a lesson? To let her know just how much of a mistake she was making in leaving you?”

“What’s the point?” Church asked suddenly looking at Aberdeen with burning eyes. She leaned back.

“What do you mean?”

Church rolled one hand around and around in his cuffs, “What’s the point of trying to teach her a lesson when it doesn’t really matter? She betrayed me, she was going to leave me to be with him and yeah I was mad. Hell I was furious, but more than that I was sad. I was hurt. I’d given her everything.” His chest was puffed, the words being expelled as gasps, “I worked that damn job fifty hours a week so maybe I could buy her a ring and take her somewhere nice like she always wanted. I did that for her and she went behind my back with him. I didn’t want to hurt her. I just…”

“You wanted to talk. You wanted to make her see reason and come back to you.” Aberdeen softened her tone as tears started to glisten in Church’s eyes.

He sniffled and shook his head, “No. Look-it my dad was not a faithful man, he must have cheated on my mom a dozen times and she kept taking him back. It killed her. Every time I could see little bits of her soul cracking away as he stood there and begged and said that it would be the last time. No, I told myself that I would never do that to a woman. So I didn’t want her back, I’m not so deluded as to think that if she didn’t love me now, she would love me later when she realized what a jerk that guy was.”

“I thought you didn’t know Mr. Gray?”

“I was speaking in general.” Church wiped his face on his shoulder.

Another photo was produced from the folder and Aberdeen placed it on the table, “This is you Church and this is Mr. Simon Gray. This photo was taken two weeks before the murders. You two knew each other.”

Church licked his lips, his eyes darted to the photograph. “I…”

“You knew Lucy was having an affair. You sought out her lover. You confronted him. Did you tell him to back off Church? Try to talk it out like men?”

Church was shaking his head, something boarding on panic in his eyes, “That’s not…”

“Then what happened Church. What are the thousand words behind this photograph?”

“Hill wouldn’t. He wouldn’t have done that.”

Aberdeen’s lips twitched, “Who is Hill?”

Church’s eyes darted to the door and he pulled on his restraints, “Jack Churchill.” His breathing was shallow, coming in ragged gasps. “He’s my twin brother.”

“And what does he have to do with this?” Aberdeen asked.

Church jerked away from her and the photograph, “That’s not me.”

Aberdeen looked down at the photo and then at the man. “Damn-it.”