A Billion Little Clues (19 page)

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For a moment, there was total silence in the interrogation room. The only sound I could hear was the thumping of my heart in my chest, beating as fast as a jackrabbit. No one was saying anything. Why was no one saying anything?

Maybe they thought that this sounded crazy, that these spreadsheets weren't enough to prove that my story was right! I felt myself starting to sweat, and was actually momentarily grateful that I wasn't wearing any nice clothing that could be ruined by the little beads of moisture now appearing on my back. What if they threw me out of the interrogation room? Or, even worse, what if they ended up locking me up as well, for being disrespectful, or intruding without permission, or some other charge like that?

Finally, Zinn was the first to break the silence. "It's utterly ridiculous," he said, with a voice that smacked of finality. "There's no way that I could do any of this. And even if such a thing was feasible, there's no way that someone like this woman could figure it out!" He accompanied this with another searing glare at me.

I flinched away a little, but Roman was already opening his mouth. "Hey, don't you say that about her!" he shot back. His voice wasn't raised, but it literally dripped with white-hot fury. "She is exceedingly smart, and if she believes this, I have no reason to doubt her."

I basked in the glow of that compliment. It gave me so much lift, I swore that, for a second, my feet literally left the ground as I was buoyed upwards. But Zinn was already scoffing back at Roman.

"And you don't have faith in me?" he called out. "I've been your lawyer for all that time, Roman! Have I ever led you wrong?"

"No," Roman admitted, shaking his head. "But she did nail you on the high spending. I've seen your lifestyle, and wondered how you kept it up. Siphoning funds from the company - from my company - would be a reasonable explanation."

The lawyer was already sputtering with a comeback, but once again, the detective spoke up and cut him off. "Mr. Zinner," she cut in. "This matter is, fortunately, not yours to decide. It is up to the police, and we will do our own investigation." She leveled a glare across the table at him. "And rest assured, we will be as thorough as is possible. Have no doubt about that."

Somehow, the lawyer didn't appear to be calmed by this.

Instead, as he gazed back at the rest of us, his gaze shifting back and forth from Roman, who had bent forward to turn some of the papers I'd brought as evidence around to peruse them, to the detective, currently glaring across at both of the men, to me, he started to shake. It was quite odd. I could literally see the lawyer, usually so suave and confident, quivering back and forth on the metal chair at the table.

Roman shook his head as he looked at the forms I had brought in. "And Silvers was sitting on these?" he asked out loud to no one in particular. "Oh, Geoffrey. Why didn't you just come to me with these right away, as soon as you figured it out?"

A minute or two later, I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. I had said my piece. This was the point where I imagined that the detective would nod and accept my story as fact, would get up and release Roman promptly into my care while Zinn was hauled off, protesting, to his new home in a jail cell. But instead, everyone seemed to be sitting, lost in their own thoughts.

Perhaps I ought to just leave. I turned, glancing towards the door. But before I could step that way, I felt a hand at my side, holding me in place. I looked down - and saw that the detective had her hand on my arm! Just briefly, she made eye contact with me and gave the slightest shake of her head, so subtle I nearly missed it.

What was she trying to communicate? Did she not want me to leave? Not yet? I wasn't sure what she was trying to say, but I didn't pull away from her grasp.

And then the lawyer opened his mouth on the other side of the table and pulled in a deep, shuddering breath.

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Across the table from the detective and I, sitting next to Roman, Eddie Zinner took a deep, shuddering breath. He was still shaking slightly in his seat, and his gaze was down, on his hands in front of him. He refused to look up, to make eye contact with any of us.

"It was an accident."

The words were almost hoarse, choked with emotion. He was shaking his head back and forth, as though he couldn't believe he was speaking aloud.

"It was an accident, I swear," he repeated again, still looking down. "The man was just so, so... so insistent about it! I had to come clean, I had to go marching out and, in front of all of my colleagues and the other executives, confess. He wouldn't let me do it in public, let me just take a day or two to sort things out! That was all that I needed!"

The detective nodded. She didn't look triumphant, but I swear that, for just a second, I caught the flash of a grin across her face. Somehow, she had known this all along, had known that the man was about to break! I felt a newfound sense of respect for her blooming inside my chest. She was definitely good at her job.

Zinn was still staring down, shaking his head. He needed a gentle push to continue, I felt. "So you hit him," I said, trying to keep my voice soft.

That made him look up. The man dragged his eyes up to me, and I saw agony staring back, so strong I couldn't stop myself from taking a half step backwards. "I just wanted him to stop!" he shouted out. "I never meant to hit him that hard! But then he started screaming, and the bookend was still in my hand, and he was grabbing at me..."

I looked over to Roman, wondering if he was as shocked as I felt. The expression on the billionaire's face told me that yes, he was. But as we looked at each other, the lawyer kept on speaking, the words spilling out of him almost seemingly beyond his control.

"It all started so small," Zinn went on, no longer looking at us. He instead seemed to be gazing off into the middle distance, looking back into a hazy memory that had soured in the time since. "I just needed a few extra dollars, just enough for me to cover until my next payday. It was nothing, and I promised that I would pay it back in." He looked up imploringly at us. "No one would even know that it was missing!"

"But it didn't stay at just a few dollars," he continued, his gaze turning inward. "The next time, I needed a few dollars more. And again, I promised that I'd put it back. But by the time I knew that I was lying to myself, that I had taken out too much to pay back, well, I didn't have any choice to keep going."

"But then you jumped to murder!" I cut in, astonishing even myself at my bravery to confront the man.

Zinn looked up at me with eyes that didn't seem to actually be seeing anything but his own choices. "I just wanted him to stop!" he wailed back at me. "He insisted that I had to tell everyone, and I just wanted him to stop!"

"So you hit him," I said, not wanting him to stop confessing.

The man nodded, looking down at his hands. "There was a bookend, right there," he reflected. "I just wanted him to be quiet, to maybe knock him out so that I could think! I didn't mean to kill him! I didn't know that he would just crumple like that!"

I stood back, feeling satisfied. I had done it! This was a real confession, right in the interrogation room of the police station! But next to ZInn, Roman was looking aghast. He turned to Zinn, his eyes wide.

"Zinn, you could have just told me!" he blurted out. "You could have come to me, explained your situation, and I would have helped! I thought we were friends!"

"Yeah, some friends," the lawyer snorted back. "You with all your wealth, flaunting it around! Showing how much better you are than anyone else, jetting in, fixing things, using your money to pick up women like her!" His arm stabbed out, his finger pointing at me. "You just like using your money to be better, that's all!"

Roman leaned back, his eyes growing even wider at the vitriol in the lawyer's voice. He looked blindsided, as though he'd never expected such a backlash.

The detective rose up from her seat next to me, her chair clattering as it scraped backwards across the hard floor. "I think we've heard enough, here," she spoke up, her voice still cool and calm. "Mr. Wayland, given the evidence that we've heard here, I see no issue in releasing you. Instead, we will be taking Mr. Zinner into custody immediately."

As the detective walked around to behind Roman, reaching down to grab at Zinn's arms, I had to hold back a sudden, almost ludicrous urge to jump up and cheer. I had done it! I had secured the billionaire's freedom, proven his innocence! He had been right all along to put his faith in me - I hadn't failed him!

For the next few minutes, the room became a scene of chaos, as other officers came in to haul out Zinn, and a middle-aged man with an impressive salt-and-pepper mustache came in to speak with the detective. They were lost in some discussion of drafting confession and witness agreements, and I had no idea what any of it meant.

So instead, I just drew closer to Roman, sidling over until I was standing just beside where he still sat in his chair. Roman still appeared to be a bit stunned by the most recent events that had transpired. He was looking down at the table, not rising up from his seat. To my amazement, he actually seemed lost, thrown off balance by this most recent revelation.

I reached down and ran my hand over his shoulder, rubbing at his tense muscles. "Hey," I called down in a softer voice. "Are you okay?"

The man turned to look up at me, and I could see the conflict in his eyes. "I... I wasn't expecting that," he replied, also speaking in an undertone. "I didn't want to think that any of my employees was responsible for what happened, but Zinn? I still can't quite believe it."

Nodding, I rubbed my hand back and forth along his shoulder. For once, I wasn't thinking about him in a romantic setting. Instead, I tried to consider how I would feel if one of my closest friends ended up betraying me like this. Just the idea of it happening opened up a pit in my stomach. I couldn't even begin to imagine how shaken up Roman must feel.

The man seemed not to mind my hand on his shoulder, however. After a minute, he leaned in towards me, seeming to draw comfort from my close presence. I felt his soft hair rubbing against my wrist as he leaned on me, and I couldn't stop a little smile from appearing on my face. It was the little touches like this that really showed me that he cared, that he thought of me as more than just a secretary or assistant.

And besides, I had done it!

I had come through, in the end! I'd proved that I could be capable, that I was smart - and in the end, I had almost single-handedly brought about the arrest and confession of a murderer! If that wasn't amazing, I didn't know what was.

I don't know how long we stayed together like that, my hand on Roman's shoulder as he leaned against me. I felt my heartbeat synchronize with his, both of our heart rhythms calming down each other. But time seemed to drift away as we found comfort from each other.

After a while, the female detective, who had stepped out of the room following close behind the mustachioed middle-aged man, came filing back in. She glanced across the table at us, her eyebrows raising up slightly in surprise.

"What are you two still doing here?" she asked. "You know, we do have other crimes, and we sometimes like to use this interrogation room for other purposes besides your case." She sounded like she was somewhere in between irritated and amused.

I glanced down at Roman, who looked just as surprised as I felt. "We can leave?" I asked the detective. "I thought that we'd need to stay here, answer more questions!"

The woman shrugged. "I suppose that I need a statement from you, still," she said, directing her gaze towards me. "But Mr. Wayland? You're all set here. Now that you've been cleared, we have no further questions for you."

"However, we will be following up," she added as Roman let out a sigh of relief. "Obviously, we're going to need to take a deeper look into Panther Worldwide's finances in order to figure out the extent of the embezzlement, but we will contact you when we are ready."

Roman rose up from his seat. "Thank you," he said to the detective in a grave tone. "Seriously, thank you for your time."

I watched as he stood up, momentarily feeling a pang of loss. Was I going to lose him already? What if he just walked out, went back to his business, and was out of my life?

As if he could read my thoughts, however, Roman turned around and, for just a second, held my hand lightly in his fingers. "I'll be waiting for you," he whispered under his breath, before letting go of me.

He'd be waiting? What did that mean?

But before I could ask for clarification, Roman slipped easily out of the room. I was left alone in the room with only the female detective; I suddenly became aware of just how quiet it now was.

I cast one last glance after Roman, almost wishing that he'd stick around. But no, it was now just the two of us. Not quite how I had hoped things would end up.

"So," the detective began, opening up her folder on the table once again and looking through her papers. "Let's start at the beginning. Tell me about this party that both you and Mr. Wayland attended..."