Chapter 15: The Detective's Suspicion
The interrogation room at Miami Metro smelled of industrial disinfectant and stale coffee. Detective Debra Morgan sat across from David Chen, her fingers drumming against a manila folder thick with inconsistencies. Three business cards lay scattered between them like accusations: forensic equipment sales, logistics consulting, tech investment.
Chen sat too still. Most civilians fidgeted in police stations—shifted in uncomfortable chairs, avoided eye contact, sweated through cheap cologne. This guy looked like he was calculating tax returns in his head.
"So," Debra began, voice sharp enough to cut glass, "tell me again why you were at Lila Tournay's fire."
"Dinner. I was having dinner nearby when I saw the smoke."
She flipped through the folder, let the silence stretch until it hurt. "Checked the restaurant receipts. Your story holds up. But these business cards?" She tapped them with her pen. "That's interesting. Three different companies across my notes from the past six months. Which one do you actually work for?"
David's expression didn't change. Not a flicker. "I diversified after the financial crash."
"That crash happened four months ago. You've had these cards for longer."
"I'm a planner."
Debra wanted to arrest him for being smug, but smug wasn't a crime. Yet. "David Chen." She spoke his name like it tasted sour. "You know what I think? I think you're running some kind of con. Multiple identities, fake companies, showing up at crime scenes—"
A knock interrupted her. Quinn stuck his head through the door, expression apologetic. "Detective? Lila Tournay just confessed to the arson. Case closed."
The words hit Debra like ice water. She looked back at David, who was already standing, straightening his jacket with calm precision.
"Am I free to go?"
She nodded once, jaw clenched so tight her teeth ached. David walked past her without hurry, leaving behind only the faint scent of expensive cologne and her own frustrated anger.
"Jesus Christ, Deb. What's your problem?"
Dexter found her in the hallway, pacing like a caged animal. His voice carried an edge she rarely heard—protective, almost territorial.
"My problem? My problem is your friend David Chen is shady as hell, and you're too blind to see it."
Dexter's face went completely still, the expression he wore when dissecting crime scenes. When something dangerous was happening. "David helped us catch an arsonist. What more do you want?"
"I want to know why he has three different business aliases. I want to know how he knew exactly where to look for evidence. I want to know why my gut screams 'liar' every time he opens his mouth."
"Your gut isn't evidence."
Debra stepped closer, studying her brother's face. In fifteen years of working together, she'd never seen him defend a civilian this hard. Never seen him shut down an investigation with such finality.
"What's he got on you, Dex?"
"Nothing. He's a friend."
"Since when do you have friends? Real friends, not work acquaintances or neighbors you tolerate." Her voice rose. "Since when do you defend people you barely know?"
Dexter's eyes went cold—winter blue, like their father's when he was disappointed. "Drop it, Debra. That's not a request."
He walked away, leaving her standing in the empty hallway with the sick realization that David Chen had some kind of hold on her brother. The kind that made a methodical blood analyst abandon logic in favor of loyalty.
She pulled out her phone and dialed a number from memory.
"Angel? It's Debra. I need you to run a deep background check on someone. David Chen, multiple aliases, forensic equipment sales. Yeah, I know the case is closed. Do it anyway."
The coffee shop three blocks from Miami Metro buzzed with lunch-hour energy. Elijah sat in a corner booth, watching condensation form on his untouched iced coffee. The moment Dexter walked through the door, the fading symptoms—the blurred vision, the chest tightness—vanished like switching off a broken television.
One hundred feet. That was the magic number. Close enough to main characters, and the Entity's curse stabilized. Too far, and he started dying by degrees.
Dexter slid into the opposite seat, expression grim. "Your interrogation went well."
"Your sister is persistent."
"She's going to be a problem."
Elijah nodded, already knowing this conversation was coming. "She doesn't trust me. Smart woman."
"Too smart." Dexter leaned forward. "What do you need?"
The question hung between them—professional, transactional. Neither man bothered with pleasantries or friendship. They used each other because it was mutually beneficial, nothing more.
Elijah activated his Probability Assessment silently, paying the cost with money borrowed from Dexter as "expense reimbursement."
Will Debra Morgan uncover my secrets within six months?
34% probability of discovery.
Cost: $4,000.
Not great odds, but not catastrophic either. Still, the trend was moving in the wrong direction. Debra's suspicion was a slow-burning fuse leading to a powder keg.
"I need four thousand dollars," Elijah said. "Information costs. Research expenses."
Dexter reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. Cash, counted and ready. "What kind of information?"
"The kind that keeps us both breathing." Elijah pocketed the money without counting it. "Your sister is going to investigate David Chen's background. She'll find inconsistencies."
"How do you know?"
"Because that's what good detectives do. And she's very good."
Dexter's fingers drummed against the table—a nervous tic Elijah had catalogued weeks ago. "Can you make the inconsistencies go away?"
"Some of them. The rest, I'll need to be creative." Elijah met his eyes. "This is expensive, Dexter. My sources don't work for free."
"Neither do I." Dexter stood. "Handle it. Whatever it costs."
As he walked away, Elijah wondered if Dexter understood the true cost of their arrangement. Not the money—that was just mathematics. The real price was what they were becoming: two predators circling each other, bound by necessity and the shared weight of their secrets.
"Information isn't free. But sometimes ignorance costs even more."
The flight back to Albuquerque was half-empty, filled with business travelers and tourists fleeing Miami's humid embrace. Elijah stared out the window at clouds that looked like cotton balls soaked in blood—the setting sun painting the sky in shades of violence.
His seat neighbor was a young woman with a chemistry textbook spread across her tray table, highlighting passages about molecular bonds and reaction rates. She glanced at him with curious eyes.
"You look stressed. Rough day at work?"
The speech curse stirred in the back of his throat, ready to activate if he came too close to any truth that mattered. "Logistics," he said carefully. "Supply chain management."
"Sounds boring."
Elijah laughed, the sound coming out bitter and sharp. "You have no idea."
The woman returned to her textbook, losing interest. But Elijah continued staring at the pages, at the chemical formulas that would soon play a starring role in Walter White's empire. The irony wasn't lost on him—surrounded by the building blocks of methamphetamine production while flying back to the man who would perfect the process.
His phone buzzed with texts that had been waiting since takeoff:
Walt: Jesse's girlfriend Jane is causing problems.
Walt: She knows about the money.
Walt: Need your assessment ASAP.
Elijah's stomach dropped. Jane Margolis. The name that represented everything wrong with the Entity's game—his foreknowledge was a curse when it came to inevitable tragedies. He could see the train wreck coming but was powerless to prevent it.
"Jane. The canon death I know is coming. And I'm trapped watching it happen because warning them would reveal meta-knowledge that my speech curse won't allow. I'm Cassandra in reverse—cursed to see tragedy and be believed by no one."
The plane touched down in Albuquerque as the last light bled from the desert sky. Elijah collected his carry-on and walked through the terminal, feeling the weight of impossible knowledge pressing down on his shoulders.
Tomorrow, he would meet Jesse's girlfriend and pretend not to know that she was already walking toward her own grave. He would smile and shake her hand and calculate probabilities while his conscience screamed warnings that his voice could never speak.
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