Private Finished Just A Few Questions

Rafa had only done mock interviews before. Now it was the real thing.

He spoke to some of the other cheerleaders first. Younger ones, the girls who knew Kayla the best. He had seen pictures of her, chased her scent all over the Academy. Cute kid. Reminded Rafa of a crush he had in high school.

He didn't want this to be another murder case. He wanted it to be... to be some kind of runaway, maybe. She could still be alive out there, somewhere, and he clung to that hope. He listened, stoic, to tear-filled descriptions of a pubescent best friend. He had an account of where every one of those girls was that night, what they knew about her relationship with the other students, and it all added up so far.

If this was a murder case - and Rafa hoped to whatever God there might be that it wasn't - then he had three primary suspects . First, there was the ex-boyfriend. They had a nasty breakup, according to the other girls, and he didn't take it very well. Lots of petty teenager stuff. He didn't see it escalating to murder, but it was worth checking out. Second, there was the Mad Doctor. Felix was off investigating the case from that angle. As much as it wrenched Rafa's gut, that was probably the most likely thing. Another life snuffed out by that sick son of a bitch.

Finally, there was Emily Strong. Known murderer, currently undergoing rehabilitation. She was deemed safe enough to return to the school for her education. He studied the files on her, then had an administrator pull her from class to come talk to him. They would whisk her into a borrowed office, and he would be waiting. He was wearing his police uniform - he wasn't a detective like Felix, so he wouldn't be running around in plain clothes like him.

"Hello, Emily. I'm Officer Quinn. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions, but first - would you like a soda? Water? Juice?" He had a small selection of drinks in a cooler that he had brought. A token of good will - and a way to collect fingerprints. An interrogation trick older than time itself.

"Don't worry," he reassured her. "I've talked to most of the other cheerleaders already too, and it didn't take long with them either. I'm here to talk to you about Kayla."

He noticed the white-knuckle grip on her skirt, but he knew not to read too much into that. It could just have to do with the stress of losing a friend. The other girls had tics like that, too. Emily probably thought that he blamed her for Kayla's disappearance. That would be a horrible feeling, especially if she wasn't guilty.

He grabbed his notepad and his pencil from the desk. "My job here today is to learn as much about that day, and about her and the people around her, as I can. If you were rivals or you had gotten into a fight recently, don't worry about that incriminating you. You wouldn't be the only one, and it really does work in your favor if you're up front about that sort of thing. With that said, do you have any questions for me before we get started?"

Once he had finished addressing those, if any, he would move on. "So, tell me about your relationship with Kayla. I know you were on the cheerleading team together. Were you two close? Did you interact much at all outside of cheerleading?"

Raphael hummed and jotted a few notes down. 'like a little sister.' didn't hang out much. He could tell she didn't want to be here, and he didn't blame her.

"Okay. Now, do you know anyone who might want to hurt her? Or did she hang out with anyone particularly 'sketchy' as far as you're aware?" He already had a good sense of this from the other people he'd spoken to. Everyone at this school had a few friends like that, and in this case they were all coming up rather clean. But it never hurt to keep asking.

"Hmm." Raphael jotted that down.

He didn't remember anyone else saying anything like that, but he also didn't know much about this girl's relationship with Kayla. Plus, he wanted it to be true so badly.

"Now, walk me through the day she went missing. Starting with the cheerleading practice. Tell me what happened at practice, then what you did until you went to bed that day, as well as you can remember. And, ah, just so you know. I've been asking pretty much all of your friends this question."

He didn't want her feeling like she needed to get defensive.

"Well," Raphael said, keeping a straight face. "I'm sorry to say that I can't keep that information to myself, ma'am. I have to share it with the detective in charge of this case. We won't tell any of your friends about it, though."

While Raphael jotted down his notes, he was trying very hard not to laugh. Emily's insecurity was incredible to him. She couldn't let anyone know that she ate chicken sandwiches sometimes. The shame would be too much.

"So, about what time did you go to the Chick Fil A? And how did you get there?" He was just being thorough at this point. If he had some way of verifying that she went out to get fast food, that could mean one less suspect for the investigation.

"Ok," Raphael nodded along and jotted down more notes. "When I'm not on the job I don't watch the time very closely either. I'll go with 'after dark.'"

Emily seemed really agitated that she was still here. Her behavior and her body language was running into 'stereoypical teenager' territory. If not for the fact that she was a serious suspect, he would have tried to wrap this up faster.

It was good that she took the portal, anyway. The public transportation system recorded that stuff. They could use that to rule her out if they needed to.

"Now, tell me about your day leading up to the practice. Did you see Kayla at all or talk to her that day? Any classes together? Lunch period?"

Raphael looked over his notes again. He figured he could go ahead and start wrapping this up. There wasn't much else for him to ask about, and he could see that Emily was anxious to leave.

"Alright, then," he said. "So, just to review. Kayla was like a little sister to you, but not a close friend in the usual sense. And the -"

He stopped himself. Something about this didn't add up. Emily might just have to suffer a little bit longer. "Excuse me. You said you didn't hang out a lot with her. But she also told you about this fantasy she had, about running away? Can you tell me a little bit more about that? When do you remember her talking to you about this?"

As badly as he wanted to believe that detail, it didn't smell right. Emily was the only person to mention something like this, yet she claimed she wasn't all that close with her. Why would that be?

Raphael nodded, seemingly placated. It only lasted a moment, until he glanced back at his notes. His wolflike ears twitched.

"That... doesn't quite line up with what you said earlier, Emily. You said that she told you about this fantasy sometimes. Could you clarify for me, about how long you've known about tihs?"

People mis-spoke, sometimes. He tried to ignore the feeling tugging at his gut, that he was catching her in a lie. He wanted this to be true. He would write down the inconsistency in his notes, but he refused to let go of the hope that he could find this girl alive and unharmed.

"Alright."

Raphael wrote that down in his notepad, remarking on the apparent inconsistency in her story.

"Continuing with the review, then. It was a relatively normal day. You had cheerleading practice in the gym because it was cold out. Afterwards you took the portal into town to go have some Chick Fil-A, then you went home, did homework, and slept."

He looked up from his notes and gave Emily an uneasy smile. Then he looked down, wrote a note about her appearing very scared at the end of the interview, and looked up at her again. "Alright. Deep breaths. I'm done hounding you. That's all I needed."

"Yes ma'am."

He would also make note of her terror, once she had left. If she was from the United States or watched a lot of American television, that would be an understandable reaction even if she wasn't guilty. He had learned a little bit about the flaws of their legal system, and how an honest slip-up could mean a literal death sentence. That didn't mean he would ignore her fear.

"Thanks for helping," he added. "And good luck on that exam."