2.2

It’s hard to look at his reflection in the two-way mirror - and he knows that it must be two-way, because a mirror in an interrogation room is so rarely ever just a mirror. Have I lost weight? Were my eyes always so sunken in like that? Landis touches his face, feeling over the stubble on his cheeks like a blind man trying to read Braille. When was the last time I saw myself in a mirror? The contrast between his reflection and the false image of himself he’s been holding in his mind for the past two years is jarring. He traces the dark circles underneath his eyes with the tip of one finger.

“Boy,” Malcolm says, “really screwed the pooch on this one, didn’t you.”

Landis jumps, the legs of his chair screeching against the dirty tile as both of his feet push off on the floor. He twists around to look behind him. Even though he already knows what he’ll see, he feels obligated. Sure enough, Malcolm is there, leaning casually against the back wall with his hands jammed in his pockets.

“I’m honestly surprised they didn’t catch you sooner,” Malcolm goes on. “I mean, you’ve been doing this since, what, ‘96? You had the whole band finished off by the end of ‘98. You think they’ll drag the lake and find all the bodies down there? I bet mine is all bones now. How long does it take for the fish-”

“Shut up, Mal.” Landis turns back to look at the mirror. His reflection is alone. There’s a strange fuzzy shadow on the back wall that would look like television static if he didn’t know better.

The spot moves - Malcolm folding his arms over his chest, maybe. “Whatever.”

The door to the interrogation room swings inwards suddenly, flooding the dim room with harsh, artificial light. Landis looks down at the table. They were watching me through the mirror. To see what I’d do. And they saw me talking to myself, because of course they did.

He looks over his shoulder, and Mal is gone.

“I brought you some water,” the person entering the room says. He’s tall, about as tall as Landis, with mousy brown hair that stands all on end. Not the same officer who arrested Landis. As advertised, he’s holding a styrofoam cup full of water. The nametag clipped to his shirt reads T. ALVAREZ.

“These are for you, too, if you want ‘em.” Officer Alvarez produces a package of Twizzlers and sets it down on the table in front of Landis, next to the small water cup. “Sheriff Maxwell said it was okay, on account of you look like you haven’t eaten in a while.”

Landis licks his chapped lips. The water looks good. It looks clean. He pushes the sleeves of his flannel shirt up to his elbows and takes the styrofoam cup in both hands so he can drink out of it. His fingers are shaking. The sheriff - whoever the sheriff here is - is right. It’s hard to remember the last time he ate a proper meal.

Officer Alvarez sits down at the table, across from Landis. “Do you wanna tell me why you attacked Hettie Paige?”

“I was…confused.” Landis looks up at the clock above the two-way mirror and winces. Four hours to midnight. Cutting it a little closer than usual.

“She said you pulled a knife on her and told her to get into the trunk of your car.”

A boxcutter, not a knife, Landis thinks, but doesn’t bother to correct Officer Alvarez. Instead, he smiles wanly.

“It was a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding?”

Landis nods. “I was holding the box cutter - had just bought it and unpacked it. I asked the girl - what was her name?”

“Hettie Paige.”

“Right. I told Miss Paige to get in the car, so she wouldn’t have to walk in the cold, you know. I guess she misconstrued my meaning and got a little spooked. I didn’t mean to scare her off.”

Landis raises the cup to his mouth again to make himself stop talking. Unchecked, he can just keep going on until he runs a conversation into the ground. It’s not helpful when it comes to lying, and he has to be convincing enough that they’ll let him go without holding him overnight. He needs to be out of here by midnight. Hell or high water.

Officer Alvarez raises his eyebrows. “Miss Paige said you put the knife to her throat and threatened her when she declined your offer.”

“I might have been a little insistent with her, but I never threatened her with any kind of weapon.” Landis sets the cup down and distracts his hands with peeling open the pack of Twizzlers. “I guess I must have intimidated her a little.”

“The convenience store cashier saw you arguing with her in the parking lot and called us.”

“Right. I didn’t mean to cause trouble for anyone.”

“Tell me, Mr. Holliday, what was that you were saying about a lake earlier?” Officer Alvarez’s voice is even, and he’s not even looking up, just scratching down notes in a tiny pad. Landis freezes with a Twizzler halfway to his mouth.

“What?”

“When my partner picked you up, he said you kept muttering something about feeding a lake,” Officer Alvarez says, looking up with interest. “The cashier said she heard you talking about it, too. Do you mind telling me what that’s about?”

Landis runs a hand through his greasy hair. He’s can hear Mal laughing behind him. “I, ah, I live in a house on the lake, about thirty minutes outside of town. I was a little upset because I haven’t been home all day and I need to feed my…dog.”

“We can always send someone down to-”

“No,” Landis says hastily, jolting in his chair. This can’t be happening. Not a peep out of the sheriff department for years while he murders people bi-annually, but he yells at a girl in a parking lot just once and they’re all set to pick apart his entire life. 

They can’t go to the lake. Landis doesn’t know what will happen if they do.

“Mr. Holliday,” Officer Alvarez leans forward, setting his pen and notepad down on the table. “If there’s anything in your house that we should know about, I think you ought to tell me right now. Because if we find out that you’re hiding anything from us, you’re going to be in a whole mess of trouble that I’m sure you don’t want.”

Landis takes the water cup in between his hands again. He’s still shaking, more than before, and it makes the water ripple and slosh around as he stares into it. Maybe he can make this work in his favor. Maybe if a deputy goes out to the lake house, they count as the sacrifice, and the lake will just snatch them up. No throat-slitting or strangling involved. It almost seems like an angle he can work.

He downs the rest of the water before he speaks up again. “Can…I’d like it if you could send someone to my house, actually. At least just to feed my dog.”

“Yeah, of course.” Officer Alvarez’s brightens, his whole posture communicating how glad he is to be cooperated with. Landis gets the idea that maybe Officer Alvarez isn’t the best at intimidating people. “I think Sheriff Maxwell already has an idea of who to send. If you could just write down your address for me…?”

“Sure thing.”

Landis pulls the pen and notepad towards him, flipping to an open page and scrawling on it. Before he gives it to the officer, he flicks his gaze over it to make sure it’s right, but looks away and pushes the pad back across the table when the letters start to shift and rearrange themselves. He isn’t interested in what the lake has to say right now. Not when he’s cooped up in here and can’t do anything about it.

“You really think this will work?” Malcolm asks from behind him, Landis lifts his shoulders almost imperceptibly in a ghost of a shrug.

It might not work. But it’s the only option he has. And if it does work, he almost feels a little sorry for whoever they’re sending to check out the lake.