Autopsy of a Mind

Chapter 128: Skipping Over Linear Flow of Time

"Do you think we brought you up here to show you a video?" Nash retorted. 

A small smile played on his lips. He really didn't believe we had evidence. "We don't understand why you went to her house. Are you afraid to tell us that you went over to see her and then came out while she was alive?"

And there it was, the opportunity to say that he had come out of the house but that he had not killed her. I stared at McCain to see if he would take the bait.

"We can work with you there. But I know you went to her house. I saw you in your shirt, walking into the house through the backyard, not talking the cement path but going through the soil and grass," Nash explained passionately.

McCain turned to me for help. He was wide-eyed and caught in the headlight. 

"Why did you go to her house? What did you talk about?"

McCain stared at the wall, thinking about what he should say next. 

If he wasn't so surprised and scared, he might have thought about getting a lawyer. Instead, he persisted and thought about appeasing our curiosity and still getting out of this situation innocent. 

"Maybe my days are slipping. Maybe I thought I was in the house all day." He scrubbed his face. "But I am so sure that I was in the house," he said in a small voice. "Can't you track my phone to see where I was at the time?" he pleaded. 

"Okay," Nash said quickly, not putting emphasis on it. 

"Why did you go to her house?" Nash asked again. 

"I don't even think I went out of the house!" McCain breathed heavily. 

Nash waited patiently, not falling into his panicked state. He didn't give any reassurance.

"But we have footage of you going to a store to buy things," Nash said quickly. "Even if you are not sure, we are sure that you weren't in your house all day."

McCain couldn't bend out of that logic. This part was true. He had gone out of the house and we had video footage to prove that.

"I did go to the store one of these days," he said softly. 

"Do you remember which store you went to?" Nash asked.

"No." McCain shook his head. "I know that the clerk had very broken English, but nothing else."josei

Nash nodded. "Okay. Tell us what time of the day it was."

"I don't know… Early afternoon, maybe?" he said. "I was just driving around, my mind was in turmoil because I couldn't compose the tune for my newest song and I needed some air. I was a little distressed."

"Okay."

"I drove to Maya's home to talk to her," he said. 

"Okay."

"And we were talking for some time when she started freaking out and asked me to leave."

"And did you leave?" Nash asked on cue. 

"Yeah, I left immediately."

"When you say she freaked out. Why did she freak out? What did she do after that? Did she scream at your, throw things… scratch you?" Nash asked. 

My eyes flitted to the scratch on his bicep but I didn't look at it for too long so that McCain didn't get a clue. 

McCain remained silent. 

"You have a scratch on your bicep, so…"

McCain frowned. "No. I scratch myself in my sleep. That's what…" He made a motion of scratching his arm to reinforce his words.

"Okay…" Nash ended the conversation quickly. 

We now knew that there had been some sort of struggle even though Maya couldn't overpower McCain in the situation. She did get a scratch on him. 

"Okay, so where was the conversation taking place?" Nash asked immediately after. "Was it in the living room or dining area? Where was it happening?"

The thing about rapid fire questions was that the suspect didn't get enough time to think through their story and connect the dots. It made them leave out details and gave us leeway to pry and break their story apart. 

"It was in the living room," he said softly. 

"Okay, apart from you and her family, who else would be in the living room in the recent past?" Nash enquired. 

McCain stiffened. "I wasn't… closely in touch with her. I suspect that the guy she was talking to would be there, too."

"So, you remember her freaking out and you came out of the house. Where did you head after that?" I asked. 

"I don't remember exactly where I was, I was distressed about my composition and then the freak-out. But I do know the general area I might have been in. It seemed familiar to me."

"Okay. Where did you stop at?" Nash asked. 

"There is a residential area north of the club I frequent at. I stopped there, I think…" he trailed off. He was animated in his description of the location, probably thankful that we were not asking about the encounter with his wife once again. 

We had already placed him in the murder scene during the time frame at which she was attacked, so that was a noted success. 

"That would be Derrill Avenue that you were on," Nash said profoundly. McCain turned to look at him with wide-eyes. Like he was looking at an omniscient being. 

It was mildly amusing, that I had to admit. 

"So… I started driving north after that." He thought about what to say next.

"What did she tell you when you went into her home?" I asked, turning the conversation back. If he drove north, he went towards the river. The only thing that could mean was that he discarded the weapon there. And we knew that he went to the river because we saw footage of it. "Did she look distressed the moment you came in? Was she bothered about something or someone? Or was she just having a normal conversation with you until something upset her?"

"Do you remember specifically what she said to you?" Nash interjected.

"I don't remember. I just felt something was wrong when I came in…"

"What did she say when you came in?" Nash asked. 

"She said that she was getting late and she needed to get ready. Something like that. I was a little out of it…"

"So she said she was running late for something?" Nash confirmed.

"Yes," McCain said with finality. 

"And… and why did you go to her house in the first place?" Nash prompted. 

"I just… I was driving around and I ended up there. I just went in without thinking much about it."

"Did she say where she was going to or if someone was coming over…" I added in. 

"She said she was going for a meeting with someone about something…" he explained vaguely. "She… like… she wasn't hearing what I was saying. She seemed distressed. And maybe I wasn't talking properly either. I wasn't myself and maybe I freaked her out."

Little by little, nuggets of truth came out of it. It was not the complete image, but it was something. 

"So, how long do you think you were in the house with her for?" Nash asked quickly, not letting him think about an excuse. 

"Less than five minutes. It was a few words and apparently, I said something wrong and she freaked out and threw me out." He sighed. 

"So, when you crossed the railroad tracks, did you go left or right?" Nash changed the conversation back to the escape. 

This was a technique I had learned from Nash, he liked to use it with people who were slowly forming a story in their head. The problem was, they could only tell it like a proper lie if they spoke of it chronologically. If you threw of the linear movement of time and skipped from one thing to the next, it confused the suspect and made them lose track of the story they had been weaving in their mind. 

"I don't remember the railroad tracks." He had now leaned away from the table and had placed his hand across his chest in a defensive position. As he became more confused and trapped in his own story, he would also grow conscious of his slipping control. "Those are a little further up, aren't they? I don't know if I went that far. I had no reason to go there. It's near the hospital, is it not?"

Nash looked mildly surprised that he would bring that up. 

"So, if you went to the left from the railroad, you would read the hospital, wouldn't you?" Ah, what guilt could make one do. McCain had driven past the hospital but his ex-wife was at home bleeding out at that point. We would have already been entering the scene by that point and trying to save her life. 

And he was wondering if it was a good thing if she survived or not. Wondering if he should have saved her or made sure she was dead before he left.