Free The Truth Collector by Corey Pemberton Page B

Craig sucked in air but stayed silent.
    “We just want to talk,” Malcolm said. “Ask you a few questions.” The tape recorder was already running, flipped on during their trip across the little beach of trash.
    “Questions,” said Craig. “It always starts with questions.” He jerked his head up and burst out laughing. The sides of his face were sunken into his skull. He still wore his eyeglasses, though the lenses dangled uselessly off his nose like tumors. Malcolm grabbed him by the hair and shoved him back to the ground. Some of the hair clumped into his hand and he flicked it aside, watched it fall on the beach in little white wisps.
    “Jesus,” Paul said. “What happened to you?”
    But Craig didn't answer. He lay on his back in a pool of blood with a smile on his face.
    Malcolm grabbed his face and forced himself to look at it. “You might not answer him, but you're going to answer me, Fielder. Look into my face. Look at me – now .”
    Craig obeyed.
    “Did you kill Eric and Miranda?”
    Craig stayed silent for a moment, considering it. Then the impact of those words spread across his body. It started in his eyes, bulging and twitching, and traveled to his fingers and toes and everything in between. He sobbed as a convulsion took him, shook him and slammed him into the ground. “Miranda is… d-d-dead?”
    Malcolm and Paul looked at each other and nodded at Craig slowly.
    “Dead!” A long, terrible sob closed off whatever he was going to say next.
    Then he shook his head. “You're lying – lying to me just like the voices. I don't believe you.” But he kept crying anyway.
    “Were you over there earlier tonight?” said Malcolm.
    Craig looked at him with wide eyes, his tongue hanging from the corner of his mouth. “Earlier. While the sun was still out. But she isn't dead. I don't believe you. Detective scum.” His eyes went back up into the sky like the truth lived somewhere up there – and he was the only one who could see it.
    Paul leaned forward. “Wait. How'd you know Malcolm was a detective?”
    Craig started laughing without ever taking his eyes off the sky. “Come on. Bad suits. Even worse questions. And no handcuffs. Just another day at the office for Craig Fielder.” He sat up again and twitched like a hospital patient injected with the wrong medication, laughing as it went through his veins.
    “Did you kill her?” Malcolm said. He shoved Fielder's head back down and pinned it.
    Craig's eyes circled in the air. “She isn't dead, you idiot. I was just there. We were supposed to spend some time together. But when I showed up that asshole's truck was in the driveway. He shouldn't have been home. He should have been at work.”
    “Okay,” said Malcolm. “So you're saying Eric killed her?”
    “I'm saying he w as there. She isn't dead. Here. My phone's in my – I can call her. I'll call her right now.”
    Malcolm slapped him across the face. “She is dead. Someone cut her up pretty bad. I asked you a question: was it you?”
    “Cut… her up?” Craig's face went blank for a moment. It took some time to process in his burned out mind. Either that or he refused to believe it. Then the crying started again. “She's dead. She's really dead?”
    “Yeah,” said Paul. “Sorry.”
    Malcolm grabbed Craig's shoulders and stood right above him, blocking out the moon and stars and night sky. “I think you killed her and her husband. Is that true?”
    Craig's lip trembled. “That's… that isn't...”
    “Don't lie to me,” said Malcolm. He held the rock and prepared to smash it on Craig's face. “You already admitted you were there earlier. And I'll have the truth whether you want to give it or not. Did you kill Miranda and her husband? Last chance.”
    They locked eyes and the bloody rock hovered in the air above them. Somewhere up the strand, the sound of drunken laughter filled the silence. Malcolm gritted his teeth and squeezed the rock until his knuckles turned white.
    “I