“Mrs. Hobbes, you understand we have to ask you some questions about your husband, don't you?”

“Ex-husband. Please get that right.”

Knox had left the qualifier off intentionally, digging for whatever feeling there was beneath her polished surface. She was skilled at not showing her hand, at keeping up appearances at all costs. Prying information from her would either be futile, or she would give it without a second thought. Sociopaths were hard to predict, even for a trained detective.

“My apologies. Let's begin with your relationship with your ex-husband. How would you characterize it?”

“Necessary.”

Knox almost laughed at her answer, which caught him off-guard. Few people were able to be so blunt with him, and to do it with no pretense of apology was startling. This woman, he thought, was something entirely different from the person he expected.

“That's not a very descriptive answer.”

“How are you supposed to put complex things into simple words?”

“With one word after another.”

She did not appreciate Knox's levity, nor the assumption it contained that she was holding back from him. Her reply was brusque, but honest. A lie, constructed to give him what she thought he wanted to hear, would have been far more complicated.

“We had a relationship typical of people who are no longer together. Some days we didn’t get along, and other days we talked.”

“And what happened on those days?”

“We would fight, as is customary in such cases. Love and hate are not opposites, nor are they mutually exclusive.”

“So it's fair to say you might have wanted him dead.”

“Of course.”

Again, she caught Detective Knox by surprise. Only grand-standers and attention seekers tended to openly admit to such feelings, so her confession struck well outside the bounds of normalcy. Knox wasn't sure what to make of her; whether she was putting on a defiant act, or whether she was incapable of understanding how her words would be construed.

“Really?”

“There were many times I wished for him to be dead, but we know wishes don't come true.”

“But this time they did.”

“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. We don't always know what we wish for until it’s been granted.”

“Did you want your ex-husband dead yesterday?”

She hesitated as she gathered her thoughts. Knox sensed genuine contemplation, having spent enough time lost in his own mind to recognize the signs. It was an open question for her, one whose answer was a matter of fact, not one with an obvious choice if ever asked.

“I can't say for sure. It's possible my subconscious was thinking it.”

“And what exactly was the conscious part of your brain doing instead?”

“Oh, you mean you want to know what my alibi is, don't you?”

“If you would be so kind.”

“But of course. I'm afraid to inform you that, regardless of my intentions towards my dear ex-husband, I couldn't have killed him, if you're thinking such a thing. I was out all evening.”

“Doing what?”

“My new fiancé took me shopping for a wedding ring. We were at the jewelers trying to find the perfect one.”

“And they can corroborate your story?”

“You'll have to ask them.”

“Can you think of anyone else who might want to kill your ex-husband?”

“Absolutely.”

Knox was beginning to ask himself if he hadn't indeed fallen asleep into a lucid dream. He had never questioned anyone who cared so little about the conventions of pretense. Faith Hobbes was a woman unlike any he had ever met, and he was utterly captivated by her. Amongst the pieces of the puzzle he was trying to solve, he had found a second riddle tucked inside, one he might have to decode before the bigger picture would fall into place.

“Who would that be?”

“Our children, Emerson and Tory. They had their own issues with their father.”

This couldn't be real, Knox thought, as he struggled to find his next words. An improbable case deserved a suitably difficult set of characters, and Knox had never come across one quite like her. Detective Lane's words came back to him, that he should maintain faith. He realized Lane had been right, as she had uncovered Knox's optimism. No matter where the investigation led him, Knox had met the most fascinating human enigma he could have imagined.

“We'll be speaking to them next.”

Chapter 7

Crashing Bores

Beads of sweat clung to Detective Lane's brow, holding on in a vain effort not to plunge to the earth. Weighed down by fear and desperation, they were tiny drops of hope pulled from inside him, sentenced to take the fall that plagued mankind from the beginning. His gait was stilted, his body stiff as he tried to understand what he had just heard. Faith Hobbes made no sense to Detective Lane; she struck him as being something other than human. Though not the veteran his partner could claim to be, Detective Lane had been on the job long enough to have seen most of the faces people could wear. She was an entirely original creature.

Detective Knox emerged from the interrogation room in a similar, yet altogether different state of mind. Like his partner, Knox had never seen anyone like Faith Hobbes, but instead of seeing her as an alien creature, he saw her as a salvation. She possessed the very qualities he wished he had; the confidence to throw away the rules of convention and live life with no regrets. Knox envied such a strong belief in herself.

Lane reached for his collar, impeding his airway, momentarily depriving himself of the oxygen needed for thought. As it rushed back into his body when he released his grip, a sense of calm filled him. It was a quirk he picked up, though he couldn't remember how or when. All he knew was that it worked, and it was the only thing that could settle him when the job began to be too much for him. Feeling more at ease, he broke the ice.

“What did we just see in there?”

“I'm not sure. That woman is something else.”

“That's for sure. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be afraid of her or not.”

Detective Knox bit his tongue, fighting the impulse to make the crude joke that flashed through his mind. It wasn't the time or place for such a remark, and by the looks of it, Lane wasn't in shape to let it roll off his back. Part of being a good detective was being able to read people, and Knox's read of his partner told him to press gently.

“So what was your take on her?”

Detective Lane's face told the whole story, a look of bewilderment not unlike that of a child witnessing their first magic trick. His senses told him a story his mind could not believe. He knew it was real, even if he didn't know what it meant.

“Honestly, and I realize this is the last thing a detective should ever say, but I don't have a clue. There's something about that woman that is almost beyond belief.”

“I know what you mean. I've never come across anyone like her before, either.”

Lane's face wore a look of relief as he heard those words. Someone else had seen the same flesh and blood ghost he had. Color returned to his cheeks as he let out his breath, filling his lungs with new air.

“I'm glad to hear it's not just me.”

“Nope, she's one of a kind, all right. I can't quite tell what it means, but she's certainly not your average woman.”

“But is she a murderer?”

“That's the question. I could read her a dozen different ways, and they'd all make sense. It's almost like she's a blank canvas upon which we can project whatever we want to think about her.”

“That could be dangerous.”

“For her, and for us.”

“I just hope the daughter isn't the same way. I don't think I could survive another one of them.”

* * *

Tory Hobbes was not her mother's daughter, not at all the steely, stoic creature she was born from. Unlike her mother, Tory was a free spirit, who let the winds of life push her in whatever direction they chose, not questioning where fate was taking her. Living for the moment was all that mattered to her, and she had set out to squeeze as much experience as possible from the time she had. Nothing was too crazy to try, no thought too mad to consider.