Briggs slammed the door open. “Guard!”
A guard—the one who’d given Agent Sterling and myself a front-row seat to the first half of this show—appeared, disgust barely contained on his face. He went to restrain Redding. “Even if you find the professor in his cabin,” Dean’s father called after him, his voice echoing, surrounded by metal walls, “you won’t find what you’re looking for. The most interesting letters I’ve received, those that show rather remarkable attention to detail—those letters didn’t come from the professor. They came from one of his students.”
The room fell into silence. Lia paused the DVD. I stood up and walked toward the door, my back to Michael and Lia. In the doorway, Agent Sterling calmly met my eyes. She didn’t comment on the contents of the interviews.
Did Dean really brand you? I asked her silently. Did Dean—our Dean—torture you?
She had no answers for me.
“I only caught Redding in one lie.”
I turned back toward Lia, hoping that she’d tell me what I wanted to hear—that Redding had lied about Dean.
“When he told Briggs that he wasn’t interested in anything he had to say—that wasn’t true. He wanted to know everything about Emerson Cole’s murder. He was hungry for the details, which means that he didn’t have them already. Whoever his protégé is, our UNSUB didn’t exactly record the nitty-gritty and send them to his good old sensei.”
“That’s it?” I asked Lia. “Everything else he said was true?”
Lia looked down at the ground. “Everything.”
“That means that he did get some remarkable letters from a student in Fogle’s class,” I said. “To a man like Redding, ‘attention to detail’ probably means some pretty explicit descriptions of violence.”
“And yet,” Michael chimed in, “every student in that class has an alibi.”
“Misdirection.” Lia said the word lightly, but I heard the bite buried in her tone. “You can deceive people without lying. Liars are like magicians: while you’re watching the beautiful assistant, they’re slipping the rabbit out of a sleeve.”
Watching these interviews—particularly the one with Dean—had been almost physically painful. I refused to believe that we’d learned nothing about this case.
“So assume everything about the letters and the professor was the beautiful assistant,” I said. “What’s left? What did we learn?” Other than the fact that Redding claims that Dean tortured Agent Sterling himself.
“Daniel Redding’s emotions are flat.” Michael dangled his legs over the edge of the couch, and I knew that—like me—he was avoiding the elephant in the room. “He doesn’t feel fear, ever. He can feel pleasure, but not happiness. No regret. No remorse. Most of the time, his expression is dominated by more cerebral emotions: self-satisfaction, curiosity, amusement, a desire to twist the knife. He’s calculated, restrained, and the only thing that gets real emotion out of him is Dean.”
My every impression of Dean’s father had been confirmed. Redding was possessive. He’d snapped every time Dean had denied their relationship. He’d done everything he could to make Dean think that they were the same—to separate him from everyone else, starting with Agent Briggs.
“Did Briggs know?” I asked. “About…what Redding said at the end? About Dean?”
I couldn’t put more than that into words.
“He knew.” Agent Sterling spoke for the first time since we’d started watching the videos. Without elaborating, she walked over to Lia, grabbed the remote, and pressed play. A third interview started a moment later.
A guard—one I’d never seen before—escorted Sterling into the room. Instead of taking a seat across from Redding, she remained standing.
“Veronica Sterling.” Dean’s father said those words like the beginning of some kind of incantation. “I have to say, I’m surprised your dearest husband—excuse me, ex-husband—allowed you in such close quarters with the devil incarnate.”
Sterling shrugged. “You’re just a man. A pathetic little man living in a cage.”
“Briggs doesn’t know you’re here, does he?” Redding asked. “What about your father? No, he doesn’t know, either, does he? So tell me, Ms. Sterling, why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here.”
“That pesky little case of yours?” Redding said. “I’m afraid I’ve told your Agent Briggs and my Dean everything I know.”
“Liar.” Sterling said the word on the screen at the exact same time that Lia muttered the word beside me.
Redding responded. “I’m hurt—and here I thought we had a very special relationship.”
“Because I’m the one that got away?” Sterling asked. A muscle in Redding’s cheek twitched.