“We’re looking for Stefon Scott,” Avery said.
The woman—barely a woman at all from the looks of it, maybe twenty-one at most—rolled her eyes. “Who’s asking?”
“Detective Avery Black and Officer Courtney Kellaway. Is he home?”
The girl nodded and took a slow step back. “What’s this about?” she asked.
“For your sake,” Avery said, “I hope it’s none of your business. Now, where is he?”
“Still asleep,” the girl said.
“It’s three in the afternoon,” Kellaway pointed out.
“We were out really late,” the girl said. “And Stefon has been depressed as hell ever since he lost his job. He sleeps a lot.”
“I need you to wake him up,” Avery said sternly.
“Yeah, okay. Go on and have a seat in the living room,” the girl said as she closed the door behind them.
As the girl walked down the small hallway to a bedroom in the back of the house, Avery and Kellaway moved to the living room. It sat right off of the tiny foyer, not quite in a shambles but in need of straightening up. There were books scattered everywhere, as well as printed sheets of paper all over the small coffee table. Avery checked a few of the sheets. Some were for guitar tablature; a few looked to be the beginnings of articles about spiders that Stefon had been trying to write.
“Detective Black,” Kellaway said.
Avery looked to the other side of the room where Kellaway was observing something sitting by the side of the couch. As she joined Kellaway, she saw that it was a large glass case, most of which was covered by a black sheet. Kellaway slowly lifted the portion of the sheet that was covering the side facing them.
Three spiders sat inside the case. Avery was by no means a spider expert but she thought they were tarantulas—and if not tarantulas, then some variety that very closely resembled them. Two of the spiders were motionless while the third was scurrying away from the sudden movement of the sheet.
Behind them, Stefon Scott slowly walked into the room, clearly still half-asleep. “Those are tarantula wolf spiders,” he said. “Also known as the lycosa tarantula.”
“And why do you have them?” Avery asked.
He gave a shrug that, for reasons Avery couldn’t quite figure out, pissed her off. “I’ve just always liked spiders. I have a few more in my bedroom. I’ve had at least two as pets since I was twelve years old.”
He sat down on the couch and looked up at both of them. Avery could tell he was aware that things were probably going to get tense. He was trying his best to convince them that he wasn’t bothered by their visit.
“We heard all about your interest in spiders from Donald Johansson,” Avery said.
Stefon nodded slowly, looking to the glass case. “If you’re here with me right now,” he said, “I suppose that’s not all you heard about me.”
“That’s right,” Avery said. “He told us about your relationship with Alfred Lawnbrook. Can I assume you’ve heard what happened to him?”
“Yes,” he said, nearly spitting the word out. “So I guess you’re here to find out why he and I were together, right? I wasn’t…I’m not…shit. I don’t even know. I mean, we weren’t ever really seeing one another, you know. It was just…physical.”
“So then who was the girl that answered the door?” Kellaway asked.
“Just some girl I’ve been seeing the last few weeks. Met her online…a forum for arachnid lovers.”
“Is that how you met Alfred?” Avery asked. She knew this was not how they met based on what Johansson had revealed but she wanted to see how Stefon would respond.
“No. I met him at the butterfly garden at the museum when I was still working there. We hung out once and I found out then and there that he was terrified of spiders. Like terrified. I found that interesting. So we chatted and one thing led to another and within a week or so, he was coming over and spending the night.”
“You said you weren’t seeing one another when he died,” Avery said. “What happened between you?”
“It was a love-hate thing. He hated my spiders, thought I was weird. It freaked him out but I think something about his fear sort of attracted him to me. I think maybe he wanted to get over it or explore it. Or…and not to speak ill of the dead, but I was starting to wonder if his fear of spiders helped things along with he and I. I think knowing there were spiders on my bureau when we were in bed together turned him on. I don’t know.”
“And you were fired from the museum for stealing spiders, correct?”
“Yeah. Not my finest moment.”
Avery was done beating around the bush. She’d already been jerked around by Johansson and she did not intend to let Stefon Scott do the same thing.
“You seem very relaxed and calm,” Avery said. “Do you honestly not understand why we are here?”
“To get information about what happened to Alfred, I guess. But like I said…I hadn’t seen him for a while before he died.”
“You can’t be this na?ve,” Avery said. “You have a fascination with spiders. You even stole them from the museum. You also had a sexual relationship with a recently deceased man who was tortured and killed with spiders…”
“Hold on,” Stefon said. “Wait. You think I killed him?”
“It’s where all the signs are pointing right now,” Avery said. “Look at the situation from where we’re standing. It’s almost paint-by-numbers simple. So I’m going to ask you to come to the precinct with us for some questioning.”
“So because I stole something from work, you think that also puts me in cold-blooded murderer territory?”
“I’m making no such claims at the moment. I just need you to come with us. You can come willingly or we can make it harder than it has to be.”
“First of all,” Stefon said, getting to his feet, “I would have never purposefully hurt Alfred. He had some emotional problems, which I suppose is why he engaged in a gay relationship when he had never even really been in a straight one—even though he swears he’s straight. He just wanted companionship. He was a good guy. I would never have hurt him. Secondly…there’s no way you have any proof that I did it. And without hard proof…really, what can you do?”
“Quite a bit actually,” Avery said.
On cue, Kellaway stepped forward. “Hands behind your back,” she said.
“Fuck you.”
“That was the worst response you could have given,” Avery said. She joined Kellaway and together, they wrestled Stefon to the floor. He fought against them for a few seconds before giving in completely. By the time the cuffs were on him and they had him back to his feet, he was openly crying.
“Clarissa!” Stefon screamed. “Clarissa…they’re taking me! Call someone to help! And feed the spiders!”
Something about the last comment seemed hilarious to Avery but she kept her composure. She and Kellaway hauled Stefon out of the front door and down to the car. As Avery reached back to close the door, she saw the woman who had answered the door—Clarissa, presumably—hurrying toward the commotion. Something about closing the door on her, leaving her there with Stefon’s pet spiders, seemed wrong. It felt like shutting her in her own tomb and Avery could not get the images of Alfred Lawnbrook’s body out of her mind.
The image was still there as they drove toward the precinct with Stefon Scott screaming and crying in the back seat.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As they came upon the precinct, Avery saw the flurry of activity in the parking lot and around the front of the building. New anger rose up in her stomach and she let out a curse under her breath.
“What?” Kellaway asked. “What’s going on?”
“The media,” Avery said. “They’re onto the case. And that’s just going to make it harder from here on out.”