The interview room was the color of nicotine and smelled faintly of microwaved coffee and institutional carpet. A square box, a square table, two square men inside it. On the wall: the little black glass eye of the camera, winking its red light like a sleazy motel sign.
Martin James looked like he’d been sleeping in his clothes for a week, which, in fairness, he had. Shirt creased, skin gray with exhaustion, hair pointing in three contradictory directions. He looked less like a murder suspect than a man who’d mislaid his life somewhere between the bar and the bedroom.
Across from him, Detective Leonard “Len” Doyle: leaning back in his chair as if auditioning for gravitas, eyes bright with that overeager gleam of a man who thinks he’s already got the third act in the bag. The tape machine clicked on, its wheels turning like a bored juror.
“Thanks for coming in,” Len began, soft, avuncular, the voice of a man who’d just as soon sell you a timeshare as accuse you of murder. “You understand we’re just tying up loose ends here.”
Martin nodded, weak smile. “Sure. That’s what I thought this was. She—Janice—she was drinking hard that night, and you know she’d been on Klonopin for years. I figured it was either an accident or maybe… maybe she did it on purpose. Or maybe she hid a prescription from me, I don’t know. Something I didn’t see.”
Len cocked his head like a dog that’s heard the word walkies.
“Mm. People did see you two at the Last Light that evening. Said you were having some trouble.”
Martin blinked. “People noticed? Really? We weren’t talking, that’s true. She was in a mood. She hit the vodka hard at the bar, then harder at home. But trouble? We weren’t fighting, just… silent. You know how it is.”
“Uh-huh.” Len flipped a page of his notebook he hadn’t written in. “So, you get home. You go to your separate rooms. That right?”
“Yeah. Lately that’s how it’s been. I don’t deny it. But I didn’t hear anything. Nothing unusual. I assume she took her pill like always, two milligrams or so. Never more.”
Len let the silence hang for a beat, then slid the knife in sideways.
“Separate rooms, huh? Some people say that started after your… let’s call it your extracurricular year. A woman at the hardware store, wasn’t it? That the reason Janice wanted space? Or was it just easier not to share a bed once the trust went?”
Martin’s head came up sharp, eyes wide. “That was over a year ago. We worked through it. We renewed our vows, for Christ’s sake. That has nothing to do with— with this.”
Len just smiled thinly, tapping his pen against the dead page of his notebook.
And without missing a beat, here it came, the line he’d been rehearsing all week. Len leaned forward, smile twitching, the way a magician smiles just before pulling out the wrong card on purpose.
“See, here's the thing. The lab came back. We had them test the vodka bottle. We found crushed Klonopin inside the neck. A lot of it. Autopsy backs it up, Martin. Elevated benzos in her blood. Off the charts. Ten times what anyone should be taking. That’s not just Janice with a prescription. That’s someone making sure she didn’t wake up.”
Martin’s mouth opened, stayed open. “What....? No. No, that’s crazy. She took them herself, in pill form. She wouldn’t crush them into vodka. She wasn’t like that.”
“Then how’d it get there, Martin? You tell me.”
Martin stared. “You actually tested the vodka? You sent that in? For what? She was already on the meds. Why even look? What are you looking for?”
“We’re looking for what happened. No sign of forced entry. So it’s one of three things: accidental overdose, deliberate overdose, or foul play. Those are the options.”
Martin’s voice cracked. “Foul play? Jesus Christ. I thought I was here to tidy things up. Are you saying I’m a suspect now?”
“Nobody’s saying that.” Len’s tone had the oily calm of a dentist with a drill in hand. “We just need to be thorough. We want to know what happened to Janice.”
“What happened? What happened is she drank herself to sleep and never woke up. That’s what happened.”
Len cut in too fast, like a man who couldn’t hold the punchline. “Autopsy says time of death was around three a.m. That’s when her system gave out.”
Martin shook his head. “What difference does that make? She was dead when I found her. You understand? For me, it was morning. That’s the only time that matters to me.”
Silence. Martin sat with his palms pressed flat against the table, staring at them as if they might explain something. Across from him, Len simply watched, steady, the little red light blinking in the corner — his own private audience, already hungry for the rerun.