The interview room smelled of stale coffee and disinfectant, a combination that Detective Zara Matheson had long ago come to associate with the hours between midnight and dawn, when the world outside shrank to the dimensions of a fluorescent-lit box and the truth became something malleable, something that could be shaped by the right question asked at the right time. She stood behind the one-way glass, studying the man on the other side.
Alden Webb had not moved in seventeen minutes. His hands remained flat on the table, palms down, fingers spread slightly as if he were trying to anchor himself to the cold metal surface. His breathing was shallow but steady. His eyes, fixed on the mirror, were the eyes of a man who knew he was being watched and had accepted it, the way a specimen under a microscope accepts the gaze of the scientist. He was not what Zara had expected. The crime scene photographs from the Mirror Killer investigation had always suggested a perpetrator of calculated cruelty, someone who took pleasure in the elaborate staging of his victims. The man in the interview room looked like he would flinch at a slammed door.
"You've been staring at him for almost twenty minutes," said Detective Ronan Cross, settling into the chair beside her with a paper cup of vending machine coffee. Cross was a veteran of the Port Ashton Sheriff's Department, a broad-shouldered man with a graying beard and the weary eyes of someone who had spent thirty years watching people lie to him. "What's your read?"
Zara didn't answer immediately. She was still processing the evidence bag sitting on the table in the adjacent room, the one that held the lace fragment. The lab had already confirmed the preliminary match: same textile pattern, same blood type, same unique wear patterns along the edges. The evidence was strong enough to hold Webb for seventy-two hours while they built a case. But something about the whole situation felt off, like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces had been forced into the wrong positions.
"He's terrified," she said finally. "But not of us. He's terrified of something inside his own head."
Cross grunted. "Or he's a hell of an actor. The real smart ones, they don't play tough. They play confused. Makes the jury feel sorry for them."
Zara had considered that possibility. She had spent twelve years working homicides, first in the city and then out here in the coastal counties, and she had learned that the most dangerous predators were often the ones who seemed the most harmless. But there was something in Alden Webb's posture that didn't fit the profile of a man feigning vulnerability. His trembling wasn't the calculated tremor of a con artist. It was the involuntary shudder of a frightened animal.
"I'm going in," she said.
She entered the interview room without preamble, carrying two cups of coffee. She set one in front of Alden and kept the other for herself, taking the chair opposite him. The mirror gleamed behind her shoulder, a dark reminder that every word would be recorded, every gesture cataloged.
"Mr. Webb, my name is Detective Matheson. I'm with the Major Crimes Unit. I have some questions for you about the item we found in your vehicle tonight. But before we get to that, I want to make sure you understand your rights. You've already been read the Miranda warning, is that correct?"
Alden nodded, his eyes finally shifting from the mirror to her face. Up close, he looked even more fragile. His irises were a pale, watery blue, the color of old ice, and there were dark crescents beneath them that spoke of chronic insomnia. "I understand my rights," he said. His voice was soft but clear. "I don't want a lawyer. I want to help. I want to understand what's happening."
"Okay." Zara opened the folder she had brought with her, spreading several photographs across the table. They were crime scene images from the Mirror Killer investigation, carefully selected to avoid the most graphic details but still unmistakably disturbing. The bodies. The mirrors. The scraps of white lace. "Do you recognize any of these images, Mr. Webb?"
Alden looked down at the photographs, and his reaction was immediate and visceral. His face went pale, then flushed, and his hands flew to his mouth as if he were about to be sick. "Oh God," he whispered. "Oh God, those are the Mirror cases. The Mirror Killer. I remember those from the news. I remember my mother talking about them when I was a child. But why are you showing me these? Why would I know anything about these?"
"Because the lace we found in your trunk tonight matches the lace left at those crime scenes," Zara said. She kept her voice level, watching his face intently. "It's not a similar piece. It's not a copy. According to our textile expert, it's from the same bolt of fabric. The same batch. The same manufacturing run that was discontinued in 1994. So I need you to tell me, Mr. Webb, how a piece of evidence from a sixteen-year-old serial murder investigation ended up in the trunk of your car."
The color drained from Alden's face again, and for a moment Zara thought he might actually faint. He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles white, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. "I don't know," he said. "I swear to God, I don't know. I don't remember putting it there. I don't remember seeing it before tonight. I don't remember anything."
"Let's start with something simpler, then. Where were you last night, between the hours of ten PM and two AM?"
A strange expression flickered across Alden's face, something between confusion and dawning horror. "Last night," he repeated. "Last night I was driving. I remember driving. There was music playing, an old song, something my mother used to listen to. And there were headlights behind me, but they never got closer, they just stayed there in my mirror like they were following me. And then I was on County Road 17, and the police lights were behind me, and I was pulling over. But everything in between, everything between the headlights and the police lights, it's just blank. It's like someone took a pair of scissors and cut that part out of my memory."
Zara exchanged a glance with the mirror, knowing that Cross was on the other side, taking notes. "Mr. Webb, do you have any history of blackouts? Any medical conditions that might affect your memory?"
"I've had episodes," Alden admitted. "Ever since I was a teenager. The doctors called them dissociative fugues. I would lose time, sometimes hours, sometimes whole days. I'd come back to myself in places I didn't recognize, wearing clothes I didn't remember putting on. But it's been years since the last one. I thought I was better. I thought it was over."
Zara studied him carefully. Dissociative fugue was a real condition, rare but documented, often associated with severe trauma. It could explain the gaps in his memory. It could even explain how a piece of evidence might end up in his possession without his conscious knowledge. But it could just as easily be a convenient excuse, a ready-made defense for a man who had finally been caught.
"You said you were driving last night," she continued. "Where were you going?"
"I don't remember." The admission came out like a confession, weighted with something that sounded almost like guilt. "I remember leaving work. I work at the Whitmarsh Rendering Plant, the night shift. I clocked out at nine-thirty. I got in my car. And then the next thing I remember is the headlights in my mirror, and the music, and the police lights. I know how it sounds. I know you don't believe me. But I'm telling you the truth."
Zara leaned back in her chair, processing the information. The Whitmarsh Rendering Plant was on the north side of the county, a forty-minute drive from the spot where Haskett had pulled him over. That left nearly two hours unaccounted for. Two hours that coincided almost exactly with the time of death for the body that had been discovered that morning at Whitmarsh Pier.
"Did you know that a woman was found dead this morning at Whitmarsh Pier?" she asked, watching for his reaction. "She was posed on a large mirror. There was a piece of white lace draped across her throat. The media hasn't released those details yet, so the only people who know about them are my team and the killer."
Alden's face went slack. The trembling in his hands intensified until the handcuffs rattled against the metal table. "No," he breathed. "No, no, no. That's not possible. I didn't hurt anyone. I would never hurt anyone. I'm not a violent person. I'm not."
"Then help me understand, Mr. Webb. Help me fill in those missing hours. What's the last thing you remember before the headlights?"
He closed his eyes, and when he spoke again, his voice had taken on a distant, dreamlike quality. "There was a song playing on the radio. An old song. My mother used to sing it to me when I was a child, when I couldn't sleep. It was about a mirror, and a lullaby, and someone watching from the other side of the glass. She used to tell me that the person in the mirror wasn't really me. She said it was my twin, my shadow self, and that one day we would trade places, and no one would ever know the difference."
Zara felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. "Your mother told you that?"
"She wasn't well," Alden said quietly. "She had episodes too. The doctors said it ran in families, the dissociation, the fugues. She was institutionalized when I was twelve. She died there, three years later. They said she stopped eating. They said she just gave up. But I always wondered if maybe her shadow self finally took over, and she couldn't find her way back."
The interview room fell silent. Zara looked at the man across the table, at his trembling hands and his hollow eyes, and she felt the first stirring of something she had not expected to feel: doubt. Not doubt about the evidence, which was damning and concrete, but doubt about the narrative that the evidence seemed to suggest. There was something else at work here, something beneath the surface of the facts, and she could not shake the feeling that Alden Webb was as much a mystery to himself as he was to her.
"I'm going to give you some time to rest," she said, standing. "But I'm going to need you to think hard about those missing hours. Every detail, no matter how small, could be important. Even if it doesn't make sense. Even if it feels like a dream. Can you do that for me?"
Alden nodded, but his eyes had gone distant again, fixed on some point beyond the walls of the room. "There was a house," he said suddenly. "I don't know if it was real or if I dreamed it. But I remember a house with a green door, and a staircase that went down instead of up, and a mirror at the bottom that was covered with a white sheet. And someone was waiting for me there. Someone who knew my name."
Zara stopped with her hand on the door. "Who was waiting for you, Alden?"
He looked up at her, and for the first time since she had entered the room, his eyes were clear and focused. "I think it was me," he whispered. "The other me. The one my mother promised would come."
She left the room with his words echoing in her head. Cross was waiting in the observation room, his face grave.
"We ran his employment records," Cross said without preamble. "He's been at the rendering plant for six years. Never missed a shift. Never been disciplined. His coworkers describe him as quiet, reliable, a little odd but harmless. His landlord says he pays his rent on time and never causes trouble. By all accounts, Alden Webb is a model citizen."
"Then how does a model citizen end up with a piece of evidence from a serial murder investigation in his trunk?"
"That's the other thing," Cross said, handing her a printout. "We pulled his medical records. He wasn't lying about the dissociative fugues. He was diagnosed at seventeen, after he disappeared for three days and turned up in a neighboring state with no memory of how he got there. The doctors noted a history of severe childhood trauma, possibly related to his mother's mental illness and eventual death. They recommended long-term therapy, but he stopped attending sessions about five years ago."
Zara scanned the records, her unease growing. "What about the car? The registration?"
"Registered to Alden Jasper Webb, Grenfell Row, Port Ashton. But here's where it gets interesting. The vehicle's previous owner was a man named Corwin Thorne. Died in 1995. And Thorne's name appears in the original Mirror Killer task force files as a person of interest. He was interviewed twice, but they never had enough evidence to charge him."
The name hit Zara like a physical blow. Corwin Thorne. She had read about him in the old case files, a reclusive collector of antique mirrors who had been flagged by the original investigation because of his proximity to several of the crime scenes. He had died of a heart attack before the task force could build a case against him, and his death had been one of the factors that led to the case going cold.
"If Thorne was the original killer," she said slowly, "and his car ended up in Webb's possession sixteen years later, with a piece of evidence still hidden inside it, then either Webb bought a car that happened to contain a serial killer's trophy and never noticed it, or..."
"Or Alden Webb is connected to Corwin Thorne in a way that we haven't uncovered yet," Cross finished. "And given the timing of the new murder at Whitmarsh Pier, I don't think we can afford to believe in coincidences."
Zara looked back through the glass at Alden Webb, who had lowered his head onto his folded arms and appeared to be sleeping. A man with no memory of his own actions, driving a dead suspect's car, carrying evidence from a sixteen-year-old crime scene. It was either the most elaborate frame job she had ever seen, or the beginning of something far darker than a simple murder investigation.
"Get me everything you can find on Corwin Thorne," she said. "And find out who that car was registered to before Webb. I want the complete ownership history. There's a connection here, and until we find it, we're missing the whole picture."
Outside the observation room, dawn was beginning to break over Port Ashton, a pale gray light that seeped through the windows and made the fluorescent bulbs seem harsher by comparison. In the distance, the Whitmarsh River moved slowly toward the sea, carrying with it the secrets of a county that had spent sixteen years trying to forget.
But some secrets, Zara knew, refused to stay buried. Some secrets waited patiently in the dark, behind locked doors and covered mirrors, for someone to finally ask the right questions. And somewhere in the labyrinth of Alden Webb's fractured memory, the answers were waiting, too, if only she could find them before the shadow self he spoke of decided to make its next move.
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