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“Speak now if there is anything else to be added,” the judge’s voice controlled the room, “or the sentence will be stated.”
The court held its breath. The room didn’t dare move. Every figure in the building kept their mouth glued shut, their eyes trailing between the defendant and the judge. The judge was scanning the room, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the person on trial.
No one had anything else to add. The proof was there. The crime was clear as day.
The judge cleared their throat, breaking the uneven silence before shuffling their papers together. “If no one has anything else to add, then the proceeding is as follows. Wilbur Soot, by unanimous will of the jury, you have been found guilty of four accounts of arson, three accounts of theft, and first-degree murder.” The judge paused if only briefly to look back at the person in orange. “I sentence you to life in prison.”
The gavel hit the block, and that was that.
The tape ended there, with the courtroom going up in a flurry of shouts and cheers, all having to be quickly silenced by the officers stationed around. Phil paused the tape just for a moment to study the caught expression of the defendant, which was empty, devoid of life.
And too young .
He had known that before he picked up the case file. He knew that Wilbur Soot was just months away from turning eighteen when he was sentenced to life. He had caught the way the judge looked at the boy when he was up on the stand. There was no doubt that he was guilty, but there was always that little bit inside of a person that whispered what were you thinking?
The motive behind the matter had never been found. Phil intended to change that.
It was quite the process, even for someone like him, to get inside the prison building, let alone get a meeting with a high-security prisoner. But he had done it. His months of work and preparation, his notebook filled to the brim with research and questions, and he was finally going to be in the room with the man who did it.
It had taken longer than Phil expected to investigate it all. Wilbur was almost nineteen now.
“Officer Watson,” one of the guards greeted him with a smile as Phil pushed open the visiting doors with a flash of his badge. “Today’s the day?”
“Been waiting for this for a while,” Phil nodded to Sam, someone who had been helping him through the process. Phil got led through several hallways, searched, and stripped of his weapons, but he did it all with a smile.
“Soot has also been wary of it since he agreed,” the man hummed. “More standoffish than usual. Eating less. I’m getting worried.”
“I’ll take it easy on him,” Phil joked, and Sam nodded with a chuckle. “He’s got nothing to worry about, and I’ll make that as clear as day.”
Sam opened a plain door with so many bolts on the outside it was almost humorous. It was an interrogation room, which made Phil’s stomach flip. He would have liked somewhere cozier, but there weren’t many places in the prison that wouldn’t pose a risk to those inside if someone were to get a hold of something they weren’t supposed to.
“I’ll be behind the glass and recording,” Sam told him as Phil stepped in. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m sure you can handle anything that comes your way though, yeah?”
Phil chuckled. “I sure hope so, mate.”
Sam gave him a casual two-fingered salute and shut the door behind him. The locks clicked all together, and Phil gave himself a second to breathe before he settled into one of the chairs.
“Are you ready for him, officer? ” Sam asked through the speakers. Phil could only nod, and it wasn’t much later that a separate door to the room opened, and in came Soot.
Phil had only seen him in tapes and pictures, and all of them had been before his sentence had gone through. He only looked a little different, his hair a bit shorter, his expression a little tighter. He was set into the chair, one of his hands locked to the table, but from there the guards left, and Wilbur Soot looked up at Phil.
Phil did his best to smile, but his heart was pounding. This had been worth months of preparation, and he only had an hour.
“Hi, mate,” he greeted casually. “I’m Officer Watson, but just Phil is fine.”
Wilbur didn’t answer, just nodding slightly as he looked down at his hands.
“I’ve been looking through your case for a while now,” Phil continued with a bit of hesitancy. “At your trial, you never presented an alibi, but you stated later that you only pled not guilty to allow the detectives to continue a full investigation. My real mission has been trying to find your motive for doing each of the crimes you were found guilty of.” Phil cleared his throat. “Does that make sense?”
Wilbur nodded again, not looking up.
“I’m going to ask you some questions about your life before all this.” Phil let a breath pass through his system. “If you can’t answer honestly, I would prefer that you don’t answer at all rather than lie to me. I’m only doing this to try and understand you better, and I can’t help you if you tell me things that aren’t true.”
Wilbur didn’t nod that time. He pursed his lips together and glared at the table. He opened his mouth for a moment and closed it not even a second later.
“If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them,” Phil prompted.
He was biting the inside of his cheek, concentrating, before he spoke. “Why bother?” He started quietly. “What’s the point of learning my motive?”
Phil’s heart began to break down the middle.
“First of all, it’s protocol,” Phil explained. “Knowing the motive can lead to the prevention of things like this in the future. We’re always trying to make ourselves better at things like this.” He sighed. “And it was hard to ignore that, despite you being tried as one, you weren’t an adult when it all happened. Losing everything before you even have true freedom is tragic. If there’s something that motive can add to the case, maybe your conditions can be adjusted.”
That got his attention quickly, eyes shooting up and expression filled with moderate disbelief.
“You mean… my sentence?”
“Yes,” Phil smiled softly. “A motive can separate premeditated murder from self-defense.”
Wilbur’s shoulders dropped again. “It wasn’t self-defense,” he muttered, looking away.
Phil swallowed down a heavy feeling in his throat before flipping open his notebook. “Let’s get started, then.” He cleared his throat only to reset his mind. “We’ll start simple. Those accounts of theft were on breaking and entering charges, where you targeted three private homes in separate areas, stealing valuables, money, certain appliances, and pieces of technology. Does that sound right to you?” Wilbur nodded. “Then I’ll ask it simply. Why did you steal them?”
Wilbur didn’t answer immediately. His eye was twitching, and his leg was shaking anxiously. Phil tried not to pressure him, but he wanted to take down any tells. Why was he so nervous about this? He was already in prison for life, there was nothing more he could lose.
Wilbur closed his eyes for a second. “Those weren’t the only things I stole.”
Out of all of the answers Phil could have gotten, he wasn’t expecting that one. He flipped to a separate page in his notebook. “What else did you take?”
“Files,” he answered quickly but hesitated before elaborating. “I was looking for– for something specific, and I knew I wasn’t going to get in and out without them knowing. I took other things to cover it up. Things that looked expensive or-” he swallowed. “Things I could use.”
Phil had thought about the last part. Wilbur had been emancipated from the foster system at sixteen, and the apartment he had been living in was bare when the police went to investigate it. Almost every appliance you would find in a typical home, like handheld vacuums, pots and pans, and a printer, had all been stolen.
“What was in the files that you took?” Phil continued to write. “And where would these be?”
“The files are gone,” he spoke quietly. “I burned them.”
Phil’s eyes trailed to the paper that detailed the arsons. Each time they had been set up in a room with a rug after breaking and entering, each reported being kindled by miscellaneous sheets of paper thrown in from the owners’ file cabinet. Three private properties and the filing room of a Child Protection Services building were where they took place.
“Does your burning of the files connect to your arsons?”
Wilbur nodded again, and Phil wrote it down swiftly.
“Can you tell me what was in those files?” Phil asked again. He wouldn’t be getting a real motive if he didn’t know what the documents contained.
But Wilbur stayed silent, his mouth shut, his eyes trailing over to the one-way mirror on the wall like he was trying to make eye contact with whoever was on the other side.
Phil didn’t have time to waste. He continued. “Why did you end up targeting a CPS building? Does it have something to do with your relationship with the foster system?”
To Phil’s surprise, Wilbur scoffed. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.”
“Anything specific?” Phil prompted on.
Wilbur’s half-faked smile dropped. “Yes.”
Phil waited. “And that is…?”
“I’m not fucking telling you that.”
Blunt, but at least he didn’t try to lie. Phil nodded without any more than an internal sigh. Soot was being way more cooperative than he had originally thought, so he couldn’t take every dismissal as a barrier. Just another path he had to uncover.
“Tell me about Dream Wastaken,” Phil said carefully. He didn’t miss the way Wilbur’s hand rolled into a fist. “No one who knew him ever remembered him talking about or meeting with you, nor did he seem to have any contact with you at all. How did you know him, and why did you decide to kill him?”
Wilbur’s nails were probably denting the table from how hard he gripped its edge.
“I didn’t know him,” he said quietly, though his voice was strained like he was trying his best not to yell. “I knew his name. I looked for him for years . First legally, like online and through libraries, but no one was going to help some fifteen-year-old kid try to find this person they had never met before and had no business meeting. Finally, I just snapped -” he cut himself off with a heavy breath in. “And I broke into houses to try and find things. I stalked and I eavesdropped and I covered up my tracks as best as I could. And I was so scared of being found out, Phil,” Wilbur addressed him, but he was looking far past him. “But when I finally found the fucker, I just couldn’t stop. People heard the yelling, and I just couldn’t run. I didn’t fucking care. He was dead, and I had done the only thing I ever wanted to.”
Phil really hoped that the device was recording. His head was swimming with new information, and he was itching to connect the dots.
“
Why
, Wilbur?” Phil pushed. “Why did you kill him?”
Wilbur’s hands were shaking, and his eyes were squeezed shut, but he spoke in the calmest voice Phil had heard the whole session.
“Dream used to foster,” Wilbur said, flexing his fingers. “Years ago. I was ten. He was fostering a little boy named Tommy Innet- he was seven. I was in a group home with Tommy, we used to joke that we adopted each other.” Wilbur chuckled, there was nothing warm in his voice. “We were brothers, and we tried everything to keep the system from separating us, but they never fucking listened. Tommy went off to his new foster home with Dream.” Wilbur pulled his fingers away from the table. There were crescent moon-shaped dents on the surface. “We wrote letters to each other. Tommy would send me stamps because I was never allowed to take them from the group home. He complained about Dream all the time, said he was the worst with kids and never should have ever fostered anyone. And Tommy, I knew Tommy, he was a spitfire.” Wilbur smiled as if reliving a memory. “Tommy wrote to me one time, said he was trying to get Dream to send him back. I wrote him back saying how I would try to get him back too.” Wilbur took in a shaking breath. “I never heard from him again.”
Phil wasn’t even writing it down anymore. He was staring blankly, trying to put the pieces together.
“What… happened?”
Wilbur laughed softly, but it was cold, hollow. “The story is that Tommy ran away. There was a whole investigation, he was reported missing. No one found him.” Wilbur’s smile grew, Phil was certain that this kid had lost his mind. This was not the person that had walked into the room with him minutes before. “I know Dream killed him. Tommy said that he had threatened to before. I wasn’t allowed to go to the police about my letters, the home said I’d faked them. They burned them when I threatened to run to the nearest station myself. Who would believe the word of an eleven-year-old, right?”
The files, the arson, the murder. They all connected back to finding Dream, and the missing poster of a little blond-haired boy.
“So I tracked him down myself, and I killed him,” Wilbur leaned back in his chair. “I don’t regret it for a second. That was my brother, and I promised before that if anyone dared to touch him they would die.”
And they did.
“Are we done?” Wilbur asked after a long bout of silence. “I don’t have anything else. That’s why I did it.”
Phil swallowed down his horror in order to attempt at keeping a straight face. “One last question, alright?” Wilbur hummed a confirmation. “Why didn’t you bring this up in court?”
“It would have been pleading guilty.” Wilbur glanced off to the side. “And if Dream wasn’t guilty, why should I be?”
Phil didn’t have the stomach for any more questions. He thanked Wilbur for his cooperation, to which he only shrugged and left with the guards who marched him back to his cell. Phil got up and left after gathering his things. He and Sam could only share horrified looks at each other’s pale faces.
As soon as he was outside the prison, he flipped out his phone and pressed the first contact.
“ Hello? ”
“Tech, I need you to open an investigation,” Phil said as he got into his car, the door slamming shut.
Techno sighed, “ On who? ”
“A dead man,” Phil answered. “And the child he might have killed.”