My first time in the FBI interrogation rooms was unplanned. Special Agent Parker and I had no time to discuss a strategy for our questioning or for me to observe the subject for some time to form a better psychological profile before charging in with our inquiries.

The boy was shaken up enough already from being handcuffed and placed in the back of the Special Agent's Bureau issued vehicle. He had been wide eyed and frantic ever since, professing that whatever this was about, he didn't do it. Parker hadn't said a word to him from the time we'd left the dorm room. I wasn't sure if that was part of protocol or if he was simply trying to formulate a plan before he did.

Now, we sat across from the boy in interrogation room C. Well, I sat and Parker stood at the end of the table, arms crossed and glaring down at the suspect. I said nothing. Parker was the one with experience in interrogations. It was better for me to observe for a time before I said anything myself. I knew there were potentially other people on the other side of the mirror to my left. I wasn't sure who they were or what they might be doing but the inability to see them had a marked effect on making the people in this room slightly more uncomfortable. The feeling of being watched always did well to heighten a sense of unease.

"Look man, I don't know what you think I did," the boy started again when the silence settled into discomfort. It wasn't the first time he'd tried this tactic. He shifted in his seat and I took note of his discomfort. The boy had been close to bursting into tears since we had led him out of his dorm. Was someone this terrified of interaction with law enforcement truly capable of cold blooded murder? "But can you please just take these things off?"

He held up his wrists where Special Agent Parker's shiny metal cuffs glimmered in the harsh florescent light. They clanked together and he winced at the sound. Psychologically, there was something so sobering about the weight of restraints.

"Why's that?" Parker asked in a slow drawl, leaning out over the table and resting his weight on his hands. "You can give but you can't take?"

"What?" Cody asked, confused. He looked to me when he continued. "What does that mean?"

"We found the restraint system hidden under your bed in your dorm, Mr. Aaron," I told him and waited for the realization to slowly dawn upon him. "Given your discomfort with the handcuffs that Special Agent Parker placed upon your wrists, you don't seem to be experienced in wearing such a restraint."

"And that's... why you arrested me?" he asked. "There's nothing illegal about me having that."

"Who'd you restrain, Cody?" Parker asked, pulled out the chair next to me and taking a seat as he did. He leaned forward onto the table and stared firmly at the squirming boy in front of us.

Cody Aaron's eyes travelled from Parker to me and back again. His mouth opened and closed but no words came out. We gave him the time he needed to formulate an answer and finally he spoke again.

"I don't see how that's relevant-" he started but Parker did not let him get any further.

"Chelsea Lucas," Parker spat.

The effect was instantaneous. Cody Aaron's lips parted in surprise at the name and he severed the eye contact between us, turning his gaze, instead, to the table. That was a nonverbal admission of guilt if I'd ever seen one. At least, an admission of an association with the victim.

"Look, Chelsea was into it, okay?" he started his defense again after a moment of contemplation. "We didn't do anything wrong so I don't know what you think you've got me on but-"

"She's dead," Parker interrupted. "We found her rotting in the river with ligature marks around her ankles."

"Wait, what? Chelsea's dead?" Cody's mouth fell open and he began shaking his head, staring down at the table as if he'd forgotten our presence entirely. He was shaking now, lips quivering in open shock. "No. No, that isn't possible. I just saw her a few days ago. She was fine. She left my place and said she was going home. She wasn't- She was fine."

His reaction seemed genuine. Special Agent Parker looked my way and I gave him a small nod to indicate that I thought as much.

"She was sixteen," Parker interrupted. "You're twenty. There may not be anything illegal about what we found in your dorm room but there's quite a bit illegal about statutory rape."

"Rape? No! No, I never raped her!"

"Statutory rape means having sex with a minor," I explained. "The law states that due to her age, she doesn't have the capacity to consent. Even if she wanted to."

His eyes widened and he shook his head rapidly back and forth.

"No," he gasped. "No, man, please. I didn't know. She told me she was eighteen. We met in a bar on campus. I didn't know! We didn't- I loved her, man. You know? I mean, I really loved her."

"You loved her?" Parker asked. He reached back and grabbed the evidence bag containing the restraints we had gathered from Cody Aaron's dorm room and slapped it on the table between us. "Then what did you do to her with these?"

"That was- it was just a little bit of fun, you know? She was into it. She liked it that way. It was actually her idea. I swear, man, I never hurt her. I would never hurt her."

"Why didn't you report her missing?" I asked.

"I didn't know she was!" he exclaimed, truly panicking now. "She just showed up from time to time, you know. I didn't keep tabs. Besides, her mom locked her up all the time when she wasn't happy with her. I thought that might be the case."

"You were never in contact with her via text or phone call or even social media?" I asked then. He shook his head.

"She wasn't big on the phone thing, said it was too conformist. I don't even think she had an Instagram."

Suddenly, there was a tap on the glass from the other side. Parker and I glanced at one another before I stood from my seat and we headed for the door.

"I swear, man!" Cody Aaron shouted from behind us. I could hear the fear in his voice when he did. "I didn't kill Chelsea."

Parker opened the door for me without looking back at the boy and I exited and headed to the room next door which was the one behind the glass. I entered to find a few analysts working the recording equipment in the room and the Medical Examiner, Dr. Portia Warner. The way she waited for us, arms crossed and watching the door, told me she must have been the one who tapped on the glass and drew us out of our interrogation.

"They don't match," she said the moment we entered. Parker and I just looked at her, confused. "The restraints. They don't match the marks left on Chelsea Lucas's ankles. The cuffs are too thick and made of the wrong material. Whatever left those marks on Chelsea was much thicker and much stronger with a braided pattern. Like a rope."

Parker frowned and I moved to the window, watching the boy in the interrogation room beyond. He shuffled awkwardly in his seat, nervously picking at his nails and tapping his foot. He didn't look at the mirror. He didn't seem to know that we were on the other side of it. That indicated that he had likely never been in an interrogation room before. I remembered what the Dean had said about Cody Aaron in his office that morning. Average student, no disciplinary record. He wasn't a killer. He was just a kid that enjoyed rough sex. And I imagined it was the only aspect in his life where he ever showed any aggression at all and even that felt like a stretch as I watched the boy fidgeting, close to tears, in the room beyond.

"It wasn't him," I said and Dr. Warren and Special Agent Parker both looked over to me.

"What did you say, Doc?" Parker asked.

"It wasn't him. He was genuinely surprised to find out that Chelsea was dead and positively horrified when he realized we suspected him to be the cause of it. She always went to him. Whenever she wanted to. I doubt he even knew where she lived."

"It could have been an accident."

I turned back to the mirror and looked at the boy on the other side of it. He was right. It could have been an accident. But something told me Cody Aaron hadn't been involved. I just needed the evidence to back me up.

"Whether it was or wasn't him," Dr. Warren interrupted, "those cuffs did not make the ligature marks on the victim's ankles."

Parker nodded and strolled up to the window next to me. We stood there for a moment in silence, both of us watching our suspect on the other side of the glass and thinking about the facts of the case. They didn't fit Cody Aaron. There was nothing to suggest the boy had even seen her on the day of her death or had played any part in the transport of her body. I wasn't even certain he had the mental constitution necessary to plot the disposal of a body.

"Everyone keeps telling us that the mother locked Chelsea up," Parker said then and I looked over at him to find him already looking my way. Though I knew what he was about to ask before he even did, the words he spoke still brought a sickening feeling to my stomach. "Do you think she might have tied her up as well?"