Chapter 29: J For Justin, J For Judge
The silence after Michael Miller's question hung in the air, thick as the copper-scented mist rising from the floor. The police flashlights created a hellish diorama: the ruined form of Mr. Collins, the spattered walls, Luna's pale, shock-frozen face against the kitchen doorframe, and Noah Carter, standing calm and drenched in another man's life.
"Michael," Noah said, his voice cutting through the static hum of the radios and Lucy Collins's muffled, hysterical sobs from the doorway. He blinked, as if genuinely perplexed. "What happened to you?"
Detective Miller stared, his own face a conflict of horror and duty. The man before him was a stranger painted in a neighbor's blood, yet the voice was the same one that had pleaded for answers over coffee in a bleak station interview room.
"Weren't you…" Noah continued, his tone shifting to one of almost paternal concern, "investigating John? Is the case… is it still open?"
The cognitive dissonance was a physical blow. Michael's professional composure, already strained to its limit by the scene, cracked further. This was a father asking about his murdered son while standing over butchered remains. The world had lost its axis.
From the shattered threshold, Lucy Collins's grief curdled into a shriek of pure venom. "He killed my husband!" she screamed, her voice raw and tearing. "Why are you talking? Get him in cuffs! Take him to a cell! Give him the needle!" She pointed a trembling finger, her world narrowed to the man who had unmade it.
"Michael," Noah said, ignoring her completely. His eyes, the only clean things on his blood-masked face, locked onto the detective's. They held a terrifying, lucid plea. "Come closer. Please. Just one question."
Lucy surged against the arm of a young officer holding her back. "Don't you listen to him! He's a monster! He'll kill you too!"
Noah's head turned toward her voice, slow and deliberate, like a predator assessing a new, insignificant noise. The movement sent a fat drop of blood sliding from his chin to the floor. "Stop trying to gaslight him with your hysterics," he stated, his voice flat, devoid of anger. It was a clinical correction. "I will give my justification to the proper authorities, and I will be protected by the law you're demanding. If anyone here should fear punishment, it's you, for the conspiracy your husband engaged in."
The statement was so outrageous, so coldly delivered, it momentarily stole the breath from the room. Conspiracy.
Hesitantly, Michael took a step forward, then another, his hand resting on his holster. He stopped a few feet from Noah, close enough to see the fine spray of blood freckling his neck, the absolute stillness in his shoulders.
"The wanted signs, Michael," Noah whispered, the words for him alone. "The bounties. Were they issued by the department?"
Michael's brow furrowed. "What signs? What are you talking about, Noah?"
"The signs Collins was ranting about," Noah said, his voice rising slightly now, ensuring the other officers could hear. "He broke in here. He said we were 'wanted.' That there was a public bounty on our heads. That's why he did this. He thought he could collect." He gestured loosely with his clean hand toward the knife on the floor. "He said it was all over the news."
Michael's blood ran cold. He'd seen the social media frenzy, the coordinated online hate after the Dallas gathering. But an official bounty? A police-sanctioned target? "We didn't issue anything like that," he said, his voice firm. "No warrants for your arrest, no bulletins with a reward. Not from us."
Noah's head tilted. The bloody mask of his face made the expression unreadable, but his eyes showed a flicker of something—satisfaction? "Oh," he said softly. "So it remains a mystery. But I heard it. He said it clearly." He let the implication hang: Collins had been acting on false information, a lie that had gotten him killed. The seeds of doubt, of a larger, shadowy manipulation, were sown not with a speech, but with a quiet question.
Michael closed his eyes for a second, steeling himself against the vertigo. The law was a tangible thing, a procedure. The nightmare in this room was a fact. "Noah," he said, his voice heavy with a grief that had nothing to do with Collins, "the law works the same for everyone. You understand that. I have to take you in. Both of you. For questioning."
Noah simply nodded, as if agreeing to a mildly inconvenient appointment. "I understand."
---
Eldridge Police Station – Interview Room 2
The sterile fluorescence of the station was a brutal comedown from the visceral darkness of the house. Noah sat, his wounded arm now professionally bandaged by a paramedic, the stark white gauze a glaring contrast to the dried, rust-brown stains that covered the rest of him. He had refused to change clothes. He was a statement.
Across from him, Analyst Phillips, brought in for his meticulous, dispassionate eye, and a stenographer. Michael leaned against the wall by the door, a silent witness, his face gray.
"Start from the beginning, Mr. Carter," Phillips said, his voice neutral, a recorder spinning between them.
Noah did. He spoke with unsettling clarity. The sound of the door. The descent. The lightning flash revealing Collins. The conversation about the bounty. The threat. The lunge.
"He came at me with the knife," Noah said, his gaze fixed on a point on the table. "I attempted a Muay Thai disarm. I was partially successful, but he managed to stab my arm." He lifted his bandaged limb slightly, as evidence. "I dislocated his knee with a low kick. He fell. I subdued him."
"Subdued him," Phillips repeated, his pen pausing.
"Yes."
"And then?"
Noah looked up, meeting Phillips's eyes. His own were clear, eerily placid. "Then I ensured he could not pose a further threat."
"How did you ensure that, Mr. Carter?"
"I used the knife he brought into my home."
"How many times?"
Noah's lips pursed, as if trying to recall a mundane detail. "I don't know. I wasn't counting. Fifty times? Sixty? It was… efficient." The word dropped into the room like a stone.
Michael shifted against the wall, a wave of nausea rolling through him. The casual brutality of the admission was worse than any rage-filled confession.
Phillips, to his credit, didn't flinch. "You have exterior security cameras at your residence?"
"We do. A motion-activated system on the front door and driveway."
"We'll need that footage."
"Of course. The login credentials are on our home server. I'll provide them." Noah's cooperation was seamless, absolute. It was the behavior of a man who believed, utterly, in the righteousness of his own narrative.
---
Interrogation Room 1 – A Study in Contrasts
The mood was different here. Lucy Collins, wrapped in a blanket provided by victim services, sat weeping softly. Luna Carter sat opposite her, her hands clasped tightly on the table. She looked hollowed out, her eyes distant, seeing not the dingy room but the rhythmic rise and fall of the knife in her living room.
Phillips and Michael conducted the joint interview, a brutal ballet of grief and trauma.
"Mrs. Collins," Phillips began gently, "did your husband mention anything unusual tonight? Any plans?"
Lucy sniffled, wiping her nose. "H-he said he was going out. To meet a friend at O'Malley's Bar. He said he'd be back by eleven. When he wasn't…" Her voice broke. "I got worried. I called his phone. No answer. I saw the police cars… the lights…" She dissolved again.
Phillips turned to Luna. "Mrs. Carter. During the altercation, did you attempt to intervene? To stop your husband?"
Luna's gaze remained fixed on the table's scratched surface. She didn't seem to hear.
"Luna?" Michael prompted softly.
It was as if a switch flipped. Her head snapped up, her eyes focusing on Phillips with an intensity that made him lean back. "Stop him?" Her voice was a low rasp, stripped of all emotion. "And do what? Let the man with the knife kill us both? Our son is already gone. Was I supposed to let him take my husband too? Let him make our family a complete set of graves?" The questions weren't hysterical; they were delivered with a cold, devastating logic.
Phillips held up a placating hand. "I'm just establishing the sequence of—"
"Are you Luna?" Noah's voice, sharp and clear, cut through the intercom speaker from the observation room next door. He'd been listening. "Why are you badgering her? Are you not satisfied with one death in my home tonight? Did you need a second? A third? Is there a quota for your report?"
"Mr. Carter, you will remain silent!" Phillips barked into the microphone, his professional neutrality finally fracturing.
"Or what?" Noah's voice came back, calm, almost curious. "You'll send another armed man to my house with a lie about a bounty?"
The room went very quiet. Lucy's sobs hitched. Michael stared at the two-way mirror as if he could see through it to the unnerving calm of the man on the other side.
The formal interviews ended. Statements were taken, evidence logged. There was no immediate cause to hold Luna. Noah, given the nature of the incident and his injury, was processed and released on his own recognizance pending further investigation, a decision made by a watch commander who looked at the CCTV footage—which showed Collins's forced entry and initial lunge with chilling clarity—and saw a messy, tragic, but defensible case of self-defense taken to a catastrophic extreme.
But as they left the station, the cold night air hitting them like a slap, a uniformed officer handed Noah a formal, cream-colored envelope.
Lucy Collins, through tears and a bottomless well of newfound hatred, was suing Noah Carter for wrongful death.
The civil suit was a torpedo aimed at their lives, a way to drain them financially, socially, and emotionally, long after the criminal investigation might fade. The war had moved from their living room floor to a new battlefield: the courtroom.
---
Seattle – The Courtyard Hotel
In the silent, dark hotel room, the Architect watched a legal news feed on his laptop. A brief, local segment out of Eldridge: "Neighbor Slaying in Wake of National Controversy… Civil suit expected…" It was a footnote to the national chaos, but it was his footnote.
His phone chimed. A secure, encrypted line. He answered.
"Master?" Justin's voice was tight, expectant. "Is there a development? Something I can assist with?"
"There is a matter," the Architect replied, his voice a soft hum. "It requires a specific skill set. Your legal education."
A pause on the line. "My… law degree? What do you need?"
"A representative. A defense attorney, to be precise."
"For who?" Justin's confusion was palpable.
"For the man who promised me his life as a sacrifice. He resides in Eldridge. He has just created a… legal inconvenience for himself." The Architect allowed a note of dry amusement to color his tone. "It is all according to the design, of course. A necessary friction in the mechanism."
Justin's mind raced. The Carters. The news snippet. The lawsuit. He understood now. He was to defend the man his master had systematically destroyed and framed. The irony was a beautiful, closed loop.
"You want me to be his lawyer?"
"I want you to be his judge," the Architect corrected, his voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to bypass the phone and speak directly into Justin's soul. "Not the one who sits on a bench, but the one who controls the narrative within the hall of law. The one who guides the verdict—of the court, of the public, of his own crumbling mind—from the defense table. J for Justin," he mused, the alliteration a playful tick in his grand design. "And J for Judge. It has a certain symmetry, don't you think?"
The instruction was not a request. It was a revelation of Justin's next purpose. He was no longer just a voice in the dark or a follower in a crowd. He was to step into the light, wear a suit of legitimacy, and use the system's own rules to further tighten the invisible noose around Noah Carter's neck. He would defend the man to ensure his ultimate, total ruin.
"I… I understand," Justin said, the weight of the task settling on him, a mantle of terrible privilege.
"Good," the Architect said. "Begin the preparations. The case will be a fascinating experiment. A study in how much truth a narrative can bear before it snaps, and what emerges from the break." He ended the call.
In the renewed silence of his Seattle room, the Architect leaned back. The play was entering its final, most elegant act. He had orchestrated the murder of children, the bombing of a capitol, the immolation of a city block. Now, he would stage a trial. It was a subtler destruction, a slower, more intimate unmaking. He would let the law, that great, creaking idol of the old world, try to consume Noah Carter, while he, from the shadows, held the leash of both the defense and the damnation.
The first gunshot in Seattle had been a period. The lawsuit in Eldridge was a question mark. And he, the Architect, was the grammarian arranging it all into a sentence of exquisite, unbearable meaning.
Chapter 29 ends
To be continued