POV: CASSIE
He keeps it a secret from her.
Damian Cross just stares at her when she says, "Tell me." These two words, "clean" and "open," are the unlocking she uses in every interview room and prison she has ever sat in to discuss with any convict.
Not through her and not beyond her but just at her.
He reads her carefully before making a sign, as if she were a document.
Cassie stays put. She doesn't add words to the silence, soften its edges, or fill it with the little professional noises, like the encouraging lean forward and the soft mm, that she occasionally employs to persuade people who are self-conscious about speaking. Since Damian Cross doesn't fear his voice, she doesn't use those tools here. He's making a decision. She can see the decision taking place behind his eyes in the same way that you can occasionally see weather moving across a flat horizon: slowly, steadily, and completely unaffected by your readiness.
She waits as a result.
She is most proficient in this area, which also cost her the most to learn. waiting without desire. listening without bending over. sitting in a room with someone else's silence without considering it a problem that needs to be solved.
In the early days of Final Words, she was told by her first producer that she asked too many questions.
He said, "Let them breathe." When someone is about to speak the truth, they need space to do so.
Eight months later, for unrelated reasons, she fired him. However, she retained the note.
A door closes somewhere down the hallway, making a final, heavy, institutional sound like metal on metal. The radio of one of the guards crackles and then silences.
Damian Cross doesn't respond to any of it.
She observes him with complete focus and without putting on a show, just as he has observed her. She is putting him together in the same manner that she puts every subject together: piece by piece, detail by detail, creating an image that will stick in her head long after the recording is over.
He is slender in the manner that men are when their slenderness is a condition rather than a choice, resulting from years of consuming what is provided rather than what is desired. His hands are steady and loosely folded on the table. Because hands are nearly always the first thing to betray a person, she notices this right away. When their owner is lying, hands tap, grip, and press flat against surfaces. When a person is afraid, their hands curl inward. As composed and deliberate as the rest of him, Damian Cross's hands are just resting, seemingly at peace with the table, the space, and everything this room stands for.
He's spent ten years in rooms like this one.
For the most part, he has had time to come to terms with things.
Above his left eyebrow, she sees a thin, ancient scar that is a pale line through his darker skin. She sees the grey at his temples, strewn like a distant broadcast through his closely cropped hair. His prison uniform is tidy, she observes. In Riverbend, there is no pressing; instead, it is arranged. thoughtful. It has a straight collar. The sleeves are uniform.
A man who continues to make his own decisions.
This is all filed by her.
The thing she saw when he first entered is what she does not file, what she will not look at until much later, when she is by herself in her car, staring at the steering wheel while the engine runs and the heating does nothing.
Over her career, she has conducted interviews with thirty-one death row inmates. Thirty-one. In a notebook at home, she keeps a running list of names, dates, and a word that she would use to express her feelings within the first ten seconds of meeting each person.
terrified. Hollow and furious. Feeling proud. Gone. Desperate.
She's been gone six times. The people who have already moved on and are staring at you from behind their own eyes like a tenant watching from a window while the building is being demolished are the hardest to sit with.
She wouldn't have gone for Damian Cross.
She is still unsure of the word she would use.
She is more bothered by this than she will acknowledge.
It has been five minutes since she said, "Tell me."
Five minutes of silence in an interview room can be classified into one of three categories based on her significant experience.
First, the subject is giving a performance. They want her to put in the effort. They want to prolong this conversation because they have been picturing it for weeks and they want to experience the power of holding the information while someone else waits. This kind of silence is nothing new to her. It has a theatrical feel to it, with a hint of self-consciousness and self-monitoring.
The second is that there is actual uncertainty about the topic. They can't find the door yet and want to talk. The texture of this silence is different; it is porous, slightly forward-leaning, and full of almost.
The third is that the person is debating whether or not to trust her.
The rarest silence is this one. and the most crucial.
Because it breaks completely when it does.
Sitting opposite Damian Cross in this room's flat white light, she feels as though she is in the third silence. She has the quiet confidence of someone whose entire career has been based on accurately interpreting silences.
She stays still.
She stays silent.
She lets him make the final decision.
When he does speak, it's not what she anticipated.
He doesn't respond to her query.
"How do you decide," he asks, slowly, as though weighing each word before committing to it, not minding even its clear and true.
"Pattern," Cassie says, taking the question seriously because it merits serious consideration and because she has a strong suspicion that he is not engaging in casual conversation. "Those who lie typically tell you the whole truth. tidy start, middle, and finish. There are gaps in those who are telling the truth. They have disorganised memories. She hesitates, "They correct themselves." "Certainty is performed by liars. Those who tell the truth are doubtful.
For a moment, he is silent once more.
"Good," he replies.
It sounds more like a door opening than a compliment.
"Because what I'm about to tell you has gaps," he explains. And I've been questioning some aspects of it for ten years. Additionally, there are still some things I don't fully comprehend. He gives her a steady gaze. Before I begin, I want you to know that. I want you to know that I won't tell you the whole truth."
"I don't want a clean story," Cassie declares. "Those who have something to conceal should tell clean stories."
She recognises the fleeting, unguarded movement across his face in less than a second because she has witnessed it in this room and others similar to it. It's the expression of someone who has been speaking honestly to a wall for a long time and has just spoken to someone for the first time.
relief.
Quiet, worn out, relieved after ten years.
His hands are folded more firmly on the table.
He leans slightly forward.
Then, after sitting with the worst, most broken, and most dangerous individuals the state has chosen to contain for six years, he does something she has never witnessed in thirty-one interviews.
He looks at her with a raw, direct, and blatantly human gaze that momentarily dismantles her professional distance in the same way that wind dismantles a meticulously arranged piece of paper, rather than with performance, calculation, or the careful management of a man running a strategy.
He gives her the impression that he needs her to trust him.
Not because of the cameras.
Not because of the appeal.
For her in particular. James Cassandra. "I didn't kill anyone," he tells the woman seated across the table.
Thirty-one times, she has heard these words.
She has twice trusted them.
She is still unsure of Damian Cross's classification.
She is aware that the red light is constant, her recorder is operating, and Damian Cross is finally going to say something.
Sitting in this tidy, humming room with the grey sky visible through the high, narrow window, she is unaware that he will lean across the table and whisper a name in about forty minutes.
And everything will change because of that name.