Chapter 3: The Interrogation Room
The hallway was a long, pale throat of fluorescent light and polished linoleum, echoing with the distant clatter of keyboards and the murmur of radios. Mac’s footsteps were a sharp, rapid tattoo against the floor. He was almost at the elevators when a hand grabbed his arm, pulling him around with enough force to stop his momentum.
“Mac, stop. Just stop for one goddamn second.” Flack’s face was flushed, his breath coming short. He hadn’t run in years, not like that, and his heart hammered against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
Mac shook off the grip, but he didn’t advance. He stood, coiled, a statue of repressed energy. “Every second I stop is another second she doesn’t know.”
“Know what? That her whole life is a lie? That the man she’s been sleeping with is her father’s best friend?” Flack’s voice cracked on the last word. He stepped in front of Mac, physically blocking the path to the elevator bank. “You burst in there, you say ‘I’m your dad, you’ve been dead for twenty years,’ and what? You think she’ll hug you? She’ll collapse. She’ll think she’s having a psychotic break.”
“She’s alive, Flack. After twenty years of thinking she was dust and bone, she is alive.” Mac’s voice was low, strained, each word sandpapered raw. “I have a right to see her. To know her.”
“And she has a right to not have her mind ripped apart!” Flack shot back. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “You’re not thinking. You’re reacting. This isn’t a suspect, Mac. This is a person. A person who thinks her name is Emily Taylor. Who thinks her parents died in a car crash. She has friends, a job, a fucking cat named Mr. Whiskers. It’s real to her.”
Mac’s jaw tightened. The blue of his eyes looked glacial under the harsh lights. “What’s real is the DNA. What’s real is that she is my daughter. Everything else is a story someone told her.”
“A story she believes! You go in with guns blazing, you could lose her forever. She could run. She could deny it so hard she breaks.” Flack moved closer, his voice dropping, pleading now. “I know her, Mac. I know how she takes her coffee. I know she hates the rain because it messes up her hair. I know she gets quiet sometimes, gets this… this distance in her eyes like she’s listening to something far away.”
He saw Mac flinch, a minute twitch at the corner of his eye.
“She has nightmares,” Flack said, the words escaping in a rush, as if he’d been holding them back and now the dam had broken.
The hallway seemed to grow quieter. The ambient noise faded to a buzz.
“What?” Mac’s question was a whisper.
“Nightmares. Bad ones. She wakes up shaking. Sweating.” Flack looked down at the scuffed linoleum. “She never wants to talk about them. But once, she was half-asleep, mumbling. She said… she said it was falling. That the sky was falling and it was on fire. And there was a noise, a roar.” He met Mac’s gaze. “She said it sounded like a building coming down.”
All the urgency bled out of Mac’s posture. The forward drive stalled, replaced by a hollow, chilling stillness. The air between them grew thick, charged with the ghost of a memory that wasn’t Flack’s to own.
“A burning tower,” Mac said, not a question.
Flack nodded, a slow, grave movement. “Fragments. Pieces of something she doesn’t understand. She thinks it’s just anxiety. I bought her a white noise machine to drown it out.” He let out a bitter, choked laugh. “I was trying to help her sleep through her own past.”
Mac turned away, bracing a hand against the cold cinderblock wall. His shoulders slumped. For a long moment, he just stood there, head bowed, breathing in the smell of industrial cleaner and stale coffee. The marine, the lieutenant, the unshakable Mac Taylor was gone. In his place was just a man, haunted by the same image that haunted his daughter’s sleep.
“She remembers,” he said finally, the words flat with awe and horror.
“Not consciously. Not in any way she can grab onto. It’s just… echoes.” Flack leaned against the opposite wall, the fight gone out of him too. “If you force it, if you make those echoes into a scream, what does that do to her? You of all people know what that day did to minds that were there.”
Mac pushed off the wall. He looked at Flack, really looked at him—the fear in his friend’s eyes, the protective anger, the guilt. “You love her.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was a realization, simple and devastating.
Flack didn’t deny it. He just swallowed hard and said, “I’m in love with a ghost. A ghost who’s alive. And I have no idea what to do with that.”
The elevator dinged down the hall, doors sliding open on an empty car. Neither of them moved.
“We can’t do nothing,” Mac said, but the edge was gone from his voice. It was threaded now with a new, terrible caution. “That DNA was at a crime scene. She’s not just out there living a quiet life. She’s connected to something. She could be in danger.”
“Then we protect her.” Flack straightened. “But we do it smart. We don’t lead with the nuclear option. We find out who fabricated her past. We find out why. We make sure she’s safe. Then we figure out how to tell her the truth in a way that doesn’t destroy her.”
Mac was silent, weighing it. The investigator in him warring with the father. The father was losing, beaten back by the sheer, pragmatic horror of Flack’s truth. He gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
“We need a room,” Mac said. “Somewhere quiet. We need to think this through without an audience.”
Flack led the way, not to the elevators, but down a side corridor to the old interrogation rooms. He pushed open a heavy door, flicking on the light.
The room was a sterile, windowless box. Cold metal table bolted to the floor, three chairs, linoleum peeling at the edges. The fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped insects, casting a sickly yellow glow. It smelled of sweat and cheap disinfectant.
“Cozy,” Flack muttered, pulling out a chair. It screeched against the concrete floor.
Mac didn’t sit. He paced the short length of the room, three steps one way, three steps back. The confined space seemed to amplify his restless energy. “Start from the beginning. Everything you know about her. Everything she’s told you.”
Flack sat, elbows on the table, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Emily Taylor. Born—supposedly—in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Orphaned at seven in a car accident. Raised by a maternal aunt, Helen… something. She never gave a last name. Said the aunt died when she was in college. No other family. She moved to New York eight years ago. Works as a financial analyst for a mid-tier firm downtown. Clean record. Not even a parking ticket.”
“The aunt. Did she ever show you pictures?”
“No. Said she didn’t have any. That everything was lost in the move after the aunt died.” Flack dropped his hands. “I never pushed. It seemed painful. Now it seems convenient.”
Mac stopped pacing. “A fabricated identity. Professionally done. Social security number, birth certificate, school records. It takes resources. It takes intent.”
“Or protection,” Flack said quietly. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to make Emily Taylor disappear and a new Emily Taylor appear. Maybe to hide her. Maybe to keep her safe from whoever took her in the first place.”
The implication hung in the air, colder than the room’s chill. The DNA at a crime scene. A recent hair. She wasn’t hidden anymore.
Mac’s phone vibrated on the table. He glanced at it—Stella. He hit speaker.
“Mac? Flack with you?” Stella’s voice was tense, echoing slightly.
“We’re here,” Mac said.
“I ran a deeper search on the name Emily Taylor, date of birth approximate. It’s solid. Too solid. School records, immunization charts, the whole nine yards. It’s a paper tomb. But I cross-referenced the social with national databases. There’s a blip. Seven years ago, it was flagged for a routine audit by the Social Security Administration. The file was reviewed and cleared by a field agent named… Arthur Kempler. Retired two years later.”
“Kempler,” Mac repeated, committing it to memory.
“And,” Stella continued, “I took the liberty of running a facial recognition scan against the DMV database using the age-progression model.”
Flack’s chair creaked as he leaned forward.
“I got a hit. Eighty-seven percent probability. Emily Taylor, license issued four years ago. The address matches the one Flack gave. The photo… it’s her, Mac. It’s your Emily.”
The digital screen on the wall of the interrogation room was off, a dark rectangle. Mac stared at it as if he could still see the ghostly face from Stella’s cubicle blinking back. Alive. Licensed to drive. Buying groceries. Living.
“Thank you, Stella,” Mac said, his voice oddly formal. He ended the call.
The buzz of the lights filled the silence.
“Okay,” Flack said, exhaling slowly. “So she exists. Officially. What’s our next move? Surveillance? Background on Kempler?”
Mac finally sat down, facing Flack. The metal chair was unforgivingly cold. “We talk to her.”
Flack opened his mouth to protest, but Mac held up a hand.
“Not as her father. Not with the truth. Not yet.” Mac’s mind was working now, methodical, plotting a course through the minefield. “You’re a detective. I’m a crime scene investigator. A hair belonging to a Jane Doe was found at a crime scene we’re investigating. We need to eliminate her as a potential witness or person of interest. It’s a routine follow-up.”
Flack blinked. “You want to use a case to approach her.”
“It’s a thread. A real one. We pull it gently. We see how she reacts. We get a sense of her life, her state of mind, without revealing anything.” Mac’s eyes were intent. “You’ll be there. As my colleague. As the detective on the case. It’s a cover you can maintain. It keeps your relationship… in reserve.”
Flack processed it. The deceit tasted sour, but it was cleaner than the alternative. It was a way in. A safe one. “She’s smart, Mac. She’ll know something’s off if I’m too stiff.”
“Then don’t be stiff. Be yourself. Just the professional version.” Mac stood, the decision made. “We go now. Before I lose my nerve. Before she has another nightmare about things falling from the sky.”
Flack remained seated for a second longer, looking at the empty digital screen. He thought of Emily’s laugh, bright and unaware in a sunlit Brooklyn café. He thought of the dread that would cloud her eyes when the thunder rolled in, a sound she said reminded her of something she couldn’t place.
He pushed back from the table. The legs shrieked against the floor.
“Let’s go,” he said, and followed Mac out of the sterile, yellow room, toward the woman who was both a stranger and the center of everything.