Work Text:
Detective Dick Gumshoe stood outside of the interrogation room. He sighed and opened the door. He sat at the table, across from a sobbing teenage girl who they had just arrested for murdering her own sister. He took a sip of coffee.
This was the part of the job he hated the most.
"...Name, age, and occupation." He mutters.
"H-Huh...?" The girl said, sniffling.
"I need your name, age, and occupation for our files, miss." Gumshoe said.
The girl stared at him silently for a moment before breaking down once again. She covered her face with her hands, gasping for air. Gumshoe watched the tears fall from between her fingers and rolled down her arms.
"Look, pal, I'm gonna need you to work with me here." Gumshoe said. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner both of us can get to sleep."
"I didn't kill her!" The girl screamed. "I loved Mia more than anyone else in the entire world! I...I'd never do anything to hurt her! Do you really think I'm guilty!?"
"Er...well..." Gumshoe scratched the back of his head. "...It's not for me to say. Your innocence or guilt...that'll be proven in court. It's not up for me to decide that, pal. I just do the grunt work, y'know..."
The girl went back to sobbing uncontrollably. Gumshoe leaned back in his chair. Just when he thought they were finally getting somewhere...
"OK, OK, let's just do this one step at a time, alright?" Gumshoe said. "First, give me your name."
"...Maya. Maya Fey."
"Alright, good!" Gumshoe said, writing it down on the form. "Maya...Fay, as in F-A-Y?"
"F-E-Y." Maya corrected him.
"Got it." Gumshoe said. "OK, now then, how old are you, Miss Fey?"
"Seventeen." Maya said.
Gumshoe took a deep breath as he wrote down the number. He couldn't help but thinking about what he was like when he was seventeen. He was still a kid, basically, just trying to get through high school and save up enough money for his first car. He probably couldn't even spell murder, let alone define it...
"Alrighty, now tell me, what's your occupation?" Gumshoe said.
"Occupation?" Maya said. "Um...I'm a spirit medium."
"A spirit medium?" Gumshoe said. He was a bit surprised, needless to say. Kids like her usually made money flipping burgers or hawking overpriced popcorn at the local movie theater...not communicating with the dead.
"Well...I'm training to become a spirit medium." Maya said. "So I guess it's not my occupation yet."
"I guess I'll just put down 'student' then." Gumshoe said. "...That's interesting though, pal. I've met a lot of different kinds of people in this line of work, but not a spirit medium, as far as I can remember. That must explain your, uh, weirdo hippie clothes there..."
"Hippie clothes!?" Maya said. "These are my robes! This is just how we dress in Kurain!"
"Kurain...?" Gumshoe said. "You're not a local, then? As in, you don't live here in LA?"
"No, um, I'm from Kurain Village, up in the mountains." Maya said.
"Never heard of it." Gumshoe said. "Must be a pretty small place."
"Yes...it's pretty remote." Maya said. "But I take the train here often to...to..."
"To do what?" Gumshoe said.
"To...see my sister..." Maya said. Her eyes suddenly became misty. She leaned over the table, holding her head in her hands as she began to cry once more. "M-M-Mia...she...she's...!"
"Hey, pal, c'mon now." Gumshoe said, reaching for a box of tissues on the table and sliding it over to her. "It'll be alright."
"Mia...Mia...she can't really be...!" Maya said. "This has all got to be...some awful nightmare."
"...I've just got a few more questions, OK?" Gumshoe said. "What's your alibi?"
"My...what?" Maya said, as she grabbed one of the tissues and blew her nose.
"Y'know, like, your excuse, I guess." Gumshoe said. "If you weren't committing the murder, then what were you doing?"
"I...um...I just..." Maya said, struggling to remember the events of the evening clearly. "I had just gotten off the train and I was walking to the office where my sister works. We...we were supposed to go and get dinner together. I walked in and...and that's...that's when I saw her..."
"Can anyone corroborate your alibi, then?" Gumshoe said. "Were you with anybody at the time, or...?"
"No..." Maya said, shaking her head. "I was...all alone. All...alone..."
"I see..." Gumshoe said, scribbling down these details. "That's, um...that's not good..."
"I know." Maya said.
"Well, uh, let's see here..." Gumshoe said, taking a long pause before dare broaching the topic of the victim. "So...she was...your sister then? Miss Mia Fey--?"
Maya once again began to sob.
"...Can I get you anything?" Gumshoe said after letting her cry for a few minutes, deciding it would be best for her to work through these emotions. "Water...or food maybe? You hungry?"
Maya looked up at him. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she nodded.
"That...That would be nice..." She said.
"Alright." Gumshoe said, standing up. "Leave it to me, then."
He slipped out of the room and proceeded down the hall to the employee lounge. In the corner of the small break room was a fridge where detectives stored food they brought to work. Gumshoe always made sure to keep some food in storage, just in case he forgot to pack his lunch--or, more likely, if times got so desperate that he couldn't afford to pack a lunch. Inside the fridge was a cupcake wrapped up in a paper towel--leftovers from a retirement party held in the office a few days prior.
"Well, everyone likes cupcakes..." He said, grabbing it from the fridge along with a bottle of water before returning to the interrogation room.
"Ah, it's..." Maya said as she unwrapped the paper towel. "...A cupcake."
"You, uh, you do like cupcakes, right?" Gumshoe said. "I just kinda grabbed it cause I assumed you would but I've got other stuff if..."
"No, it's fine!" Maya said. Gumshoe couldn't believe it, but she actually smiled at him. "Thank you."
She dug into the cupcake, clearly quite hungry. Gumshoe supposed he did arrest her right before she was supposed to go out to dinner, so it made sense that she had worked up quite an appetite by this time of night. As she finished off the water and licked the frosting off her fingers, Gumshoe cleared his throat and decided to try and keep going with the interrogation.
"Let's, uh...let's keep going, if you feel comfortable..." Gumshoe said, looking back down at his sheet, deciding to skip the questions he had about her relationship to the victim. "...OK, so, um, the thing is, pal...the reason we arrested you is cause of evidence at the scene. A receipt where your name was written...in the victim's blood."
"...I saw it." Maya said. "But you have to believe me, she didn't write it! Whoever is the real killer did! I loved my sister. We were really, really close. I never would have tried to hurt her...ever!"
"Right, but...if you didn't do it, who did?" Gumshoe said. "Do you know anybody who, maybe, had a grudge against your sister or just plain ol' didn't like her or...something?"
"No...not anyone I can think of." Maya said. "Mia...she's the kindest, sweetest person in the world. I can't think of any reason someone would try to...to kill her..."
The room became quiet again. Maya picked crumbs from the cupcake off the table. Gumshoe thought about how to proceed.
"...I don't know how much further we're gonna be able to go tonight." Gumshoe said. "You're exhausted. I'm exhausted. Maybe it'd be for the best if we called it quits for tonight. You can get some sleep and we'll talk it over in the morning, when we're both more well-rested. How's that sound?"
"...Yes, I...I'd like that." Maya said. "I need to get some sleep."
"Then let me take you back to your cell." Gumshoe said. He stood up, as did Maya. She followed him out of the interrogation room and down the dark hallway.
"...Thank you, by the way." Maya said, after a minute of solid silence.
"What for?" Gumshoe said, a bit taken aback.
"For the food and the water." Maya said. "...That reminds me. I never got your name."
"Oh, it's Gumshoe." Gumshoe said. "Detective Dick Gumshoe. At your service."
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Detective Gumshoe." Maya said. "...Despite the circumstances."
"Ain't that the truth..." Gumshoe said, laughing feebly.
Upon locking her away in her cell for the night, he headed straight for his car. On the drive home, he made up his mind. She definitely didn't do it. Even if the evidence told him otherwise...there was no way a kid like that would be capable of killing her sister!
"I just hope she's got a good lawyer..." Gumshoe said as he pulled out of the detention center's parking lot.