The ride back to the police station was in forced silence. Duo leaned onto Heero on the backseat of Wufei’s car and when they finally arrived, sweat was trickling down from the piano teacher’s brow. Trowa wanted to help him out of the car, but backed off quickly when Heero stepped out on the other side and threw him a look that told him not to even think of assisting - and thereby touching - Duo.
On the stairs to the entrance, Duo let his hand slip out of Heero’s. Wufei didn’t miss the surprised look on Duo’s face when Heero grabbed his hand again immediately, clasping their fingers together. After entering, one of the secretaries, a woman with short cropped hair and dressed in a western blouse, stormed into Wufei.
“Officer Chang, officer Barton, Lady Une has asked five times about you. I have twenty return calls for you, I need your signature on these forms and…”
“Put everything in our office, Lucrezia. Is room 412 unoccupied?”
The woman turned around and picked up a large schedule from the reception desk. She flipped through the pages and said: “It’s only booked for the afternoon. It’s free for now.”
“Please mark it as ‘in use’ Lucrezia, and bring us some coffee and water, if you please.”
She mumbled some confirmation and the detectives led Duo and Heero up two stairs. The hallway was filled with officers, cops on duty, secretaries and other people, minding the day’s business in a police station. Wufei noticed the increasing firm walk of the piano teacher. Duo still looked pale as a sheet and his hands grabbed Heero’s arm convulsively, but his walk was firm and his eyes determined. \\A strength struggling to surface.... \\
“In here, please,” Trowa unlocked the door of room 412. It was one of the largest interrogation rooms and one of the ‘friendliest’, as detectives came to call it; it had large, albeit barred, windows and light yellow paint on the walls. The abundance of daylight into the large room gave a softening glance to the cold, metal furniture-- one large table and four chairs.
“Mr. Yuy, please understand that we’re going to question you separately. I have to ask you to follow me to another room where you can wait until we get you.” Trowa addressed Heero directly. Duo already took a seat, the one closest to the window. His face was lit by the daylight, turning it into a sickly yellow colour, while his eyes remained in the shadows. His chestnut bangs caused their own shadows, one reaching his nose, displaying his profile in a painting of light and dark planes. He sat down and the short moment of almost palpable vulnerability was ruptured. The piano teacher put his hands on the table and huddled in his seat.
“Duo needs my help,” Heero stated. He had caught, without a doubt, the same moment of vulnerability and his tight jaw betrayed the tension running through him. He wanted to take a step forward, but Trowa raised his hands.
“Please follow my colleague to the waiting room, Mr. Yuy.” Wufei didn’t raise his voice, but he certainly left no other room for interpretation. Heero opened his mouth to answer rather angrily, but it was Duo again who calmed him.
“It’s alright, Heero. It’s alright.”
Without a word, Heero turned around and grabbed the doorknob, jerking violently at it. The door swung open and Trowa hurried to follow him. Wufei took a seat opposite Duo and watched him closely.
“Are you alright?”
“I feel like I’m going to throw up any minute.”
“Barton will return with some water soon.”
“Thank you.”
Silence fell. Duo seemed to study his hands, while he blinked his eyes frantically.
“The news of your friend is hard to take,” Wufei admonished. Duo leaned a bit forward with his head.
“I will not cry. Not again.”
Just as Wufei was about to ask him what he meant, the door opened and Trowa entered, followed by Lucrezia. He had brought a tape recorder and some paper files, while she put a thermos of coffee, a bottle of water, and some cups on the table. After she left the room, Wufei addressed Trowa.
“How’s Yuy?”
“I left him with Otto. He was anxious, but he backed off after a while.”
Trowa sat down next to Wufei and busied himself with pouring coffee and water. Wufei set up the tape recorder, put in a new, blank tape and opened the first folder. He pressed ‘record’.
“Detective Chang and Barton, questioning in the Catalonia-Schbeiker case…” he rattled off a whole list of numbers, the date and the location. Then he shoved the tape recorder to the middle of the table and asked: “Please state your full name.”
“Duo Maxwell,” Duo answered.
“Okay, Mr. Maxwell, as we explained to you before, you’re not under arrest. We’re going to ask you some questions concerning the Catalonia-Schbeiker case.”
“Do I need a lawyer or something?” Duo sounded meekly.
“Not for this, as you’re not under arrest yet. We haven’t appointed you as a suspect.”
Wufei tapped with his fingers on the table. “We have two girls, murdered, who have the only thing in common that they’re - they were students of yours. How did you get to know them, Mr. Maxwell?”
“I’ve known Hilde for quite some time, ten years. I met her in a Child Aid Program home.”
Trowa had opened another file. “The Child Aid Program was set up by as a collaboration between charities and the colony governments, especially the L2 colony cluster, during the war,” he recited while reading off a paper. “Their goal was to offer juvenile war victims a place in foster homes, to stabilize their lives and to continue education until they were old enough to support themselves. Most of the male orphans ended up in the military.”
“Why were you there, Mr. Maxwell?”
“I was the only survivor of the Maxwell Church Tragedy,” Duo answered rather bluntly. Wufei quirked his eyebrow.
“My... apologies, Mr. Maxwell, I didn’t make the connection.”
“I’m not different,” Duo spat out, suddenly angered. “I have gone through this and I survived! I don’t know why exactly the Church was world news, there were lots of other people who were going through worse, for whom war was even more vicious and…”
“As for Heero?” Trowa asked.
Duo looked at him, surprised. He calmed down.
“Yes, for people like Heero and... Hilde. Hilde lost her parents in the war too. I didn’t even know my parents. She came into the Program home three years after me and we were friends from the moment we met. Hilde was buried under her house for two days before they found her. What I have gone through, is nothing compared to her tragedy.”
“You saw a church being destroyed and you lived on the streets for more then seven years before you got into the relative shelter of a home. Be it as it may, Hilde Schbeiker had had at least some family and some certainties in her life.”
“And she’s dead,” Duo whispered.
“Can you tell us what Hilde did when the war was over?”
Duo reached for a glass of water. “We kept in touch, if only to remind each other of our dreams. I wanted to become a pianist, she a doctor. After the war, I had found Heero, and she a foster family who was really good to her. They stimulated her studies and well… she was my first piano student.” He smiled fondly in remembrance. “She also brought in new students. I always teased her she should go into public relations.”
Trowa scribbled in his note book, short sentences, even though the tape recorder caught every sound in the room.
“Did she introduce you to Dorothy Catalonia?”
“No, no, she didn’t. Duke Dermail contacted me himself to make sure Dorothy would get lessons from me. She and Dorothy only met three or four times. They couldn’t play quatre-mains well together.”
“Why did you start giving piano lessons? You were on your way to become quite a famous concert pianist.” Trowa closed the file. Duo looked at him irritated.
“What is it you have there, in that folder?”
“Answer the question, Mr. Maxwell.”
“I won a few recitals, no big deal.” He bowed his head.
“You won the annual Achievement Award for Classical Music three times in a row, the most prestigious classical music award of the joined colonies, an award which holds great respect on Earth as well,” Trowa summed up, “and you won five different Earth awards in the same field. There were quite some articles written about your talent, still circulating on the Internet, though not many, and you call that ‘no big deal’? It was a wonderful career, yet you gave it up for teaching.”
“May I ask what this has to do with Hilde? I chose to teach at home!”
“Are you sure you chose?” Wufei eyed Duo meticulously. “You weren’t forced?”
“That’s ridiculous. No! I wanted to teach at home, it was safer.”
“Safer for whom?” Wufei mercilessly kept beating him with words. “Why did you give up such a brilliant career, Mr. Maxwell? To stay at home and teach students, who would never show the same amount of talent as you have, and were only playing for mere fun?”
“Not for mere fun,” Duo defended himself, pronouncing the word ‘fun’ as something vile. “They worked and studied hard on their nocturnes! There’s more to win than awards, or…”
“Did you want to obtain a low profile, for whatever you were planning to do? A few murders are quite conspicuous when you’re a famous pianist.”
“And not when I’m a well-known piano teacher?” Duo’s eyes flickered, Trowa couldn’t tell if it was out of anger or out of malice. “I came down with you here to help you, not to listen to ridiculous accusations! If you have nothing to work on, don’t take it out on me! Do you really think I enjoy having two of my students found dead? Murdered?”
He screamed his last word and had risen from his chair. Duo looked at the two detectives, felt the tension and deflated.
“I’m sorry, I… I got a bit carried away, I guess.”
Wufei bullied forward. “You still haven’t given an adequate answer on our question.”
“What did you mean by ‘it was safer’?” Trowa chimed in.
Duo sat down and looked at his hands again. He felt cold, ice cold.
“Heero wanted me to stay home. Travelling around Earth and the colonies to give recitals and concerts were too dangerous for me. He couldn’t… he couldn’t keep me safe that way, he said. And I… I stayed home.”
Chapter 7 | Chapter 9 |