Chapter 18
Lingering Questions
Even with the killer caught, Jamonte ponders the 'what ifs'. Could this have been prevented? The complexities of human nature leave him unsettled.
The scent of stale coffee and something vaguely metallic, the ghost of what had once been Sarah Jenkins’s lifeblood, clung to the air in my office. It was a familiar perfume, one I’d grown accustomed to, even if it never quite lost its grim undertones. Elias Thorne sat across from me, his hands clasped tightly in his lap, his eyes, usually so full of a practiced, almost theatrical, sincerity, now held a flicker of something raw, something that clawed at the edges of his carefully constructed composure. The confession had been delivered, a torrent of guilt and self-recrimination that had washed over me, leaving me feeling less like a conqueror and more like a weary custodian of other people’s wreckage.
“So,” I began, my voice a low rumble in the quiet room, “it was all about the grant money.”
Thorne nodded, a slow, jerky movement. “She was going to expose me. The fellowship… it was everything. Years of work, of planning. And she was going to ruin it. Just like that.” He gestured vaguely, as if swatting away a fly that only he could see. “She found out about the… the discrepancies. The way I’d fudged the numbers on the preliminary proposal. She said she couldn’t stand by and let it happen. That my art was built on a lie.”
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