WHO KILLED MADAM (Truth unfolding)

Interrogation Room B. 7:22 p.m. Someone had turned the overhead light up. The room was brighter now and less forgiving for it. Two chairs sat across from Fashola's side of the table. Neither man looked at the other. Fashola set a small recorder on the table without ceremony, it could be seen blinking red, a sign that it had been set to do it's work.... "Before we begin, anything said in this room can and will be used in evidence. You are not under arrest at this time." He looked at Emeka. Then Chidi. "That can change." Neither man responded. He opened the folder. "Thursday evening, nine forty-five. A call was made from the Okafor residence landline." He did not look up. "Three minutes and twelve seconds. Made to your mobile, Mr. Okafor." Now he looked up. "By your wife." Emeka stared at the table. "Thirty minutes before her estimated time of death." He turned a page. "A cup was recovered from the master bedroom. Rohypnol. Dissolved. Undetectable by taste." He turned another page. "A thumbprint was lifted from the base of that cup." He closed the folder. "Mr. Dike. Yours." Chidi's jaw moved once. "I was in that house regularly. I touched many things." "A cup in the master bedroom." "I may have taken her tea up at some point." "Tea laced with Rohypnol." "I didn't say I prepared it." "Then who did." Nothing. Fashola turned to Emeka. "Your wife called you thirty minutes before she died. What did she say?" Emeka looked at the recorder. Then his hands. Then at nothing. "She said she felt strange. That something was wrong. She asked me to come home." A pause. "I wasn't home." "Where were you." "I had been asked to leave earlier that evening. Told to be absent. That it was better." "By who." Emeka looked up. Not at Fashola. At Chidi. "Him." Chidi turned slowly. The composure held but something behind it had shifted. Getting warm in a way that was not good for anyone in the room. "Mr. Okafor." Fashola kept his voice level. "Be very precise about what you say next." Emeka nodded, and continued.. "I was sent to Tabitha by her uncle. Introduced through people I didn't question because I needed the money and the instruction seemed simple. Get close. Gain her trust. Marry her if possible. When the time came, help move her assets." The recorder could be seen, blinking the red light..... "Her uncle wanted her properties." "Her uncle wanted everything. She had no idea where she came from. Who her family really was." Emeka's voice was flat. Worn smooth from being folded and unfolded too many times. "I was the inside man." "And." "And I fell in love with her." He responded unapologetically. "I pulled out. Told her uncle I was done. I wanted to take Tabitha and leave. Start somewhere clean." His jaw tightened. "She wouldn't go. She kept asking why I was so desperate to leave. I couldn't tell her." Chidi laughed, a dry chuckle escaped his throat.. "Touching." Emeka looked at him. "You want to talk about love." Chidi's voice was losing its edges now. Slowly. "You sat at her table. Slept in her house. Ate food she paid for." Quieter now. "Don't speak about her, like you cared." "I loved her." "You were sent to destroy her." "I stopped." "You didn't stop." The last word cracked. "You just changed which side of the knife you were holding." Emeka looked at him. Steady. "And which side are you holding, Chidi." Chidi stood. The chair hit the floor behind him, an unexpected sound echoed across the room. Slap! Emeka turned his face back from the impact and looked at Chidi. Calm. Like the slap had been scheduled. Chidi stood over him, chest rising and falling. "You think you can sit here and play innocent? Hand them everything and walk away clean?" He jabbed a finger at Emeka's face. "Tell them what you did. Tell them where you were Thursday night. Tell them about the call you made at eleven. Tell them....." "Mr. Dike." Fashola was on his feet. "Sit down." Chidi turned. "Sit down." He sat. Fashola looked at both of them. Two men. One dead woman, glad that they've begun speaking up voluntarily.. he continued.. "Tabitha Okafor was drugged in her home Thursday night. Found in her garden." He moved around the table as he spoke, unhurried. "Her staff saw her alive at her office Friday morning. Later that day she was found in that office. Shot. Dead." He stopped. "Drugged in her house. Shot in her office. Two acts. Two locations." He looked at Chidi. "One thumbprint on a cup." He looked at Emeka. "One husband who was conveniently absent." He put both palms flat on the table. "Stop performing for each other and talk to me. One of you drugged her. One or both of you know who shot her. Whatever you think is happening outside this room, in here it ends tonight." He picked up the recorder. Held it up. "Everything on here is evidence. Nigerian criminal procedure does not protect men who withhold information in a homicide case. It protects even less a man whose thumbprint sits on a cup found at a crime scene." He set it back down and reached for his phone. "I want Tabitha Okafor's uncle brought in. Tonight." He put the phone to his ear. Chidi made a sound. Low. Almost private. "You want to find Sniper?" Fashola lowered the phone, mouth ajar like he wanted to say something. Chidi looked at him. Composure back. Fully. Like it had never moved. "He's a million steps ahead of you, Detective." The recorder was still blinking.... Fashola looked at Chidi. Chidi looked back, their eyes kept the stare..

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