A woman wearing a long open white coat enters the room and whispers into the officer's ear. He eyes me the entire time and whispers back, "Just one?"

"Just a preliminary search. Extensive search is underway, but yeah."

He nods and waves her away.

"Ms. Kingston, is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" His tone changes from concerned to aggravated, marked by the frequent sighs.

I shrug, searching my mind for anything I might've forgotten. "What do you want to know?"

He sits back and tilts his head. "More about the screams you heard before arriving here."

I nod. "I hear them every day now. They won't stop until I pay the ultimate price. And I'm willing to pay to stop it."

"Yes, I'm aware of that," a deep inhale and then another sigh, "but what prompted you to burn down the house? Why did you think that would stop the screams?"

"If it's destroyed he wouldn't have a place to hurt anyone anymore. That place is a house of horrors; it needed to burn in hell." I look directly into his eyes, hoping he can see and sense my sincerity.

Instead he narrows his eyes. "Burn in hell along with Mr. Kingston?"

He isn't getting it. I sit forward, looking more intently into his squinted eyes. "This is about me, what I've done, what I'm willing to pay to fix it."

The officer shifts in his seat. "Mesa, can I call you Mesa?"

I nod. Something prompts me to glance to the mirror. Maybe someone on the other side of it understood.

"Mesa, we can't find any signs that anything was ever buried in the back of that house."

"What—well, what do you mean?" I look down at my dirty, wounded hands. "There should be over fifty bodies back there."

"We'll have to do an extensive, more thorough search of the grounds, but all they seemed to pull up back there are the remains of a large lizard, a Gila monster. Now this leaves me with a burning question I need answered." He closes the gap between us by leaning uncomfortably close and lowers his voice to just above a whisper. "Why would someone confess to murdering dozens of people but not present any proof beyond the lizard she buried twelve years ago?"

There is that haze again. I shake my head to rid of it, but it lingers. "I'm—I'm confused."

"Is this your attempt at a motive for murdering your father? Try to convince us he's responsible for an absurd amount of deaths to justify you killing him?"

"No, I did this. It's about me."

"You know what's hard for me to fathom about your claim? Why would a man go through the trouble of burying fifty bodies, in the backyard of his property nonetheless, than dump the bodies in the nearby lake?"

"I—I—" Words get stuck in my throat as they get stuck in my mind.

"We're gonna open an investigation, Mesa."

"No. Yes, yes do."

"Why would you want to kill your dad, huh? What would the motive be?"

Motive? Killing? Words and images swirl around in my mind like a swarm of bees. "What ... wait I don't understand."

"A burnt body of a male matching the description of Mr. Kingston was found on the property in one of the bedrooms. So while we try to piece it all together, I'm gonna ask you to continue to cooperate with us while we gather more details, evidence, get a psych evaluation done on you, and try to contact your grandmother. If it turns out you need help, we'll make sure you get what you need." He stood and patted my shoulder. "Okay?"

I look up into his eyes, suddenly feeling like an eight-year-old kid again. "Grandma?"

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