“Nothing!I… It was just a post.Like a warning.”
“What was the warning?”
Anthony dropped his head and his face flushed like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar.“Okay, look.I just… I wasn’t going to do anything.I just posted it there to drive engagement.I wanted people asking about them.Then I could give them information and help them understand the evil they were all perpetrating.”
“Evil’s a big word,” Jessica remarked.
“Yeah, it is,” Anthony agreed.He jutted his chin.“And they were evil.”
“And you didn’t do anything to address that evil,” Faith replied.
“I didn’t.”
“Just posted a threat on a messaging board.”
“Exactly.”
“And when we take a very close look at your recent history and your whereabouts of the past few days, we’ll see that you haven’t done anything?”
Anthony’s left eye twitched.Faith stared at him calmly while Turk watched her with his ears flat, teeth slightly bared.He swallowed and said hoarsely, “I protested at a conference a few months ago.The list is everyone at that conference.All of the shelter employees that got me kicked out.”
“Ah,” Jessica said, nodding slowly.
“I wasn’t being violent,” Anthony insisted.“They said I was, but I wasn’t.I was just standing on stage and speaking.Theywere violent when they dragged me off the stage.I didn’t fight back.I just refused to leave when they told me I had to.”His face hardened.“People always do that.It’s okay for them to beat us, arrest us, drag us away, and throw us out of buildings and into the backs of cars, but God forbid we fight back or ruin a silk suit or two.”
“Did you fight back?”
“No!”
“So, you protested at a conference, they got you kicked out, and then what?”Faith asked.
“Then nothing.That was it.”
“Well, not nothing,” Jessica reminded him.“You posted that hit list on social media.”
“It wasn’t a hit list.”
“Three of the victims are dead.The top three names.In order.I’m not trying to be a bitch, but that kind of sounds like a hit list.”
“Itwasn’t.It was just a post.I just wanted to… stir things up a little.”
He shrunk a little when he said that.His eyes suggested that she was realizing the immaturity of his behavior for possibly the first time in his life.Better late than never, Faith supposed.
Except it wastoolate now.“You succeeded,” Faith told him.“Someone took that post very seriously.Someone is working their way down a list of names thatyouposted online and dispensing their own judgment.I’m wondering if it might be you.”
“It’s not me,” Anthony insisted.“I never intended to actually hurt anyone.I figured the worst that would happen is people might show up and throw rocks through the window.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Anthony said, lifting his hands and letting them drop.He had waffled right back to anger.He definitely had a quick temper.
“You can tell us where you were last night,” Jessica replied.“And yesterday morning and the night before that.Those seem like good places to start.”
Anthony paled again.“I was organizing protests.”
“Really?You don’t seem confident about that.”
“I was,” Anthony insisted.
