WHO: Officer June Rogers and JJ Mayweather WHEN: Friday, August 24th WHERE: The Municipal Building SUMMARY: JJ confesses to sending all those anonymous notes. June gets him to write a full confession and then arrests him. WARNINGS: Harassment talk. Talk of JJ
“I’m here to see June Rogers,” JJ explained to whoever was close enough at the Municipal Building. If he was going to talk to anyone, it was going to at least be someone worthy of his time. Hot cop was, well, fun to play with, but he just didn’t have time to waste. Tony and Clea were also a waste of his time.
No, he’d rather just sit down and have a chat with someone intelligent enough to ask the right questions so he could go home and get back to work.
He was led to a room to wait—where he made himself quite comfortable in the chair provided to him. The idea of what he planned to do was foreign. And had it not been for Sam, he would never dream of such a thing. But losing two people was worse than losing one. At the end of the day, he couldn’t have a zero in the friend column. So he would talk. Hopefully, she would listen.
June was surprised that JJ asked for her, and half suspicious that this was going to be some kind of game or another round of ‘What the Mayfairs Did This Week’. But June wasn’t one to jump to conclusions prematurely. She sat down in the seat across from the person that someone outside the department suspected had been sending those notes.
Her notebook and recorder were ready.
“You asked to speak to me?”
“Mm,” he hummed in agreement. “Yes.”
Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the chair, tilting it onto two legs. He leveled his gaze with June’s. “I sent the letters.”
June hid her surprise well. She peered at him. JJ was a good suspect, but they’d had no evidence so far. He seemed very much like the kind of person who liked to see what they could get away with. Based on his expression, he definitely wasn’t confessing because he felt contrite.
Still, June wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth until she had the gift locked up in her stable. She informed him of his rights and when he waived the attorney, she proceeded.
“The anonymous letters sent to Camila Marple on April 16th and the 28th of July, Hugh Christian on April 19th and May 1st, Gene Kim on April 19th, Jessica Schnitzler on May 1st, Rhett Wyatt on June 28th and July 17th, Maxine Ryan on August 19th and Dash Exely on August 19th, and May Ryan on August 22?”
“I don’t remember the dates.” He shrugged now. “I thought they were funny. Apparently, not everyone gets my humor.”
June got him the departments copies on all of the anonymous letters that had been sent. She also added one of the missing dog fliers that someone had put up. “Which of these notes are you confessing to?”
He didn’t bother to look at them. “Probably all of them. I figure there’s only one person sending letters in Fall City.” But then he considered the fact that there had been a serial killer in town. He rocked forward, tapping the feet of the chair to the floor. He scanned the copies and nodded. “These are mine.”
“You put up fliers saying Marceline Cox's dogs were missing? What about the tape Rhett Wyatt received, did you send that to him?”
“I didn’t put up the flyers, no. But I made them,” he said. “I don’t know anything about a tape. Everything I’ve done is in front of you.” He pointed out Lola’s note and tapped it twice. “That one’s my favorite.”
June wasn’t as impressed. Too much cat. “You hired someone else to put up the fliers? Are there any other notes you’ve done that we don’t have?”
“I didn’t say that either. I made the flyers.” He wasn’t going to admit to anything other than making and sending the letters. Too messy. “May has one. It’s the last one I sent. Blaze Wolfe came and sprayed me in the face with a garden hose or something. Haven’t had the chance to start back up again.”
“You haven’t gotten a chance to start back up again because Blaze Wolfe sprayed you with a garden hose…” June repeated. She pressed her lips together but kept back the comment and stayed on track. “How did you make them and how did you send them?”
“I don’t think you need that information.” He leaned back in the chair again. “I’m done. I’ve had my fun. I admitted to it. Let’s just get this over with and move on.”
“You’re confessing because you had your fun?”
“Does the reason I’m admitting to sending the letters matter? I don’t think it does.” His lips were upturned in smug self-satisfaction. “Just scribble on some papers that I did it. I said I did it. Let’s get a move on. I’ve got stuff to do, Officer.”
The look she gave him was wholly unwilling to put up with the look he was giving her. “Yes, JJ. The things you do, how you do them, and the reason you do them all matter. If you really want this to go as quickly as possible, don’t make me ask multiple times for a full confession.”
“I told you what you needed to know,” he stated. “I sent them. I’m done sending them. It was fun, now it’s not.”
“What changed?”
JJ’s smirk faltered for a moment before returning to its rightful place. “I don’t like being sprayed in the face.”
June looks unamused. “Why did you start sending these letters? What was your goal? Why these people?”
“I thought I’d welcome the film crew in style. Worked with a few of them.”
“So it was a prank? You wanted attention? Why threatening letters?”
“I wouldn’t call them threatening. Most of them are quotes from literature.”
“The threats are implied. Why make these notes and send them to people?”
“They’re harmless,” he countered. “I wrote a letter. I sent a letter. You can take the english language in many different ways. I didn’t outright threaten anyone.” He tilted the chair further. “I thought it would be fun. It was.” Marceline’s panic. It was well-deserved.
“Why send them?”
“It was fun,” he repeated. “I wanted to see what people would do. The human brain is fascinating, Officer.” He could prove it with the right amount of craft supplies. “And then it wasn’t. So I’m done and now we’re here.”
“What gave you the idea?”
“Doesn’t matter.” The idea that he could waste time was fun, though. His smirk renewed. “Realistically, I don’t have anywhere to be.” He splayed his hands. “We can write up a report, move on, and I’m done sending letters. Or we can sit here for hours and you can ask me the same questions over and over again. That’s your call.”
June pressed her lips together, but if she had to sit with him all day long until she got a full confession, that was exactly what she'd do. “You said you're here because it's not fun anymore and you got sprayed in the face? So you're here because you've lost friends. You think you're going to impress them by coming in here, giving half a confession, and then wasting the department’s time?”
“I don’t like being sprayed in the face,” he repeated. “I don’t have friends.” That much was true. There were a select few that could tolerate him, but they didn’t come around often. He imagined Blaze was glad he was done. His smirk dropped again for a second, his expression cruel, before his lips curled into their trademark grin. “I’m not here to impress anyone. I had my fun. It’s done. There’s nothing else to say.”
“Do you want friends?” June asked. She sized the boy up from his grin to the tone that was trying just a little too hard to convince her that he was 100% happy about being there. “Since you want to stay here with me for awhile, let’s take a few minutes and think about why you don’t have any right now when you seem like you could be capable.”
“Are you offering?” he asked in return, lifting his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I didn’t realize it was that easy.”
She gave him a cursory glance, but did not deign to comment on his sarcastic quip. He needed time to think about why he was there.
JJ preferred the silence. He tilted his chair further and closed his eyes. As a master in the art of ignoring people, he was well-versed in sit, stay, pretend to listen. And so, he refused to speak.
June stood and walked to the door. He didn't need her there for him to sit in silence. She'd get some work done and then come back in a few hours to see if the meditation had made him any more rationally headed.
Instead, he kicked his legs up onto the edge of the table for balance and took a nap. That room was safer than anywhere in the Mayweather house.
”JJ, get out of my room,” Jet grumbled as his twin stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
“I just don’t get the rush to leave.”
“You wouldn’t. You want to stay here forever. Big fish in a tiny pond. You and mom are exactly the same. I had no idea what you were doing to Juliet.” Jet packed another box, stuffing book after book until it was finished and he starter anew.
JJ frowned. “I was just—“
“No,” his brother said, turning solemnly. “No. You knew what you were doing. You were happy to do it. And if I had realized sooner—“
“What? If you had realized sooner, you would’ve stopped me?”
“I would have gotten you out of it. Just because mom chooses to be that way doesn’t mean we have to.” Jet stuffed clothes into his suitcase, mindful of the creasing. He finally turned after several long minutes of silence had stretched between them. “I love you, JJ, but I don’t like you anymore.”
JJ stayed by the door, watching as his brother dragged box after box down the stairs and to his car. When the room was practically empty except for furniture, he wandered his way to the driveway, where he stood, watching, hands shoved in his pockets.
“You don’t need to hurt other people to feel better about yourself,” Jet called from the driver’s seat as he looked at his brother. “When you figure that out, call me.”
As the car backed into the street and drove off, JJ stood there, arms crossed, eyes staring in the direction his twin had gone. “I love you, too.”
His heart was pounding in his chest as he leaned forward abruptly, toppling his balance. He stumbled out of the chair, which scraped across the floor. Shaken, he put things back and climbed into the chair again, crossing his arms. Waiting.
June saw him napping and wasn't impressed. She left him there while she got some work done. When she came back, she didn't sit down. “You can go.”
“No,” he said, his brow scrunched, his voice soft. “I need to do the right thing. I just..I don’t—“ He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know how to do what you want.” He sighed. “I don’t have friends. I don’t want them, don’t need them.”
Her eyebrow arched. At this point, June half-expected this to be another trick. She sat down anyway. “Good friends are generally good people. Their ability to care about others is what allows them to care about you. If you want someone in your life who actually truly cares about you, you have to be willing to care about them and show that you care about them through your actions. If you only say you care about them, but you hurt the people around them and cause them anguish in the process, that’s not caring about them. That’s putting your selfish feelings over the feelings of other people and whether you’re caught or not, there are consequences. It shapes you into the kind of person that isn’t worthy of having friends.
Then you have to lie to yourself and say you don’t need them. Even though a part of the human condition is needing other people. Is this the person you want to be JJ? Do you want to be the kind of person who will never be loved back and who will always be alone? Who needs people but doesn’t really have them?
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone does things that they regret or act selfishly or carelessly in a moment. But not everyone is willing to admit where they were at fault and try to fix it as best as they can. That distinction is what separates the people that other people want in their lives and the ones that people don’t.
If you want to be worthy of good friends, the right thing to do is to give me a full confession and then go to the people you regret hurting and tell them that you’re sorry and that you accepted full responsibility for your actions. If you want me to take this seriously, I need you to write down what you did, how you did it, and why.”
For once, JJ listened to June. Not because he wanted friends. Not because he really wanted to do the right thing. He didn’t. He had worked hard to ensure that he wouldn’t have to be held accountable for his actions. From a young age, he was taught that he could get away with just about anything as long as no one saw.
And no one had seen.
But her words reminded him of conversations with Jet. His minutes-younger twin. His better half. Someone had joked that they really were opposites; good and evil. They balanced each other. Except his brother had gotten tired of him. He’d gotten a full ride scholarship to NYU. He’d moved away and never looked back. Not a text. Not a call. Not a Skype conversation. Not a piece of mail. There was radio silence between them. The ball was in JJ’s court and he’d done nothing with it.
At her instruction, he reached across the table to grab a pen and a piece of paper. He wavered for a moment, glancing between the paper and June. His nostrils flared as he fought his nature. His instinct to lie. “I don’t need anyone,” he emphasized. “I’m perfectly fine on my own.”
But he carefully detailed how he’d made the letters. Used discarded magazines. Newspapers. Pamphlets. He’d utilized the library to print pictures. He crafted the letters skillfully and then shipped them out with instructions within other shipments so that they couldn’t be traced back to town. He did not explain his involvement with Marceline’s posters. And he wouldn’t. What he’d written would have to be enough. When he was done, he slid the paper back toward June and leaned back in the chair, tilted again. “Are we done now?”
“Yes,” June said. She took the written confession as evidence.
“JJ Mayweather, you are under arrest for the harassment of Camila Marple, Hugh Christian, Maxine Ryan, Rhett Wyatt…”