Characters: Claire Matthews, OCs

Summary: 2003. Claire Matthews is woken up in the middle of the night by a pair of FBI agents pounding on her front door.

Author's Note: This story was originally supposed to be used as a flashback in a Claire/Ryan fic I never ended up finishing, but then it took on a life of its own. (My Claire/Joe flashbacks tend to do that an awful lot, don't they? Hm…) This is just one of many takes exploring how Claire might've reacted to the news of her husband being the serial killer terrorizing Winslow's campus.

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Claire Matthews's eyes flicked from one federal agent to the other as she stood, frozen, still waiting to hear the punchline. Her hands cupped her elbows, holding them together over the robe she'd quickly had to throw on when she'd been woken up moments ago by the sound of a heavy fist banging on her front door. She'd been worried, when she'd answered the door and saw those two men in their imposing suits, that her clothes were too flimsy and too revealing. She'd been about to excuse herself to change, but then the two men had introduced themselves, flashed their badges, and stated the reason why they were at her door at one in the morning.

She didn't think much about clothes, or her lack of them, after that.

She didn't think much about anything after that.

After they spoke they stood, staring at her, and neither of them, from what Claire could see, so much as breathed audibly to dispel the air, let alone speak to break the silence.

Finally, she had to.

She was very conscious of her son, sleeping just a few feet away, and so even though she wanted to yell, she kept her voice relatively low as she snapped, "Well, you have the wrong guy."

The burly one on her left—Claire had forgotten his name, but it didn't matter—spoke up immediately. He had wide shoulders and thick arms, and looked more like he belonged on a professional football team than in the FBI. "Ms. Matthews—"

"I don't know what to say to you," she interrupted, throwing her hands out. "I really don't. You have the wrong person. There's nothing else I can tell you about this."

"We don't need you to tell us anything just yet." The agent had adopted a calming tone and it grated on Claire's nerves. As he stepped forward, the wood floors creaked beneath his weight, and Claire could almost feel the entire house sinking into the ground, sinking into the black hole of lies this man was creating. "But we do need you to come with us, answer a few questions…"

"What do you want me to say?" she asked, stepping forward herself, feeling an absurd urge to physically claim this space as hers, to force him—and that other one—back. Hers. This was her home; how dare they come in here and say these things? These lies? "Do you want me to agree? Do you want me to just stand here and listen to you—"

"We would like your cooperation, ma'am." Again, the larger one on her left was the one to speak.

Claire looked to the other agent—a younger, thinner man—but he avoided her eye and offered no input of his own. He hadn't spoken once since mumbling his name before crossing the threshold of her house. She wondered why he was even here; what good was he when he let Mr. Linebacker do all the talking, and probably all the fighting, for him? "Cooperation?" For some reason, she found herself glaring at the smaller agent—as if he was the one that had brought all these charges forth. "Are you kidding? What am I supposed to say—"

"You're not supposed to say anything," the larger agent attempted to correct her. "We just need you to—"

"My husband is not a serial killer!" Claire couldn't hold it in anymore, but once the words were out, she found herself speechless, save for that one sentence. What else was there to say, really? She felt like laughing; it was that ridiculous. Joe—the murderer of all those girls? No. Not possible. She studied the two agents, certain again that this had to be some sort of practical joke or elaborate hoax. The only thing that stopped her from asking were the cold, serious looks on their faces that told her without them having to say it that they weren't kidding around.

There would be no punchline, not for her.

"He isn't," she said again, renewed in her effort to convince them if they really were—for some insane reason—serious. She took the time to look them both in the eye, one after the other, as she pointed her finger at each. "He. Isn't." Mr. Linebacker barely blinked, but the smaller man on her right almost cowered. That made her feel a bit better; gave her enough confidence to continue. He continued to stare at the floor while she spoke, employing her loudest, most defiant tone without actually having to shout. She thought again of her baby boy, and suddenly wished she could kill these two men with the guns she knew they must be carrying without waking him. How dare they come into her home and accuse her husband of those atrocities? What was wrong with them; were they that desperate for a conviction they'd even take in an innocent man? "He isn't the one murdering those girls. He couldn't; he isn't capable of that. I don't know what stupid story or fake eye witness account you're going off of here—"

"Ma'am—"

"—but it's not true! He's a professor of literature, for god's sake; could you find anyone softer—" She broke off, directing her attention solely to the burly agent on her left and abandoning the one of the right. The big one had been the one to so bluntly break the news moments ago, so she knew she could get the truth, the real truth behind all this, out of him quicker than the other man. If the other man ever bothered to speak, that was. "Do you even have any proof?" she demanded, her hands on her hips, her chin jutting forward defiantly. "Do you? Or is this just some stupid suspicion? Some ridiculous hunch you all cooked up in your FBI headquarters because you aren't smart enough to find the real killer?" A thought struck her then, and for a second she stood, numbed with shock, before the non-feeling combusted into anger of such she'd never felt before. She stepped forward slowly, her finger suspended menacingly between herself and the larger agent so she wouldn't do something drastic like punch him in the face. It took all of her willpower to keep herself from screaming the words as they left her mouth. "If this is about that stupid Edgar Allan Poe theory," she hissed, "you can tell that goddamn Agent Hardy that I—"

"Ma'am," Mr. Linebacker interrupted swiftly, as she knew he would soon enough, "we have more than enough proof to put your husband away for the rest of his life." He paused briefly, and though it lasted for barely the length of one heartbeat, but it felt like an eternity to Claire. "On death row."

She had opened her mouth to say something, but by the time he'd finished speaking, there was nothing left to say.

In the wake of her silence, he continued, his voice softer now, as if to make up for its previous bluntness: "It is no longer a question of whether or not he committed these murders we mentioned, ma'am, but if he's committed any others. And we… Well, we strongly suspect that he has. The evidence…" For a second he faltered, and even his eyes fell to the floor. "We shouldn't talk about it here," he explained after a brief pause.

Claire swallowed, nodding her head to acknowledge—not that she had agreed—but merely she had heard, before lifting her chin in a challenge. "No," she told him, "we can talk about it here." She saw him open his mouth to dissuade her, but she refused to let him. He'd been so eager to explain before; he could do it again. "Tell me," she ordered. "If you're so sure, tell me what happened. If you say you have more than enough proof, tell me." Her eyes narrowed. "Tell me what makes you so certain that my husband was the one who did it. Because I'm not going anywhere, I'm not talking to either of you, until I'm convinced you aren't lying right to my face."

The two agents exchanged a loaded look before the smaller one on her right cleared his throat and opened his mouth.

Oh, Claire almost said, he can speak. But her mockery was silenced before she could even open her mouth; his words made hers disappear.

"One of our fellow agents happened across him earlier tonight, at one of the sorority houses just off campus. He heard screams as he was passing by, and by the time he entered the house, your husband…" He cleared his throat again, eyeing her nervously, as if thinking that maybe he shouldn't refer to Joe as such anymore. Claire wanted to smack him. "Your husband had already murdered one of the two girls in the house. He was torturing the second, stabbing her, by the time our agent arrived, and if he hadn't stopped him, your husband would've killed her." He paused a moment, maybe to catch his breath after speaking so much. "She's still in surgery right now. They aren't sure if she's going to survive yet. We've contacted her parents, and they're being flown in as we speak."

There was silence again after that; it was so quiet she could hear herself breathe, hear her heart beat, hear the blood rushing through her head—

"You're lying," she accused at once. She felt like her head was swimming; it was the only coherent phrase in her mind.

"Ma'am—"

"No, you're lying," she cut in forcefully, and the renewed spark of anger helped her to clear her mind. She was adamant when she spoke, full of purpose as she continued, "Let me talk to him. It had to have been someone else. You have the wrong person; he was just—just there at the wrong time. He—He was probably trying to help," she added, remembering that she and Joe had taken basic first-aid classes before Joey's birth. Infants weren't so different from adults; he had to have been trying to help her, as much as he could. "If you talk to him, he'll tell you. He'll show you. There's an explanation for all of this, you know."

"Ma'am, this is the explanation."

She shook her head. "No. No, it's not." She crossed her arms over her chest, backing away from the two agents. They were too close and the room was too small. It was too late and she was too tired and this—this wasn't happening. I'll wake up in two minutes and this will all have been a horrible dream. "Just…" She struggled for words, prayed for some sort of deliverance. "Please just…" She felt her voice shrinking and growing distant, and though she tried, she couldn't raise it. Or was it her ears that were making all the sounds seem like they were coming from far away; was the blood moving between them masking all outside sound? What if she was in fact screaming but she just couldn't hear it?

A traitorous thought entered her head, scrabbling to hang onto the coattails of the other: What if they're telling the truth and you just won't accept it? She banished it immediately, and then found her voice.

"Just let me talk to him, please." She was vaguely aware she was pleading, begging, but she didn't care. "Let me talk to Joe. Let me talk to my husband." She looked between the agents, her eyes flying from one to the other, but they both wore those identical, immovable masks of indifference. Like they didn't realize that they were tearing apart her entire life with their accusations. Or maybe they knew and they didn't even care. That was so much worse.

Their coldness, their words, suddenly made her want to sob. Why were they acting like this—so mean, so cruel? Why did they talk to her like this, come into her home like this; why did they say these terrible things? They weren't true. They couldn't be true. Where was Joe and why wasn't he here to tell them all they were wrong, to tell them all to go away?

"Just let me talk to my husband," she whispered, desperate now. She needed him here. Where was he? "Please." A hurried smile appeared on her lips as she added, hoping to win them to her side, "He'll explain it; he will." All they had to do was talk to him. Then they'd see they'd had it wrong. Then they'd see he was innocent. All he would have to do was explain. He was so good at explaining things.

"Please," she called, moving towards the agents again, not caring that she could hear her own voice breaking, "please just let him explain. He'll make you understand, make you see that he couldn't—wouldn't…" She didn't even want to say it; part of her wasn't able to. "He'll be able to explain it, I know it. He always…" She broke off abruptly, as something clicked in her mind, and she fell curiously silent. As the realization trickled down from her brain, she felt her body grow very stiff and very cold. It spread through her like her veins had just been injected with ice water, and she wondered if this was what those agents felt, standing there on her doorstep. She felt herself be transported back in time as she remembered, recalling all those things that had been meaningless, inconsequential, all those things that had had no connection… No meaning…

The stained pieces of clothing she'd glimpsed for a second in the laundry, and the others at the bottom of the trash. Wine, he'd replied at once, shutting the washer's door before she could get a better look. And paint from the art class I was auditing yesterday. I tried, but the stains wouldn't come out. Sorry. I'll get them.

The long showers taken at odd hours, the way the water ran and ran, so much so that it made her worry about the bill. Just felt like I needed a shower, he'd shrugged when she'd asked. Simple as that. The bill will be what it always is; don't worry about that.

The fact that he'd be missing from bed in the middle of the night, but then in the kitchen for breakfast the next morning. Maybe I'm sleep walking, he'd joked with a smile. Does it really matter? I'm here now.

She blinked, the memories running together and fading as the agents came back into sharp focus. With them standing before her, at either sides of her door like ghoulish sentries, she suddenly saw what they must've seen.

It hadn't been wine stains on the shirts, or paint. And he hadn't been embarrassed that she'd seen them, or that he'd failed to clean them correctly, but worried that she'd instead realize exactly what it was that she was seeing.

The long showers had not been for cleanliness, or relaxation, but for washing away the evidence. For scrubbing his body clean of all traces of what he had done.

The nighttime disappearances were not random bouts of insomnia, or somnambulism, or even momentary trips to the bathroom. They'd been intentional excursions out past the front door, down the street, through the neighborhood. They'd been midnight hunts. Killing sprees.

Claire could barely stand still with the way her head was spinning. It felt like it was going to fly right off of her body, and she put a hand on the wall beside her to steady herself. No, she told herself. No, it wasn't true. None of it was true. They were lying to her and they had the wrong person. They had to have. She opened her mouth, knowing she had to speak, knowing she had to say something. He was her husband and she was his wife and you defended your spouse when people came into your home and made terrible accusations like this.

She tried to make words, but for a time her chin trembled so badly that she couldn't utter a single sound. Finally, after some time and much patience on the agents' part, she managed to finish what she'd started saying long ago, though its meaning had long since changed, and her voice had grown so much quieter: "He always… always had an explanation." Her eyes wandered between the two men, lost, searching for understanding in their statue-like faces. Her gaze lingered on the younger, smaller one, but to her surprise, it was the burly man who looked most sympathetic.

He nodded calmly at her words, and he sounded almost apologetic, and even almost kind, when he spoke: "I'm very sure he did, ma'am."

He paused for what felt like a very long time before stepping forward, lifting a hand to her elbow to guide her towards the door, and asking quietly, "Would you… please come with us now, Ms. Matthews?"

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Author's Note: Reviews would be very much welcome! I loved writing this piece when I started it, but I just never had time to finish it. I'm glad I found time (finally!), and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Thank you for reading! Please leave your thoughts below! :)