The Devil's Cinema (5 page)

I
N A POLICE INTERVIEW
room on the other side of town, Joss was hesitant to open up about his dealings with Twitchell. Sitting beside a detective at southwest division, Joss slowly revealed that he had helped the filmmaker, a good friend, with a short film production in the garage at the end of September.

Twitchell's script had featured a serial killer who was targeting unfaithful husbands. These men were tortured and then stabbed. Joss remembered how the death scene used “lots of blood.” In the corner of the garage they also had an oil drum. While it wasn't used during the film shoot, Joss
understood it was a “burn barrel” that the killer would use to dispose of the remains of his victims.

C
LARK KNEW THE GAME
was about to begin, but the problem was he had very little evidence. If the case was going to move ahead tonight he would likely need Twitchell to confess – but to what? Clark talked it over with Anstey, and they figured he needed to start positive. If Twitchell began saying anything that implicated him further, Clark would have to stop the interview and read him his rights. Until then, he'd play the role of bumbling idiot cop. Big smiles, lots of nodding.

Clark strolled into the interview room and Twitchell stirred awake. “Hey, Mark, thanks for waiting.” Clark took a seat in a chair across from him.

The two of them talked for an hour and a half.

Twitchell needed little prodding. He was soon telling Clark all about his life and the strange things that had transpired in the past few weeks: Twitchell was a married man and a young father. His wife, Jess, was on maternity leave from the Workers' Compensation Board. Their baby, Chloe, was now eight months old, and she had been sleeping through the night after the first few weeks.

Twitchell loved
Star Wars
and had directed a fan film based on the sci-fi series. That's where he had met Joss and became friends with Mike and Jay, his current production assistants. He said one of his email addresses had the name “Kit Fisto” within it, a reference to a Jedi knight in
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
. Clark shrugged it off, having no idea what Twitchell was talking about when he described the “green dude who smiles a lot” with a lightsaber.

Twitchell said his film career had been developed with a laptop while sitting in coffee shops. His income came from a combination of money raised from film investors and revenue from selling handmade
Star Wars
props on eBay. He had just shipped a codpiece, which covers the crotch, for a Darth Vader costume, the day he dropped off the cleaning supplies at his garage.

He had two cell phones. The call he had taken before buying the forty-dollar car was from a Los Angeles producer who was helping Twitchell find investors for a planned comedy feature called
Day Players
. Twitchell could go on for hours, even though it was the middle of the night.

Clark made notes, slowly directing Twitchell to topics relevant to the investigation. Murphy listened in the monitor room, taking his own.

The oil drum in the garage had been purchased online, like most of Twitchell's possessions. He had filmed his horror movie at the end of September and then gone back to the garage in the late afternoon of October 10, the day of Johnny's disappearance. He was cleaning up the film set between 3:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Twitchell said he was concerned about the fake blood mix they had used – a mixture of corn syrup and red food colouring – because it could start “attracting bugs.”

Clark had Twitchell tell the car story twice, then he had him tell it backwards. The same odd details emerged: a mystery man with a Celtic knot tattoo and a sugar momma who was taking him on a vacation. His willingness to unload the car for forty dollars, no bill of sale. Twitchell taking the licence plate, keys, and leaving them in his own car. The basic story, however, had changed multiple times, sometimes with added detail, other times with the order of events changed around. In the version told to Clark, Twitchell had gone to the gas station to fill up a jerry can in his trunk – good for emergencies, he said, and for a lawn mower he was going to buy some day. “I think I might've forgotten to put that in the eight-page version of the statement,” said Twitchell. “But anyway …”

By the time Clark left the room, it was nearly 4:00 a.m.

I
N THE DARKNESS, NEIGHBOURS
living near the garage had been awakened by police knocking on their front doors. Officers were asking questions. Next door to the garage, and nearing retirement age, Mike and Lynda Warren clearly remembered seeing a group of young men making a movie. They had placed black plastic over all the windows. One man they saw often. He drove a Pontiac Grand Am and had short black hair. The last time they saw him was on the weekend. Peering through their fence, as neighbours sometimes do, they spotted him changing the padlock on the garage door.

Farther down the road, another couple was startled awake by police officers. They remembered seeing a red car, definitely something sporty like a Mazda, parked outside that same garage on October 14. It was the day of the federal election and they had walked right past it on their way to the polls.

“B
OY, IS THAT GUY
lying!” Clark exhaled a long sigh as he staggered into the monitor room, rubbing his bald head and giving Murphy a look through his fatigue.

“Oh, yeah!” Murphy nodded.

“Is there anything more, anything I can go over with this guy?” Anstey walked in and the three of them talked, realizing there was nothing else.

Clark had heard enough. He was exhausted. He had been up for twenty hours. It was time to press the issue. “I'm going to confront him. If we don't get a confession he's walking out of here anyway, so let's see what he says.”

Anstey and Murphy agreed.

Clark tried to find the energy. He didn't drink coffee so it was proving difficult to stay sharp. At least he knew Twitchell's reaction would tell him everything. When confronted, an innocent man always loses his composure and denies everything. Clark would know something terrible had happened to Johnny if Twitchell's reaction was anything different.

J
OSS DIDN'T WANT TO
spill the story on Twitchell. After all, he believed the man would make him millions and their film ideas were going to be hits. Already investors were handing over thousands to finance
Day Players
. Joss and his family had even put up $30,000 of their own money for the film. But the detective pressed on and Joss finally complied: he told the detective he had removed the Mazda's licence plate and cleaned the car “a little,” but then he left it alone, parked in the driveway of his parents' house. Twitchell had the key. Joss remembered the day Twitchell had called him to help move the Mazda quite clearly. He had been at work on the afternoon of Friday, October 17.

Another detail then came back to Joss that he thought the police may want to know about. His grandfather was a retired cop so Joss respected the law. About a month ago, he said, Twitchell had asked him to be a reference on a new purchase that required a bit of paperwork. And Joss didn't mind.

Twitchell, for an unknown reason, had suddenly expressed interest in buying a gun.

T
HE METAL DOOR TO
the soft room clinked open. Twitchell, appearing tired, turned to see Clark shuffle back inside the interview room, legal pad in hand.

“Mark, you remember what I mentioned to you earlier?” Clark pushed the door shut behind him, making sure the latch had closed. “About, uh, contacting a lawyer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That still holds true, okay? Just so you're aware. If at any time we're talking and you wanna contact a lawyer, you can do so. I'll take you to a phone.” Clark sneaked a quick downward glace at his notepad. “There's something else I wanna tell you … Mark.”

Twitchell was hunched over, holding his chin up with one hand.

Clark dropped his papers on the table and turned to face him. He took a quick breath, then launched in. “There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that you're involved in the disappearance of John Altinger.” He chopped each word with his hands like he was lecturing Twitchell, towering over top of him.

Twitchell blinked rapidly, looking up at Clark in sudden shock. His eyes flared as he locked on to Clark's gaze.

Thirteen seconds passed in silence as they stared at each other.

Twitchell slowly leaned back into the couch, his fleece jacket rustling against it. He dropped his hands between his knees and tried to regain his composure.

Clark raised his voice again. “No doubt in my mind at all, Mark.” He was nearly shouting.

Twitchell looked stunned. He opened up his hands to Clark like he was pleading for scraps of food before finally responding. “Uh, wha, why?”

Clark shuffled backwards to take a seat, ignoring the question, realizing he was now in for a marathon. Twitchell had become a prime suspect. He dropped down on the edge of the chair, his elbows resting on his thighs, opening up his body language. “As I said, Mark …” He shook his head, lowering his voice. “There's no doubt in my mind that you're involved in this disappearance.”

Twitchell exhaled in a heavy sigh that seemed to empty his lungs. His body deflated. He collapsed and buried his face in his hands, gasping for
a breath. Rubbing his forehead hard, he stared down at the office carpet, avoiding the detective's probing stare.

But Clark kept hammering away. “I just wanna get to the bottom of this because this is
not
gonna go away. It's not gonna
leave
you, Mark.”

Twitchell drummed his forehead with his fingers, hiding half his face. “I, I don't understand.”

“I'm gonna explain some of the reasons to you,” Clark said, pausing for effect. “But you
do
understand.”

Twitchell sat up straight, squinted, and clasped his hands together again. He listened closely, expressionless.

“You're involved in this and unfortunately …” Clark shrugged his shoulders. “Something got carried away. Something got carried away with this guy.” He kept nodding as he changed his tone to that of a father-confessor. “I mean, talking to you here tonight, you seem like a decent guy. And I think that something happened that night that maybe you just didn't have total control of. And I'm here to get to the bottom of it. Because it's not gonna go away. This is gonna stay with you …”

Twitchell shook his head, staring at his palms as he sighed yet again.

“We need to clear this up here and now. We need to clear this up tonight.”

Twitchell shook his head in defiance.

“You need to tell me the truth about what's going on,” Clark stressed. “What happened … with this fella?”

But the room was silent. The low hum of fluorescent lights droned on as the clock ticked past five in the morning. Twitchell did not respond. Clark, speaking slowly as his fatigue settled in, reached for an explanation. “I mean, did this happen because of the movie thing? … Something that went too far?”

Twitchell fell back into the couch and threw his hands up in the air. “I have no idea what the
hell
is going on,” he said, his voice quivering.

But Clark was relentless. “You
do
have an idea,” he said, staring him down. “You have a very good idea, Mark, about what's going on. You know
exactly
what happened there that night.”

Twitchell clutched his forehead again, sighed, and dropped his head into his hands. He refused to open up.

Clark pressed on, scolding the filmmaker for more than an hour. He probed for a weak spot, circling back repeatedly to Twitchell's wife, Jess,
and his baby, Chloe.
Think of your family
. Clark repeated it.
What are they going to do? What are you going to tell your wife?
He laid on the guilt, then built him up with praise.
You're a smart guy. Decent guy. Have a conscience
. He seized on anything that might get Twitchell to talk, anything to pry him open and unburden himself, get him to spill the story.

Twitchell looked rattled. “This can't be,” he peeped. “I don't –” His whole body language had changed. Clark saw his posture close in on him like he had become a shamed man, lost, powerless, and under attack. “I just don't understand,” Twitchell whimpered.

Clark reached for his notes. The case wasn't too difficult, he explained: a guy was missing, the police knew he had gone to Twitchell's garage, and he had already admitted in the interview that the missing man's licence plate and keys were in his own car. On top of that, here he was with a ludicrous story that he had bought the missing man's vehicle for only forty dollars with no bill of sale from a mystery man with a Celtic knot tattoo. Twitchell had said repeatedly that he bought the car on October 15. But having checked in on the rest of the police team during the break earlier in the night, Clark knew Joss had already revealed how Twitchell had called him to move the car on October 17, while a neighbour had spotted the Mazda parked at the garage on October 14. And Twitchell's version of events had changed repeatedly. It had changed from the previous night's interview, changed from his written statement, and continued to change even while he was talking with Clark. The detective knew Twitchell was lying about the padlock and was suspicious about the barrel. The jerry can in his trunk made no sense either. Who buys a can of gas for a lawn mower they don't own? Nothing was adding up. It was time to fess up.

“You've changed your whole story. Told all kinds of different lies.”

As Clark picked off the list of inconsistencies, Twitchell hid his face with his hands and avoided looking at him. He stroked the bridge of his nose with his index finger, sighing repeatedly.

“What happened to John, Mark? What did you do to him?”

“I'm done,” Twitchell said. Clenching his first, he pressed his knuckles against his temples. He wanted out. “I'm just not talkin' anymore.… This is ridiculous.”