AND IF YOU FALL, HOLD MY HAND
Date of Birth 🡒 January 02, 1993 [26]
Identity 🡒 Cis Woman & She/Her/Hers
Has Been in St. Clair 🡒 Entire life
Currently Living 🡒 Bon Temps
Occupation 🡒 Co-owns Common Grounds with Luciana Lefay
Faceclaim 🡒 Katie Stevens
OOH BABY, IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN
TW - Military death, sibling death, drug addiction, drug use
1. GOOD AFTERNOON, FIRST OFF I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS SIMPLY PROCEDURE. YOU AREN’T IN TROUBLE. WE JUST HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK, IS THAT ALRIGHT? AND BEFORE WE GET STARTED, HAS ANYONE OFFERED YOU SOMETHING TO DRINK YET? A WATER, COFFEE, OR PERHAPS A CUP OF TEA?
“Yeah sure, tea would be good.” Lux glanced around the interrogation room, then looked back at the officer. She knew her rights and how easily anything she said today could be twisted and turned against her. She was going to be careful, and a cup of tea wasn’t going to change that. “I hope you are interrogating all the founding families and not just us.” Lux hated the judgement her family got for their past and what Grandpa Randall had done to the Hale name. She wasn’t surprised when she and her siblings were called in for questioning early on.
2. OKAY THEN, COULD YOU PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME FOR THE RECORD? IS THAT YOUR BIRTH NAME? ANY ALIASES WE SHOULD BE AWARE OF?
She sighed, she didn’t really like her full name. “Luxana Hale.” Lux rolled her eyes, “I’ve been here my whole life, I know you know me. It’s Lux to most people. I don’t have any secret alias that I use in my shady backroom dealings.” she added flatly.
3. NOW THEN, LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD BRIEFLY. WHAT WAS GROWING UP LIKE FOR YOU?
Lux furrowed her brow, “What does my childhood have to do with the recent crimes?” It wasn’t as if she had anything to hide regarding her childhood. In fact, it had been a pretty good one. “You and the whole town watched me grow up here, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary. The biggest event was probably when my parents divorced and my dad got remarried, then suddenly Xander and I had another sibling and there were two versions of every holiday.”
4. AND WHAT ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR FAMILY? WERE YOU CLOSE WITH YOUR PARENTS, OR GUARDIANS? ANY SIBLINGS?
Lux narrowed her eyes at the officer, “Are you hoping I say I’m not close with my parents so you can find out more information about our family’s business? Because I am not here to answer any questions that are not directly related to this investigation.” The last thing she wanted to do was give the police or anyone else a reason to look further into her family.
In truth, she was close with most of her family. Growing up with a twin meant that she and Xander were inseparable, and were as close as two people could possibly be. She grew up idolizing her father and thinking he could do no wrong. Even after she discovered the unsavory side of the family business, she always believed her dad would turn things around for the better. Although their mom was absent-minded and often unreliable, she and Xander would always humor the latest of her ever changing obsessions. Now Lux still regularly spends time with her, but the loss was hard on both of them. When her father met and married Olivia, Lux saw the kind of fierce commitment and love a mother could have for children, and reluctantly grew to really like her stepmom.
5. WHAT WAS YOUR HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE LIKE? DID YOU ENJOY IT? DID YOU HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS, OR WERE YOU MORE OF A LONER? SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN, MAYBE?
“Again I’m not sure how relevant these questions are to the investigation.” Lux knew that the friends she associated with in high school, and still did, were directly affected by these crimes. So she supposed she should share a bit of information. “I enjoyed high school. Xander and I had a lot of shared friends, but we were closest with some of the founding families’ kids since we all grew up together.” Even with all the rumors and sideways glances surrounding the Hale business, their close friends had thankfully stuck by them.
6. SO, DID YOU GO TO COLLEGE? IF SO, WHAT FOR AND IF NOT, WHY? WHAT WAS YOUR POST-HIGH SCHOOL LIFE LIKE?
“I went to Arcadia College for Business and Accounting. It was the first time I had done something different from Xander, I went to college and he joined the Marines.” Xander had returned for her graduation, and it was the last time she saw him alive. Post high school life was fine, if a little lonely because they were separated.Post college life was nearly unbearable without him.
7. DO YOU HAVE A REPUTATION AROUND TOWN? HOW WOULD YOU SAY OTHERS PERCEIVE YOU?
“For most of my life I was ‘one of the twins’ or we were just The Twins. But I’m guessing they have a different way to refer to just me now.” Lux shrugged at the question, how was she supposed to know how people perceived her? “I don’t know, I’ve always been kind of a bookworm, maybe that.” Or they associated her with the black sheep founding family. “I was told once in college that I came off as ‘cold and calculating’ which I thought was a little harsh. I wouldn’t say I’m cold.” But everyone was entitled to their opinions, even if those opinions were wrong.
8. CAN YOU HELP ME UNDERSTAND YOUR PERSONALITY? WHAT ARE YOU LIKE, BOTH ON THE SURFACE AND DEEP DOWN? WHAT ABOUT IN PUBLIC VERSUS IN PRIVATE?
“Is this the profiling portion of the interview, where you figure out if I have the kind of personality that makes me capable of murder?” she asked pointedly. “I don’t know how to describe my own personality…straightforward, serious, maybe a little temperamental?” Lux shrugged. Xander had always helped to balance her out and keep her less serious and not so hard on herself. Now that he was gone, she had hardened some on the surface to protect from the sympathetic pity she got from everyone. In private though, she was often anxious and bubbling with emotions she didn’t want to let out.
9. LEADING OFF OF THAT, WHAT WOULD YOU CONSIDER TO BE YOUR GREATEST STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES?
“This sounds like a job interview now. Hmm, strengths would probably be that I have a pretty analytical mind, I learn quickly, and I consider myself a good friend.” She was a fierce protector of her family and any of her friends. “I’m not really wanting to share a list of weaknesses with you though, officer.” If she were to choose weaknesses, it would likely be that she could be cynical at times, she was overly guarded, and could be too quick to judge. But she was working on that last one.
10. A BIT HEAVIER, I KNOW, BUT I HAVE TO ASK IF ANYTHING HAS HAPPENED TO YOU PERSONALLY IN YOUR LIFE THAT DRASTICALLY CHANGED YOU AS A PERSON?
Lux frowned. “I already told you, losing Xander. Losing him meant I lost my other half, and I’m still adjusting to life without him. I went to Greece for a couple months right after he died because we always said we would go and I needed to be away from here for a while. He always helped me mellow out and lighten up so now I have to figure out how to do that on my own.” She wished that this interrogation hadn’t turned into talking about Xander so much. He died overseas in the Marines, he wasn’t even one of the people lost to these murders. She felt kind of guilty bringing up his death when others had been killed so brutally.
11. AND OF COURSE, I HAVE TO ASK, WERE YOU IN TOWN BETWEEN ‘96 AND ‘99 WHEN THE ORIGINAL DROWNINGS OCCURRED? DID YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW ANY OF THE ORIGINAL SEVEN VICTIMS? WHAT WAS YOUR LIFE LIKE DURING THOSE TRAGIC YEARS? WHAT WAS THE AFTERMATH?
She let out a flat laugh. “I would have to be a pretty capable toddler to have anything to do with the first round of murders. I was three and six, so I would say that’s a solid alibi.” Lux pursed her lips as she remembered being that young and hearing about the deaths, especially Dahlia’s. “One of my best friend’s older sister was killed back then, and I remember going over to Luci’s house and how empty it felt without Dahlia.”
12. THAT SAID, DID YOU KNOW EITHER DARYLL BORDELON OR GEORGIANA MEARS PERSONALLY? IF SO, WHAT WAS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THEM? HOW MUCH HAVE THEIR DEATHS AFFECTED YOU?
“Yeah I knew Daryll, he’s - he was, Rian’s older brother.” It still felt weird to change descriptions into past tense, no matter how long ago their death was. “I grew up with Rian and am pretty close with them, so I knew Daryll fairly well. It’s been weird to have someone who was always around just suddenly be…gone. But I’ve been trying to help Rian and their family through it since I’ve been there.”
She shook her head at the question about Georgiana, “I knew who she was and heard she was back in town, but I didn’t really know her personally.”
13. LASTLY, WHERE WERE YOU ON THE NIGHTS OF MARCH 9TH AND JULY 23RD AND IS THERE ANYONE THAT CAN CORROBORATE YOUR WHEREABOUTS?
“March ninth…” Lux pulled out her phone and scrolled back in her calendar. “I was at work, you’re welcome to check that out with the cameras or with Luci.” She swiped over to July and shrugged. “Looks like I had that day off, but the only thing in my calendar is a list of some things to pick up at the store. So I must have gone shopping at some point but otherwise I’m not sure where I was. Probably at home or with Rian.”
TO THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER
After the death of her brother, Lux felt like she lost some of the naivete and optimism she had about the world. She grew more interested in the shady side of the family business, and with her degree under her belt, she has been helping her dad keep those connections alive and the details hidden. Her moral compass is a little broken with her twin gone, but she also understands the benefit of keeping the unsavory connections and the risk of losing them.
Georgiana had come to Lux two nights before her death asking if she could get her a drug connection in town. Georgiana had heard the rumors surrounding the Hale’s shipping business and assumed it would be easy, but Lux didn’t want to associate with a known addict and risk anything further with their reputation. Georgiana was persistent and kept calling Lux, and when she was found dead, Lux deleted the call records from her phone just in case.
