Mind Games (8 page)

“We’re just here to ask you a few questions,” Amy said. “It won’t take long.”

The woman clacked her nails on the doorframe, and she opened the door a little wider, revealing the tip of a shotgun. “And why should I let you in?” Then she hiccupped three times in a row.

“We’re investigating the death of Fred Stefani.” Amy leaned towards the door. “Did you know him?”

The woman slid her nails onto the barrel of the shotgun and pushed it further out the door, aiming it up. “Yeah. I knew him.” She coughed and spat through the crack in the door onto Vince’s boot. “What’s it to you?”

“Were you in business with Mr. Stefani?”

The shotgun lowered two inches. “Like I’d tell you anyway.”

Vince interrupted with a deepened version of his voice.

“Lady, spill the beans.”

She coughed again. “Stefani. You know Stefani?”

“Not really. We found him dead in his basement.” Vince said.

“Well, shit. I’m glad…the damn fool. Although, he was one of my biggest customers.” She shook her knobby fist at the sky. “That bastard owed me money.”

Amy was impressed. This woman was so high that she didn’t realize she was confessing to selling illegal drugs.

Vince decided to take advantage of the situation. “I didn’t get my fix this week, and I was wondering if you have any deals on crank.”

“Who said that?” The woman opened the door and poked her face out, holding the shotgun in the cleft of her chin. Her glassy eyes looked like marbles coated with Vaseline. A sly smile crinkled around her sunken eye sockets, and she lifted a scrawny finger towards Vince. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” She already liked Vince and gazed up at him like he was her long lost son, but it was only the drugs talking.

Amy hid her gun. It seemed stupid, but maybe Vince’s oddball vibe was actually some kind of brilliant asset. She signaled Cameron as the woman stepped out into the daylight. From the extreme paleness of her skin, Amy wondered if the woman was going to shrivel upon exposure.

The scrawny lady reminded Cameron of a velociraptor.

“Come inside. Please. But wipe your shoes off first. Don’t track any shit onto my carpet. I just got it cleaned.”

Vince started shaking like an addict. “Cool, ‘cause I really need my fix.” He rolled his neck around and sniffed.

When the dinosaur’s back was turned, Cameron and Amy ducked behind some bushes outside as Vince entered apartment 445. They kept low just in case the old lady remembered they were actually cops. Cameron’s lack of sleep made him a little silly, so he did a tuck and tumble behind the SUV. And when he did, even Amy laughed.

This is why they kept Vince around.

He knew how to roll with the punches.

After a few minute
s
, Vince left the apartment with the woman cuffed while she rambled about how bright it was outside.

They brought her to the station for questioning, and it turned out she didn’t actually know anything about Fred Stefani’s death. When Vince asked her about Stefani’s involvement with some sort of terrorist group, the old lady laughed and said she’d always thought Stefani was a regular pussy. She doubted he was dangerous at all.

But Amy wasn’t convinced.

She thought this woman didn’t seem to be a very reliable source, especially in her condition. Vince decided the dinosaur lady really had no other connection to Stefani other than selling him cocaine.

False leads, like dinosaur lady, were more common than not. Vince told his friends at the bar that false leads were the things they never got right in TV shows. The characters in the show might spend a few extra minutes questioning an incorrect suspect, but Vince claimed the writers never truly explored the other time commitments involved in securing leads. Vince always reminded the bar crowd that investigators don’t actually know whether a certain trail will lead anywhere until they reach the end of it.

After a few brews, Vince would lean over the bar and toss a wadded-up napkin at the bartender, asking for another round. And while the bartender poured more beer, Vince cracked a few peanuts and told his friends all about the inner-workings of crime scene investigations.

“You see,” he’d say, half-hammered out of his mind, “The TV shows and movies are full of all kinds of bullshit. They never show characters taking a piss or knocking on the wrong door. No! They find the body, ask a few questions, and they’re halfway to putting them in shackles. That’s just not the way it works. I’ll tell you what actually happens…”

When it came to interviewing suspects, Vince prided himself in his abilities. Through questioning, he tried to understand their motivations, which was easier said than done.

He’d start by asking some very simple questions in attempts to gain their trust. Vince studied under the Reid model of interrogation. Developed in Chicago, the methods pushed towards gaining a confession. Under the nine steps of the Reid model, Vince learned to go as far as claiming to have false incriminating evidence in a manila folder. Anything to get them to talk.

Other times, he’d claim to have security footage of the suspect committing the crime. All of these lies were permitted as long as he did not present the false evidence in physical form. Vince also learned to interrupt the suspect whenever they denied accusations and continually get closer to them as the interview proceeded.

This way, he maintained control over the suspect. He could always tell when certain people were about to reach a point of confession. It was something subtle that happened behind their eyes, a flash of surrender. Some criminals, especially rookies, had extremely obvious tells.  Vince knew how to look for these nervous habits: posture, vocal inflection, the flick of an eye, the tap of a foot, even the smallest change in jaw movement.

But other criminals developed a poker face. Over years of repeat offenses, possibly several trips to jail or prison, certain criminals could kill without changing their heart rate. And if their demeanor was cool in the act, it was even cooler in the denial.

When he knew they were guilty, Vince asked for the room to be chilled, making the suspect uncomfortable. More severe tactics were certainly legal, but Vince always believed the interrogation was meant to be a psychological battle with bluffs and lies for ammunition.

And confession or not, Vince didn’t like to lose.

Over the course of the next two week
s
, the team of investigators conducted several drug busts thanks to dinosaur lady, but they didn’t find anyone who was aware of Fred Stefani’s weapon business. Vince and Amy tried their best interview methods, but no one broke.

Amy even assigned a cop to go undercover into the black market trade, seeking any information about Stefani’s crime web, but Stefani apparently needed more advertising. That, or he’d found a way to keep his clients quiet.

Throughout the ongoing investigation, Cameron collected photos of new suspects, including several black market players; but as he added them to the evidence board, they were slowly taken down one by one. These pictures were then filed and stored in some cardboard box in the evidence lockup to gather dust.

Jennifer Frost had spen
t
the last two weeks feverishly perfecting her security updates for the bank. Since the proposal had been approved, she stayed up late testing motion sensors and alarm triggers. In the stresses of the late night work, she remembered the strains of obtaining her degree in electrical engineering. Those late nights hadn’t been so different: the countless formulas, calculations, and failures.

Shifting her protractor and straightedge along security blueprints, Jen approached failure with strength. The failure motivated her, causing her to push towards innovation.

In order to keep her mind from overheating, Jen spent the last few afternoons with Sarah making orange marmalade from scratch. The simple recipe allowed Jennifer to focus on her daughter, listening to her and offering advice as Sarah requested it.

When he was home in the evenings, Cameron was thankful for the hours of normalcy he was able to spend with his wife and daughter. Sarah’s eleventh birthday was coming up, so Cameron helped take custom photos to create an invitation. The dangers of Jen’s security proposal – the plans that involved Sarah – had faded from Cameron’s mind.  But these risks were intensely magnified on the night of Sarah’s party.

Sarah had a group of five girls over
,
and they did sidewalk chalk outside while Cameron grilled hotdogs in the backyard. Jen sat on the front patio watching the girls swirl the chalk into colorful pictures. The girls even made their own hopscotch game, and Jen joined in the fun, skipping and jumping along with the group of pre-teens. Cameron called the girls inside, and they skipped to the bathroom to wash off the colorful dust. Jen helped set the table on the deck near the grill while Cameron covered the cooked hotdogs with a sheet of tin foil and poured the drinks.

After the meal, the girls played with water balloons in the backyard, and by the end of the games, both the lawn and the girls were soaking wet. Jen brought out a stack of towels, and the girls dried off and hung them on the lawn chairs, making a fort. Cameron and Jen sat next to each other holding hands, listening as the girls whispered under the fort.

A calm breeze wafted over the backyard, carrying the remaining smoke scent from the cooling grill. It was that distinct, smoky smell of summer than contributed to the ease of the evening.

And as the sun dipped below the tree line, Cameron realized his early struggles as a father had become easier with experience. Although she had streaks of rebellion in her, Sarah was an all-around good girl. In Cameron’s eyes, Sarah was still his smart, sensible princess.

Lounging on the patio, Cameron sipped iced tea while Jen drank two glasses of red wine. It was about 8:30PM, and they were about to start the s’mores. Jen went to the kitchen to get the chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers while Cameron started a small fire. He used some twigs from the backyard tree and brought over a few logs from the garage.

When the fire died down to glowing embers, the girls emerged from the fort and bounced back to the porch chanting, “We want s’mores! We want s’mores!”

Cameron handed a roasting stick to each of the girls and told them Jen would be right out with the marshmallows.

But she never came.

“I’ll be right back.” Cameron went inside to the kitchen.

When he rounded the kitchen island, an invisible force field stopped him from moving forward, and his breath locked in his chest. Fear dug into his scalp, bringing on the sting of an instant headache.

Dozens of marshmallows dotted the kitchen’s rustic linoleum, and the empty bag lay next to a horrific sight: two drops of blood and a small clump of brown, glossy hair.

These remains laid just to the right of Jen’s purple slipper. It was the same slipper she’d been wearing just minutes before as they sat outside, but now there was only one of them, flopped over, and slightly bent. Cameron noticed a small object glint underneath the fridge, and he fought the paralyzing fear freezing his skull. He leaned down to pull it out. It was Jen’s cell phone. The battery had fallen out of it, and the screen was violently cracked.

Cameron then saw a stack of books knocked over onto the floor near the front entryway, and the welcome mat was turned askew. He also found a small piece of duct tape next to the mat.

He’d photographed similar imagery. These were the classic signs of a struggle.

Cameron ran out the front door and listened for the squeal of tires or the scream of his wife, but there was nothing but the soft, smoky breeze. He clamored back inside and went to the garage.  Jennifer’s car was still parked next to his motorcycle.

Trying to calm himself, Cameron rushed back into the house and searched the home office. The stack of blueprints that normally rested on Jen’s desk was gone.

Cameron checked the bathroom, then the bedroom.

She wasn’t there.

In an emotional frenzy, Cameron tried to clean up the blood and clumps of hair. If Sarah saw signs of struggle, she would figure it out.

Cameron’s mind race
d
back to the night he argued with Jen about her security proposal. In the two weeks since the bank manager had approved her idea, Jen had been taking Sarah to work with her at certain times to help with the final stage of the security upgrade.

  It was almost too simple: a standard retinal scan. However, there was only one set of eyes in the world that the San Francisco Empire Bank vault would open for…

Those blue eyes had just turned eleven.

Sarah loved her trips to the Bank with her mom, but it never occurred to her that these field trips could lead to danger, especially not the abduction of her own mother.

Cameron finished cleaning up the spilled marshmallows just before Sarah entered the kitchen.