Disclaimer: Meyer owns Bella and Edward's characters. I own the rest.
"Silently, I put on
Today's straw sandals." – Santōka Taneda 9 translated by John Stevens
Chapter 2
I went home and got two hours of sleep. Then I was back at work.
A few months back, there was a departmental memo about not pushing ourselves too hard. Apparently, some psychologist had published a study saying that policemen weren't at their best when they were exhausted.
Who knew?
Until they fixed the budget so that they could hire more detectives, or crime took a holiday, there wasn't much that anyone could do about reducing the workload.
And for the most part, I didn't mind. I didn't have a family and I wasn't looking for one.
Nichols said that I had it backwards, that family made the job tolerable.
But it seems to me that when you're looking for ways to make a job tolerable, maybe it's the wrong job for you.
Lisa didn't get that. She didn't understand why I was a detective.
Recruits tell their friends and family that they're becoming cops because they just want to help people. That's not exactly true, though, because a person could become a doctor or a fireman, do good without doing any harm.
I didn't harbor any delusions: Cops hurt people. Cops lied and took bribes and looked the other way when bad things happened. Cops killed kids and never faced jail time thanks to the color of their skin.
I was a cop because I didn't trust the police. One of my mother's boyfriends was a cop, and he liked to beat the shit out of her. I even called the police once, but they covered for him.
That told me everything that I needed to know about the illustrious fraternal order of policemen.
I became a cop so that I could keep my eye on them. More importantly, I wanted to show that it could be done differently. To prove that cops didn't have to be bad, to make it all the more obvious that their corruption was a choice. And thus a sin.
I wanted to do it right.
And I wasn't all that bad. Or so I liked to tell myself.
I made mistakes. It was human nature. I went to court with cases that weren't 100%. But I never intentionally cut corners—interviewing Spencer on my own, that was an aberration. I followed the rules. And I did my best. Even when my best was kind of crappy.
I liked to think that I was a good cop. Particularly on days like this, running on nothing but caffeine and sheer willpower.
"You look like you're going to pass out," Nichols observed.
I sat up straighter. "Bout time you showed."
"I've already been here an hour," he said.
"Hiding in the bathroom?"
"Talking to Murphy. He's talking to the victim's accountant, looking for anything shady."
"Have him check up on the dead wife, too," I said. The victim was a widower, his wife having died of some sort of illness. We'd come across the death certificate in the guy's safe.
"Already on it. He's still going everything we found in the safe. Looking for any firms the vic might have worked with."
In addition to the death certificate, they'd found several accounting books in the safe. The vic appeared to be a self-employed real estate agent. But nothing looked shady. Yet.
We still had no idea what the victim was doing in that alley, and our list of suspects was woefully short.
But while we were waiting for some leads to come back on the vic's family and any questionable business deals he might have had a hand in, we were going to nail down the alibi for our only suspect.
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Cindy King was a bubblegum blonde, complete with the bubblegum. She just kept on popping and chewing, her eyes like saucers as she stared at us over the monitor sitting on her desk.
She was employed as an IT specialist at the same biostatistical firm that employed Isabella Spencer. And if Miss King was anything to go by, IT wasn't for nerds anymore.
"Isabella left then," Miss King explained. "It was pretty clear that she wasn't interested in hanging out. But then, she never is." Pop.
Nichols was nodding like a puppy, encouraging Miss King to elaborate. "So she left alone then."
Miss King started to answer, but then stopped. "Well she left alone, but Marcus left right after. I thought that he was going to try to catch up with her." Pop. Chew. Pop.
"Did he come back?" I asked, because Nichols' puppy dog impersonation was wearing on my nerves.
Miss King's head swung in my direction. Pop. "Nope." She even popped the 'p.' "But I don't think that he went home with her. She's too much of a prude. I don't know what Marcus sees in her."
I opened my mouth to reply, but Nichols was already thanking her for her assistance and asking if Marcus was available.
We were directed to a set of cubicles, and even managed to make our way there without causing too much of a stir. But Mr. Marcus Stottin wasn't interested in talking.
"Do you have a warrant?"
"Excuse me?" Nichols asked, the puppy adopting a confused look.
Mr. Stottin crossed his arms. "I don't have to talk to you if I don't want to. I know my rights."
"We're just trying to do our job," Nichols said, trying to reason with the well-informed-citizen-who-knew-his-rights.
"So am I," Mr. Stottin retorted. "And my job actually means helping people. Unlike yours."
I didn't know what biostatistics was, and for all I knew it cured cancer or some shit, but this Stottin guy was a prick.
"We're trying to clear your friend in an ongoing criminal investigation," I said. "If you don't want to help, that's fine. But you're not doing your friend any favors and you're definitely not helping anyone by keeping a murderer on the streets."
Mr. Stottin reconsidered. "Fine," he sighed. "Yes I followed Isabella out of the bar. Yes I wanted to talk to her. No I didn't catch up with her and no we didn't talk. She was gone by the time that I made it to the sidewalk."
"What did you want to talk about?" I asked.
"Work."
I raised an eyebrow. "Work?"
Mr. Stottin shrugged.
"It couldn't wait for today?" Nichols asked.
"I wanted her to cover for me at the meeting this morning. She always gets in early. I was going to ask her to run my reports for me."
I scoffed. "So you wanted her to lie for you?"
"We run each other's reports all of the time."
"We heard that you might have another reason for wanting to catch up with her," Nichols said.
Mr. Stottin adopted an imperious gaze. "Well it doesn't matter, does it? Since I didn't catch up with her."
"We heard that you were maybe interested in her."
"Interested?" Mr. Stottin chuckled. "In that space cadet? No thanks."
Stottin's tone was really ticking me off. Not that I disagreed with the substance of what he was saying, but I didn't care for his tone.
Fortunately, Nichols saved me the effort. "What do you mean? Space cadet?"
"Like she's crazy. High strung. Smart. But crazy. I'm not making the same mistake Jack made. Don't shit where you eat, if you know what I mean."
"Jack?"
"Jack Marin. He used to work here. Not in the same department, but he and Isabella were like that." Stottin held up two fingers, entwined. "Them and Veema."
"Veema? He—"
"She."
"She work here too?"
Stottin nodded. "In the same department as Isabella and me. Veema's gone now, like Jack, but the three of them were joined at the hip at one point. It was weird, if you ask me."
"In other words," I interrupted, "you were jealous."
Nichols and Stottin both looked a little shocked at my suggestion.
But it was obvious that this Stottin loser was a waste of space.
"You got anything solid to hold against Miss Spencer?" I asked.
"She does her work," Stottin said after a pause. "I can't complain about her work ethic. She doesn't like happy hours, though. And who doesn't like happy hours?"
I was about to answer that question when Nichols cut me off. Thanking Stottin for his time, Nichols got the directions to the next cubicle.
And so it went.
The other employees who'd attended the previous evening's happy hour confirmed Spencer's story. She'd left early—well, early in everyone else's opinion—but apparently that wasn't unusual for her. She wasn't exactly a social butterfly.
Unfortunately, Isabella Spencer's story hit a bit of a snag after that.
The Metro employees couldn't remember seeing her. And two of the cameras weren't working at the station where the vic was found.
The third camera was working. It captured Spencer's departure from the station.
Or rather, it captured her meandering slowly towards the garage. At one point, she stopped and stared up at a streetlight for a full four minutes.
If I didn't know better, I would've said that she was intentionally wasting time.
We were still running the plates from the garage. So far, nothing suspicious had come up, and it was going to take some more time to check the plates against the vic's known associates.
Interestingly, the vic's car wasn't in the garage. And it didn't look as if he'd taken the subway, because he didn't have a Metro card on him.
But we'd pulled the records for Isabella Spencer's Metro card. And they didn't match her story.
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"I think you should talk to her alone," Nichols said, eyeing Spencer, who's sitting with the sketch artist.
"Why?" We usually question people together.
"You've got a rapport already."
I snorted. "I doubt it."
"Well, let me see you two together, and if you need help, I'll step in."
I shook my head, because I didn't like the game that Nichols was playing. But as soon as Spencer was done with the artist, I snagged her so that we could have a talk.
She looked uneasy, like she was weighing her chances of getting out of the precinct without having to talk to me. Commonsense must've told her not to chance it, though, because she followed me into the interrogation room.
"So, why were you in that alley last night?" I asked, not bothering with a preamble, eyeing the way that Spencer was fidgeting in her chair.
She clasped her fingers together, as though willing herself to sit still. "To get home," she said, her tone implying that she wasn't very impressed with this line of questioning.
"But why the alley? It's pretty dirty. And the streetlight's broken. Why would a young woman like you want to walk down an alley like that?"
"It's a shortcut."
"A dangerous shortcut."
"The long way around is just as dangerous. Just danger spread out. The alley crams it all into one space so you get it over with."
I had to think for a minute, because she wasn't making any sense. "Danger? It's just a sidewalk."
"There might be people," she said, like it was completely logical to worry about a crowded sidewalk.
"Normally, a young woman like you feels safer when there are more people around."
"But they might want to bother you."
And something about the way she said that—like she was speaking from personal experience about the kinds of random cruelty that perfect strangers visited upon each other for no reason at all—made me wonder about her.
I was used to all types of people. In my line of work, I had no choice but to study them. I was by no means a psychologist, but to be a good detective, you had to get a feel for the way a person thought.
Some people just blustered. They screamed and screamed, and sometimes they used their fists, too, because that was all they knew.
Other people just went quiet. Scraped raw and bleeding, they just went dead silent. Not a whisper. They didn't give up. But they didn't have anything to say to you either.
When life kicked you, you either blustered or you went silent.
Spencer was the type of person who went silent.
"Why were you out so late?" I asked, knowing that it would aggravate her, because she'd already answered the question a couple of times at least.
But something about her story didn't ring true. And it wasn't my job to hold her hand.
"I went out with coworkers."
"No one came home with you?"
She looked confused. "Came home with me?"
"You know, did one of your coworkers accompany you?"
She blushed. "No. No one came home with me. I wouldn't do that."
Not wanting to push her—sensing that it would be the wrong tack—I decided to go for conciliatory. "I can be discreet, you know. It doesn't have to get back to your boss." Maybe she was worried about an inter-office romance.
That Stottin guy had implied that she'd had a problem with that in the past.
"No one came home with me," she repeated a bit too vehemently.
So either she was lying or she was just upset over the line of questioning. I didn't see why it should bother her. Was it really so crazy to imagine a guy—or a woman—wanting to take her home?
Spencer wasn't Charlize Theron, maybe. But she wasn't exactly Quasimodo either.
I watched her for a few more beats, waiting for her to give herself away, but she didn't so much as twitch. I sighed. "It's just as well. But you know, it would help if we could get someone to corroborate your story about the guy in the garage."
"I didn't say there was a guy in the garage."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "You just sat down with a sketch artist."
"I didn't say it was a guy."
She clearly thought that I was trying to trick her into contradicting herself. I'd glanced at the sketch. It resembled a man, but it could have been a woman.
The sketch, in fact, was so nondescript that it was just about useless.
"What time did you leave the bar?" I asked.
"Can't my Metro card tell you when I entered and left the subway?"
But I didn't want to go there just yet, so I changed the subject again. "One of your coworkers left at the same time as you."
"If you say so," she replied carefully.
"How much did you drink?"
"Less than a glass."
"You didn't take a sip out of anyone else's drink?"
She thought about her answer. "Just a sip."
I decided to give her an out, see if she took the bait. "You seemed a little confused last night. Like maybe you'd had more than one drink."
"I'm not a heavy drinker."
"Why not? You don't like your coworkers?" I thought her coworkers seemed like tools, but I wanted to hear her explanation.
"I just—I just don't. That's all. No reason."
"You don't go to many of these happy hours, do you?"
"No."
"Trying to avoid someone?" It sounded like she had a bad history with some of her ex-coworkers. Maybe one of them was still carrying a grudge, and had followed her home from the bar. That Jack guy, whoever he was.
"Avoid someone?"
"A coworker maybe." I shrugged, having decided to lay it all out for her. "You had an affair and it ended badly and now it's hard to see him around. Especially outside of work. So you usually skip happy hours."
"I'm not seeing anyone."
"But you were seeing someone."
"No."
"Then why don't you like to go out drinking with your coworkers?"
"It's—I'm awkward."
"Awkward?"
She wasn't lying. She seemed awkward, alright, trying to explain herself to me.
Alas, awkwardness could be a cover for deception.
She began fidgeting again. "I don't get along with my coworkers. I don't like drinking and it's awkward."
I wasn't buying it. "Why do you go if you don't like them and you don't like drinking?"
"Because you're supposed to. You're supposed to go to happy hours and have a beer even if you don't want to. To seem social."
Again, she wasn't lying. But still. "So you didn't stay long?"
"I left as soon as I could."
"But one of your coworkers left at the same time."
"I didn't know that."
"Why would he leave at the same time as you?" I asked, purposely leaving out the name of the individual in question. "Doesn't he like going to happy hours?
"I don't know."
"Could he have followed you home on the subway?"
"I was alone." She looked like she was trying to picture the scene. "No one else was walking out of the station."
"Except for the guy in the parking lot. The one you saw."
It only took her a few seconds to recover. "He must have already been there."
"You just said that you weren't sure that it was a guy." I couldn't help feeling annoyed, remembering all of her bullshit about the lighting in the garage.
"Him. Her. Whoever."
"And didn't you say that you weren't sure if it was a trick of the light?"
"It might have been a trick of the light."
I shook my head. "What'd you call it? Pareidolia? I looked it up. You were right, that's what it's called. Why d'you use big words like that when you can just say 'trick of the light'?"
She didn't answer, and I could tell that I'd gotten to her.
I dropped my voice. "You know, we sometimes get witnesses who try to inject themselves into cases. They do their civic duty in reporting what they know, which is great, they've done the right thing. And that gives them a sense of importance. So they try to help a little more. They even make stuff up sometimes. Things that aren't true. Because they're trying to help."
She was perfectly mum.
I asked again, "Did you see anyone in the garage?"
"I don't know," she said, an aggrieved tone entering her voice, like she was through with this questioning and through with me.
"You went home alone?"
"I was alone."
"How long did you wait to call 911 after you found the body?"
"I didn't wait. I called right away."
"The time stamp on your Metro card says you exited the station eighteen minutes before you called 911. Are you telling me it took you eighteen minutes to walk 400 yards?"
She looked genuinely shocked. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, like she was trying to think of what to say. Like she thought I was maybe trying to trick her.
Then a resolute look came over her face and she sat up straighter. "I must've dawdled," she said.
"Dawdled? It was an empty Metro station after dark and you're a young female."
"Weren't there any cameras?" Some of her self-confidence was starting to dissipate.
"Most of them were broken."
"Most of them?" She sounded almost outraged.
"There's footage of you on one of the cameras," I admitted.
"And what am I doing on it?"
Reluctantly, I replied. "You're dawdling."
She looked almost triumphant. "Well if you've got footage of me dawdling, then you know damn well that no one came home with me."
I shrugged, because I still wasn't willing to commit. Maybe no one was on her tail, but she could've been waiting for someone.
Either she took the shrug as a sign that I was done with her, or she'd finally lost her patience, because she stood up.
"I'm going," she said, with a tone that was equal parts defiant and pleading, as if worried that I might say she was under arrest.
"You can go. But stay in the area."
She blinked. "In the area—are you serious? I have to go to work and school. And my family. I have to leave the area."
"Your folks live in Maryland, though, right?"
She nodded.
"So don't leave the state."
She looked like she wanted to argue, but must have decided against it. She agreed—a hasty "Fine"—and fled.
"So what'd ya think?" I asked Nichols as we watched Spencer trying pretty damn hard to look like she wasn't in a hurry as she wove her way through the maze of desks to the exit.
"You were going pretty hard on her," he said.
I scoffed. "No harder than I usually do."
"If you say so."
"You should've been in there with me. We could've gotten something out of her."
"You really think there's something there?" Nichols asked.
I hesitated.
She was acting guilty as hell, no denying that. She was acting like she had something to hide.
And yet her horror when she realized the issue with her Metro card and the lost time.
And then her obvious confusion.
Whatever she was hiding, I didn't think it was murder.
And yet—
"I think she's gonna be a gift to the defense," I said.
AN: Thanks for reading.