Chapter Three - Basic Game Theory
Since no one knew any better, LAPD at the door to the crime scene let all of the agents through, thinking that they were all on the case. If only they knew better, they wouldn't have let Don's team within a mile of the place.
Even though the coroner had taken away Bethany Jenkin's body, there was a large and sickening bloodstain on the carpet indicating clearly where she was lying. Colby crouched down and squinted it for a while, unfocussing his eyes so he could imagine the body there, and imagine the events leading up to her murder. Nikki made sure all of the LAPD units were clear of the room before pulling out her phone.
"This was the message left on you boss' answering machine." She pressed play, and the team listened, with mixed severity of expression. A female voice, presumably the victim's, rang out. They could tell from the first few words that something was wrong on her end of the line.
"Don, I need to talk to you." David and Liz exchanged worried looks. Messages starting with that phrase, or variations of that phrase, always ended in tears. "I'm at the Beauford Hotel, room one-one-eight. I know we have exactly been close recently, but this isn't about us. It's very important to me and I need your help." She disconnected suddenly, and Nikki cut the message off. The agents all looked at each other.
"I still don't know why he didn't tell us." Despite the fact that Nikki had explained what Don had told her, his team was still not buying it. Especially Megan. "Doesn't he know that he can tell us anything?" Colby stood up, and wandered over to the nightstand, starting to look through the drawers.
"Some things are better kept as secrets, Megan. Life works best that way." She knew that he was right, so she did not reply, merely hugged her shoulders as she looked at the crime scene in front of her.
"One more thing - this doesn't look like any normal murder." She added, a frown crumpling her forehead. The agents stared at her, Nikki included. "Look at where she was first stabbed." Megan motioned towards a spray of blood, which was now dry across the white wall near the bed. "Now look at where she was killed." The agents' heads moved, across the room, and Nikki caught on first.
"She ran towards the door." She concluded, staring up at Megan, in a moment which reminded all of the agents that she really was quite a bit younger than them, in terms of working with these situations. "What victim runs towards her attacker?" David carefully stepped around the arterial blood sprays across the floor, and into the ensuite bathroom.
"Unless the attacker was already in her hotel room." Peering into the bathroom, he found nothing out of the ordinary - nothing to prove their theory. "Which means that he was waiting for her here."
"Don was called from the number of the hotel. She was already in the room before he even got the message. Unless he's taken to climbing through six-storey windows, this means that he didn't do it!" Liz gushed, pleased that they had found a loophole in Lieve's theory. But her face fell as soon as she saw the expression on Nikki's face. "What's wrong now?"
"This isn't enough. No evidence. There needs to be something more." She had already taken the bottle of water from the trash that Lieve had given Don, and had sent it to the lab to be tested for anything out of the ordinary. But that wouldn't prove much either, without a confession. "When I was in the room with him, Eppes said that I should get Charlie to look at fingerprints, or something. I have the files here, but-"
"You, me and David, let's go to Charlie's. Colby, you and Liz see if you can find anything else here; talk to LAPD and see what conclusions they've come to. Talk to the people in the neighbouring rooms. Find out what happened on Tuesday night." Even though Nikki was the only one who was technically on the case, therefore the highest in rank, Megan took control and Nikki found herself following her orders. Now was not a time to battle for power. Right now they needed to prove that Don's innocence.
Charlie opened the door with the same expression he had worn when Nikki had told him of the FBI's suspicions. It didn't look like he had even moved from his spot on the sofa, because he returned to it as soon as he saw Megan at the door. She and David traded a worried look, and David branched off to find Alan.
They had been sitting in silence for a few minutes, when Charlie suddenly seemed to notice Nikki's presence.
"What are you doing here? Have you found something?" He gushed, jumping forwards and almost falling off the couch. Nikki glanced at Megan. She didn't know this man. It was best for his friend to do the talking, and her to just hold the badge for the time being.
"Charlie, we need your help to prove that your brother didn't do this." Megan said, slowly, and Charlie seemed to be struggling to keep up with her words. "We need you to look at some evidence that we found, and see what you can do." Charlie swallowed hard, and a determined, almost angry look came into his eyes.
"Anything that I can do."
As they watched him work in the garage, Megan appeared to have complete trust in Charlie's erratic swipes of chalk, but Nikki had the opposite opinion.
"This really works? I mean, it stands up in court and everything?" Megan laughed. She knew why Nikki found it doubtful - in the beginning she too thought it odd and circumstantial.
"Two plus two always equals four, but a witness statement can mean one hell of a lot of things." She replied, calmly, then turned her eyes back to the younger agent, who had her head cocked to the side as Charlie scribbled, trying in vain to understand half of his thought process. "Why are you doing this?" The question caught Nikki off guard, partly because she didn't even know the answer herself.
"Why am I doing this? I'm doing it because I don't think he's guilty of murder." She said, simply, her retort surprising even her.
"He practically took you hostage, that's what I heard." Nikki raised one eyebrow and Megan shrugged. "News travels fast in the elevators."
"There's just something about him that I trust. I don't know why, he's an impressive interrogator and I might just be jumping through hoops for him, but I don't know. It just feels like he's innocent." Glancing up at the older agent for confirmation, Megan nodded. That made sense to her, she felt the same way.
"You should think about doing a course in psychology. You have a good grasp on people." Megan touched her gently on the back, and David returned with Alan. Both had clearly been talking for a while, and Alan's eyes had a thin red rim. "Hey Alan." He smiled at her, and Nikki realised the dynamic between these people. The Eppes weren't just the three men - they were the whole team. Megan wasn't just Don's partner - she was his sister, even though sometimes she acted like a mother to Charlie. David was the uncle, as Don's second in command. Closer to Alan than he even was to Don sometimes, even though he looked up to him. The emotion and the loyalty binding the team to their friend caught Nikki's words in her throat. She watched Charlie for a little longer, not wanting to think about what would happen if Don was sent down for a crime that she was now almost certain he had not commited.
By the time Charlie had finished his preliminary analysis of the murderer's movements around the hotel room, Nikki had been and returned from work twice. Lieve was occupied with another case, luckily, and Don had been moved to a cell in the State Penitentiary where Nikki was sure that he was regretting his choice in career. When she went to visit him, two days after their earlier encounter, there were bruises on his arms, and a nasty looking discolouration along his cheekbone. His eyes looked a lot darker because of it, but they lightened considerably when he realised that she was not accompanied by her partner. A slight smile even graced his features as she entered, and sat down across from him.
"Didn't think I'd be seeing you again." He sounded relieved that she was there. "Security's watching us real careful now, and I have to be strung to the chair." She glanced down and sure enough, he was shackled to his chair and handcuffed to the table, so he could put his hands on the smooth metal surface, but do nothing more with them. "Are you here to give me good or bad news?" Nikki was pissed of and impressed that he just knew that she had believed him. Either he was hopeful or cocky, and neither gave her a very good read on his position.
"I'm here to figure out the truth." Nikki corrected him, not wanting to get too trusting of him. Last time that happened, she was held close to his chest while he muttered ransom demands in her ear. She kept her voice cold, even when she remembered the warmth of his lips as he had kissed her cheek. "The ME estimated the killer's height to be around six foot, of average build, and the cameras at the door got an angle of the back of his head. All criteria fits you." His eyes were cold again, but not towards her. He was frowning at the table, knowing that this was a problem."Your brother also made his own profile." His initial reaction was joy, but then his face fell.
"That won't stand up in court. He'll be branded as biased."
"That's why you're not out of here by now." He thought some more, his frown deepening further.
"You made him look at the crime scene photos while he thought I did it?" Nikki shook her head.
"He didn't see the body." He turned his head away when she used that term. "He only saw the hotel room, the bloodstains and the fingerprints and DNA left."
"Still." Don muttered. "In case you haven't noticed, he's a senstive guy."
"I'm just trying to find out what happened. Charlie wanted to help, so he did." She snapped, getting pissed off with the circle they were spinning round. "He made a catalogue of the killer's actions from the moment he came into the room from the time he left. The killer was already in the room before the victim." The second term referring to his ex-wife she had used made him feel sick too. "Which means that it wasn't you, because no one leaves a message on someone's machine only to be out when they come around. That just doesn't make sense. Also, Charlie's analysis implies this." Nikki pulled out a sheet of paper with lots of coloured lines on it.
"Pretty, but you gotta know that Charlie's the genius. I don't know what all this shit means." He said, almost glumly.
"The red lines are where the killer went before killing Bethany, and the blue lines show what he did after he killed her. The yellow dots are where they found your fingerprints, and where they found skin cells. Green is the blood spray patterns." Don surveyed the scene, shaking his head. "The killer goes out of his way to touch the windowsil and the bedside drawer handle. There's no reason for him to do that. Thus implying that they were planted, but only implying. There are lots of reasons for inconsistancies." Nikki wasn't ready to put all of her eggs in his metaphorical basket yet. "Also, they didn't find any smudged prints. They were all neat, and of your thumb and index finger. I don't have to tell you that those aren't the only fingers that people use to murder people."
"So what more does Lieve want?" Don asked, relieved.
"You thought you'd done it?" His relief had bugged Nikki, and now she knew why he was experiencing it. Since he couldn't remember that night, he had no idea if he had killed Bethany Jenkins or not. What was really pissing him off was not the fact that he could have, but the reasons why he would have. He could find none. He didn't reply to her question, because they were on tape, but the look on his face said it all. "And what does this have to do with Lieve?" No games now, the glance that he threw her was completely innocent.
"This has nothing to do with Lieve." 'Well now I feel silly for blocking him out'.
"I need you to think, Agent Eppes, why would anyone want us to believe that you were guilty of killing your ex-wife?" Her words were loud and deliberate, clear as day on the tape. Don, having written the interrogation handbook, caught on immediately.
"Apparently, if an agent is investigating someone for fraud, that's a motive."
"You mean hypothetically?"
"I have no idea what the real reason is, but that would make an awful lot of sense, wouldn't it?" The tone of his voice was cocky - he knew that this was a trick people used all the time to communicate certain pieces of information without actually admitting it on tape. That meant that the tape wouldn't meant shit in court. "What do you think, Agent Betancourt?"
"Well hypothetically, I would think that if there was nothing on this agent's network system or personal computer, he would be keeping it elsewhere. What do you think?" She matched his tone perfectly, and the corners of his mouth turned up. He was liking this Agent Betancourt more and more.
"I suppose hypothetically, this agent would keep it in a safety deposit box. It's the safest place to be." Nikki could not help but to smirk. This guy definitely knew how to play the game. "But this is all hypothetical." And he knew how to win the game. It was an unspoken deal - he would give her the evidence if she showed him that she was worthy of his trust. This wasn't about trading information anymore. She had to do something which is of no use to her, to help him. Basic game theory.
"I'll keep that in mind." Nikki gathered her things, making sure to keep eye contact as much as possible. Those cool brown eyes just kept staring back at her, an edge of flirtation curving his mouth. "Thank you for your cooperation, Agent Eppes." She stood, and he smiled back, exuding confidence.
"And thank you for yours, Nikki." His use of her first name almost unnerved her, but at the same time it left her breathless. But instead of showing anything to him, she turned on her heel and left, concealing her smile by her turned back. Security moved in to unshackle Don, and he lolled his head back, smiling at them disconcertingly.
"I think she likes me." He informed them, playfully. They skillfully ignored him, and he chuckled as they led him back to his cell. He had decided in his short stint in the penetentiary that he liked playing games - he could see why the dirtbags did it. It was quite fun.