Episode 16: "Teenage Wasteland"
Day Two
Scene One
Fisk sat on the desk opposite Jim's. "Okay, bring me up to speed."
Marty looked up from his computer. "In checking out the building where the DOA was found, there were a couple of calls since it's been vacant, apparently to break up 'rave' parties. The last one was about two months ago."
Tom added, "The owner of the building says it's been vacant for about four months. He evicted all the tenants so he could renovate. The contractor started the job and did most of the demolition, then stopped showing up about a month ago. The place was basically gutted to the walls, and it's been pretty much deserted for the past month or so."
Fisk turned to the detectives from the 20th. "Morrison, Vecchione, what do the friends – what's their names, Jennifer and Kendra – have to say?"
"Both of them were pretty broken up when we told them," Morrison replied. "They didn't know what Michelle was doing in that building, and no clue about the triangles."
Vecchione added, "Kendra did say that she and Jennifer had drifted apart some from Michelle since they started college. Michelle started hanging out with a different crowd. They really didn't know her new friends, didn't like them, apparently. Kendra thought Michelle was getting into drugs more and suggested it could have been a drug deal gone bad."
"Jim, Karen, fill them in on what the ME had to say."
Karen looked over at Jim, who appeared to be lost in his "thinking" mode. "Dunbar's thinking again," Marty explained to Morrison and Vecchione.
Karen ignored him. "The cause of death was a single GSW to the back of the head. No other trauma. No signs of a struggle. No sexual assault. Preliminary BA was negative, but it'll be a while until the complete toxicology report comes back. The marks on her face look like triangles. That's about it."
"Something to share, Jim?" Fisk asked.
"Things don't add up, Boss," Jim replied. "There's no sexual assault, and no sexual positioning of the body after the killing. Plus, there are no defense wounds, and no evidence of a struggle at the scene. It just doesn't feel like a sexual killing."
"What about Kendra's idea of a drug deal gone bad?" Vecchione suggested.
"That doesn't feel right, either. Sure, they could have used the vacant building to make their deal, but why go to the basement? And how did the deal go bad? Michelle had plenty of money. If the dealers wanted payment 'in kind,' there would have been evidence of a sexual assault. Plus, where do the triangles fit in? None of the drug-dealing gangs we know of use anything like that as their symbol."
"So what are you thinking, Jim?" Tom asked.
"One thing that doesn't fit in with any of our theories is the way the body was found. She wasn't just left where she fell after being shot. Someone moved her, placed her on her back, folded her hands on her chest – like she was in a coffin – then covered her. There's something else going on here – maybe some feeling for the victim, or remorse. I think we're dealing with a killer who knew her."
"That would also explain why she went there voluntarily – if she did – and why there was no struggle," Karen pointed out. "But what about the triangles?"
"A diversion, to throw us off."
"Okay, so where do we go from here?" Fisk asked.
"Let's get her friends in here," Marty suggested.
"Agreed." Fisk turned to Morrison and Vecchione. "Dave, Paul, you go get them."
"On our way," Morrison replied.
Scene Two
Jim hung up his phone and turned toward Karen. "That was the tech guy from the lab. They just finished with Michelle's computer. She kept a journal on it. Most of the recent entries are complaints that Kendra and Jennifer don't want to spend time with her any more and are being mean to her. The lab is faxing it over."
Karen jumped up to grab the pages from the fax machine as they came in. Scanning them quickly, she told Jim, "Just as the tech guy said. They're all 'I thought they were my friends, why are they being so mean to me' kind of stuff."
"Let's get them copied."
A few minutes later, Karen handed Jim a copy of the fax. He scanned it into his computer and listened intently. He was still listening when Morrison and Vecchione arrived with Jennifer and Kendra and escorted them to separate interview rooms. Jennifer was tall and willowy, with long, light brown hair. She carried herself with an assurance that made her seem older than her 19 years. Kendra was shorter, with dark, curly hair framing her face. She looked apprehensively around the squad room, pausing for a moment when she saw Jim.
Karen rolled her chair over to Jim's desk. "They're here. Which one do you want to talk to first?"
"Kendra, I think. She's mentioned in more of the entries. Have you finished reading?"
"Yeah," Karen replied, "Looks like her 'friends' were doing some pretty nasty stuff."
Jim nodded. "Some 'friends'."
Karen walked over to the interview rooms and asked Morrison and Vecchione to come out to talk to her. She handed them copies of the journal. "You're going to want to read this."
"While you're reading, Karen and I are going to have a conversation with Kendra," Jim told them.
"If anyone talks to her, it should be us," Vecchione asserted.
Fisk emerged from his office. "What's the problem?"
"Paul here seems to have a problem with me and Karen interviewing Kendra," Jim told him.
"Not a problem – " Vecchione began.
Fisk cut off the discussion. "It's Bettancourt's case."
"Which one is Kendra?" Karen asked.
"Room one."
Scene Three
Jim and Karen entered the interview room. Jim stood next to the windows, leaning against the sill. "Hello, Kendra, I'm Detective Dunbar, and this is Detective Bettancourt."
"Hello," Kendra said guardedly, staring at Jim.
Karen sat down at the table opposite Kendra. "We're sorry about your friend, Michelle," she began.
"Thank you. I can't believe she's – dead."
"We understand she was a good friend of yours," Karen continued. "How long had you known her?"
"Forever, it seems like – since fifth grade."
"Do you know anyone who would want to do this to her? Was she having problems with anyone?"
"No, no one that I know of. But, you know, since we started college, she had a lot of new friends. I didn't know most of them, and I didn't like the ones I did know. She was getting into drugs. I think some of her new friends were dealers. She must have come down here to buy drugs, and something went wrong."
Jim spoke for the first time since introducing himself and Karen. "You weren't having problems with her?"
"No, why would you think that?"
He walked over to the table, sat down, and took off his dark glasses. Turning to face directly toward where he thought Kendra was sitting, he took the sheaf of faxed print-outs from his jacket pocket. "These."
"What are they?"
"Michelle's journal, from her computer. Want to take a look?"
He pushed the pages across the table, in her direction. Kendra looked at the print-outs in shock. "Oh, my God, she actually wrote this stuff down?"
"You were having problems with Michelle, weren't you?"
"No, I mean, not really. Okay, she was bugging us, but we wouldn't, you know, do anything to her."
"No?" Jim asked, skeptically. In a harsher tone, he went on, "What about the time you dislocated her finger? You call that nothing?"
"It didn't mean anything," Kendra protested, "it was an accident. She was bugging me, and I was just trying to get her to go away."
"By pulling her finger out of its joint?" Jim raised his voice in disbelief.
"It was an accident," Kendra insisted.
"You know, Kendra," Karen stood behind her and leaned over. "The other detectives are talking to Jennifer right now. What do you think she's telling them?"
"I don't know. I mean, there's nothing to tell."
"I guess you're going to have to find out the hard way how good a friend Jennifer really is," Karen suggested.
"What's that mean?"
"Do you really think she's going to be able to stick to the story you cooked up about Michelle going to meet a drug dealer, when the pressure's on?"
"I –, I –," Kendra stammered.
"And when she caves in," Karen continued, "what's she going to tell them? That you killed Michelle? That it was all your idea?"
Kendra stared at Karen but said nothing.
Jim stood up and walked to Kendra's side of the table. He sat on the table next to her and said, "We know you know what happened to Michelle. Tell us what really happened. Don't let Jennifer put it all on you."
"Okay," Kendra whispered, looking down at the table.
"Tell us," Karen urged her. "What was your problem with Michelle?"
"Michelle had changed," Kendra began, "or maybe Jen and I had – I don't know. She was just so needy. She wanted to hang out with us all the time, and we didn't want to be around her any more. We kept telling her to get a life, but she kept clinging to us. Our college friends thought she was a joke. It was embarrassing. We thought maybe we could talk some sense into Michelle if we scared her."
"Scare her how?" Jim asked.
"With Jen's dad's gun. He never used it, and we knew he'd never miss it. Jen and I went to a rave at a vacant building down here last month. So we told Michelle to meet us there. We told her it would be a good place to smoke some weed before we went to check out a place we'd heard of down here. We just wanted to scare her. . . ." She shook her head and looked away.
"Kendra?" Karen prompted her. "What happened?"
"It was an accident – a horrible accident. We smoked some weed and talked for a while. Michelle kept saying how good it was to spend time together, just the three of us. Jen and I couldn't believe she was so clueless, but she kept going on and on about it. I finally just came out with it. I told her she needed to stop stalking us and get a life. That's when Jen showed her the gun. She freaked out and started screaming. The gun went off, I don't know. . . . Jen said it went off by accident, she didn't mean to – " She put her face in her hands and began to cry.
Karen pushed the tissue box across the table. Kendra wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then continued. "She was lying there on the floor. There was blood and brains all over. We knew she was dead. We panicked, we didn't know what to do. Jen was babbling, totally freaked out. I decided we should leave Michelle there and hope no one would find her for a while. But I couldn't leave her just lying there. I dragged her over next to the wall and covered her with a cloth I found."
"What were the triangles about?"
"That was my idea. I thought it would make it look like she was into something weird, or maybe some psycho killed her."
"Where's the gun?" asked Jim.
"We threw it in the river that night."
Kendra looked over at Karen, tears streaming down her face. "I still can't believe it happened. I am so sorry, but it was an accident, a horrible accident." She began to sob.
Jim and Karen left the interview room. He closed the door behind them and headed to his desk.
"Kinda sad, huh, Jim?" Tom asked.
He stopped and turned toward Tom. "Yeah. Three young lives – " He frowned and shook his head. "What a waste."
"Dave, Paul," Fisk said as they walked out of the observation room, "The victim's parents will want to know."
"We'll take care of it, as soon as we finish up our fives," Morrison told him.
"You might as well head back to your squad after that and let your boss know. We can wrap things up from here."
"Okay," Vecchione replied.
Jim sat down at his desk and beckoned to Hank. He scratched the dog's ears, looking pensive. Karen watched him thoughtfully from her own desk for a few minutes, then scooted her chair over to him. "So, do you think a jury will buy that it was an accident?" she asked.
Jim raised his head and seemed to look directly at her. "Do you?"
Scene Four
An hour later, Vecchione and Morrison had finished their reports and turned them over to Fisk. After gathering their belongings, they turned to leave. "It sure has been eye-opening, seeing how they close cases here at the 8th," Morrison observed.
"How's that?" Jim asked, tilting his head quizzically.
"All they have to do is wait for the blind guy to pull the rabbit out of the hat," he replied, grinning.
"Yeah, something like that," Tom said, with a warning look at Marty.
"Maybe we should get our own blind guy," Vecchione suggested.
"I know where you can find one," Marty offered.
"Later, guys," Morrison called as he and Vecchione walked down the hall to the elevator.