Episode 1–3: The Suspects
August 4. 9:55 AM. Police Department. Detention Center.
Everything about Stirman Fry screamed guilty. The man hadn't said a word since his lawyer had gotten there. His body language was relaxed, and his attitude was easy going. He didn't seem particularly scared or worried. Someone how was innocent would at least be a little antsy at being detained, but not Stirman. Goodman was trying his hand at getting information, talking to Fry over the long metal table. Pam could see the two of them through the one-way glass. The only other person in the room was Fry's lawyer. Stirman was examining his fingernails, not even looking up at Goodman.
Goodman cleared his throat, still not getting the man's attention. "Mr. Fry, could you explain to me what you did after your wife went up to her room?"
Stirman looked to his lawyer, a weaselly old man with glasses, before speaking.
"As I've said before, I was hoping to allay my wife's foul illness, so I had the cooks downstairs make her some soup, so that I could take it up to my beloved. She was speaking with Miss Dillo, so I left it on the bedside table and took my leave."
"And as for the letter you wrote to your brother—"
The lawyer was quick to chip in. "My client need not re-answer questions. He has already said that he wrote the letter weeks ago, and that it had nothing to do with this incident."
Pam could tell Goodman was starting to get aggravated. The man's shoulders were hunched, as if he was having to physically restrain himself from leaping across the table.
"We'll be back in a bit to ask you some more questions, sir." Goodman stood up, his coat snapping as he sharply turned and exited the room. Turning to Pam with a sigh, he said, "It's pointless to try and talk to him anymore. We won't be able to get a word out of him, not with that lawyer there stopping our every move."
"So, let's go and speak to Miss Dillo," Pam suggested, already walking out of the door. "Has she been questioned yet?"
"Not that I know of, other than preliminary questions. She looks lost, as if she doesn't know what to do without her friend to boss her around. If you want to talk with her, then I'm not going to stop you. Plus, it will be a good time to evaluate your interrogation skills."
Goodman and Pam walked together to the next room, where Pam could see the fabled companion. She was older, with little glasses perched on her nose. She was a bit plump, occasionally dabbing her eyes with a tissue. A cane was propped up against the table. Goodman placed a hand on Pam's shoulder, startling her.
"Stirman is probably going to be released soon. If we don't get some kind of clue from Ms. Dillo, then we're up a creek without a paddle. It could very well be that this wasn't a murder at all. If you don't get anything from this lady, we'll have to mark this down as a happenstance death."
"What will that mean for me?"
"It'll mean you used your brain." Goodman shrugged and removed his hand. "Sometimes it's wiser to say that there hadn't been a murder at all. We don't want to arrest innocent people. Just go in there and give it your best shot. There's no harm in coming up short."
Pam grabbed the case file that Goodman had been holding, forcing back a frown. She couldn't quite agree with the older detective. Pam didn't think this was all one big mistake or accident. Something about Stirman was really rubbing her the wrong way. The one thing she could agree on was that unless this woman told her something interesting, this case was as good as dead. With a deep breath, Pam entered the room.
Dillo's eyes snapped up to meet hers. Pam took a seat across from her, laying the folder between them.
"Miss Dillo, I'm Detective Pamola Wright. I'm investigating the death of your friend, Mrs. Fry."
"Oh, poor, poor Carry." The older woman looked sad, but not completely distraught. Perhaps because she had seen a lot of loss in her life? Or because she had killed her friend? "I knew that some day she would get into trouble. Young people always do nowadays."
Trying to ignore the fact that Pam herself was a young person, the detective forged on.
"I'm sorry about your loss, but I do need to know what happened that night. Can you walk me through it?"
"Yes, yes. I had been invited by Carry—we were such close friends, we were—to dinner at their apartment building. It was between her, myself, and Mr. Fry, really a looker that one. We had lobster that night, but I didn't eat very much. Was trying to put myself on a diet, you see."
"And after that?" Pam was trying to push the conversation along. It seemed like Miss Dillo really liked talking, almost as much as Phoenix did.
"Well, that night we all felt so terrible, but Carry most of all. I stayed with her, to try and give her some company. At some point Stirman came in and dropped off some soup, but Carry just couldn't find the stomach for it."
So Stirman's story did check out. Annoying, but Pam kept her composure as the woman kept talking.
"She wanted me to eat it, but I was on that diet. Oh, but she was very convincing, and I hadn't eaten much that night, so eating a little soup wasn't going to hurt. Before I knew it, I'd eaten the whole bowl. After that, I left, and well…" She sniffled again. "Then when I woke up the next morning…"
"I understand, Miss Dillo. I know it's hard, but I have a few questions I still need to ask."
"Of course, of course."
Pam had to think things through. The husband was the most suspicious. He had reason to kill his wife, as that would have given him some money, but he had no chance to kill her. Dinner wasn't prepared by him, and it wouldn't be likely for him to slip something on her plate without many people noticing. He couldn't have poisoned the soup either, or it would be Dillo who was dead. And even if he did poison her, what would he have even used?
Sure, Dillo could have been making up her story about the soup, or she could have poisoned the victim when they were alone in the bedroom. But Pam didn't think that Miss Dillo would have access to drugs strong enough to kill someone.
So unless the two were working together, there couldn't have been a murder.
A bit more confident in her reasoning, Pam leaned forward on the table.
"Did anything at dinner that night seem strange to you?"
"Oh, no, nothing really. Carry and I were talking about going shopping soon, see, she wanted a new raincoat. Stirman had been flirting with a chef earlier that day, but he's always been a bit of a playboy."
The chef? Does she mean Lindsey Linch?
"What did the chef look like?"
"Oh, I'm not sure, deary." Miss Dillo tapped her chin. "Very young, with blonde hair." Certainly sounded like the young chef Pam had talked to today. Miss Dillo seemed to know where Pam's thoughts were going. "Oh, but you mustn't think that Mr. Fry is like that. He does that with all the young ladies. At the end of the night, he always goes back to Carry. I mean, he always…did go back to her."
Pam was starting to lose the woman to grief. She quickly switched up her line of questioning.
"The food itself, did it taste odd in any way?"
"Oh, it was divine. If I hadn't been on my diet, I would have eaten everyone's plates. The lobster was perfect, and the dessert was…oh, if only I hadn't been fasting! I felt so jealous when Carry began to gobble hers up. I could only take a few bites of mine before I began to feel guilty."
The dots were in Pam's brain, she just needed a little help connecting them. She leaned back in her chair.
"After that, you went straight up to their room?"
"Yes. I put Carry to bed and, after she talked me into eating her soup, I left for the night." Miss Dillo sighed, exhausted. "I swear that's all I know. Nothing else happened. I slept in their guest bedroom, and when I woke up…"
Pam took a close look at the woman's face. She really did seem distraught. She showed remorse, as if she wished she could change something. She felt guilt. Her tissue kept coming back to dab at her eyes. Pam had no way to outright prove that she was innocent, but she really believed that Miss Dillo didn't kill her friend.
If it's murder, Pam thought. I guess there's one more question I could ask.
"Miss Dillo," Pam started, pulling out a picture from her folder. It was one of the Frys on their wedding day. She pointed to Stirman. "I just have one more question. What do you think of Carry's husband, Mr. Stirman?"
"He's a flirt. Anyone of the opposite sex is free game, as the kids say." Miss Dillo blew her nose into the tissue.
"Do you think that he would kill his wife?"
Miss Dillo jerked back, her tissue flying to the floor. "Of course not! Yes, he flirts a great deal, and he did have that little stint with Miss Smith, but he would never—"
"Hang on." Pam held up her hand, eyebrow raised. "Who is Miss Smith?"
Miss Dillo paused, twitching a bit before answering.
"Miss Smith is the daughter of the apartment's doctor. They had a…fling, but that's far been over."
"When did this fling happen?"
Another pause from Miss Dillo. "My it was…perhaps a year after Stirman married Carry, but it only lasted a short while. Two months, at the most."
Pam leaned back in her seat, arms crossed. She stood from her seat, returning the picture of the Frys into the folder before tilting her head to Miss Dillo.
"Thank you so much for your time, miss. That will be all for now." Pam escorted Dillo to the door, where another officer led her out of the precinct. The door to the interrogation room closed, leaving the two detectives in silence. Pam rubbed her eyes, holding back a yawn. She heard Goodman sigh.
"So," he began, breaking the quiet, "what do you think?"
"I think I need some coffee." She led the way to the breakroom, dodging past a chatty Gumshoe and loud Meekins. Pam grabbed herself a cup before joining Goodman at one of the tables. His fedora was hanging over his eyes again. Pam couldn't tell what he was thinking under there.
"So Mr. Fry had an affair with the doctor's daughter. No wonder the doctor thought Stirman had killed his wife. He was probably still angry about the man going after his kid. All the more reason to say that this isn't a murder, just a doctor angry at a rich man."
Pam leaned forward, hands shaking ever so slightly. Man, she hadn't sat down with someone to discuss a case since Kent. It…was hard to do, looking at Goodman's cleanshaven face instead of Kent's bearded one. Pam pinched her arm, hard. Just…pretend it's the same. Come on, you have a case to solve.
"Well, right off the bat, I think we need to wait for any more investigating until forensics can tell us more about how the victim died. I'm assuming we can rule out heart attack or stroke?" When Goodman nodded, she continued. "Then we need to know what drug killed her, because that is the only way she would have been killed at this point. Though I'm not sure how many drugs Stirman would be able to get his hands on."
"But his story does check out," the older man pointed out. "He ate the same food as the other two women, and Miss Dillo corroborates his story about the soup. Mrs. Fry was feeling sick after dinner, so it's most likely she was poisoned then. Our people say Mrs. Fry probably died an hour or two after Miss Dillo left her room, and apparently Stirman wasn't in the room until after Carry had died. Miss Dillo could be the murderer or could have been working with Stirman to kill Carry. Either way, we don't have enough evidence to convict either of our suspects."
Pam chewed on her lip. "What if…" Goodman raised his head, revealing his curious gaze.
"Hm? Spit it out, rookie."
"What if there's a third suspect? Someone other than Stirman or Dillo."
Goodman leaned forward, face scrunched up. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it's just a theory." Pam stirred her coffee with a plastic spoon. "I could be wrong—"
"No, no, don't leave me in suspense."
"—and there's still the chance that this is just rich people scared about someone's sudden death—"
"Wright, come on already."
Pam gripped her mug. The heat burned her hands. "Well, what if—" But she didn't get a chance to finish. A man came running into the breakroom, gasping for breath. He had a buzzcut, short brown hair sticking out of his tanned skin. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned over an old rock band tee. Add that with the khaki shorts and the flip flops, along with a pair of sunglasses on his forehead, and Pam thought he looked like the weirdest person in the precinct (and she sat next to Gumshoe). Stranger still was that he was making a beeline for their table.
"Boss man!" the guy said, addressing Goodman. The detective let out a quiet sigh before raising an open hand to the new person. The man was happy to give Goodman a high five, followed by a fist bump.
"Always good to see you, Otto." Goodman said, though it sounded like he meant just the opposite. Otto turned to Pam, who was getting the subtle vibe that she needed to get out of Dodge. Unfortunately, it was too late. She had been spotted by the LAPD's best kept secret.
"This the new lady on the block? Hiya, the names Otto Topsi, but you can call me whatever you'd like." He winked at Pam, making her blink. Was…was she being flirted with? Goodman snapped his fingers in front of Otto, who had been inching closer and closer to Pam.
"Cut it out, Otto!" Goodman said with a tone that finally made him look the part of the scary old detective. "Just tell us why you're here. I know you have your own break room down there with all your other forensic rats, so there is no reason for you to be up here." Otto put his hands over his heart.
"Boss man, I assure you I have the best of reasons to be here today."
Goodman's teeth were grinding together. "That being?" Otto winked at Pam once more.
"I simply must introduce myself. What kind of man would I be if I didn't scope out the new, female detective? It's been, what, two years since there's been one in the LAPD?" Pam wouldn't say she was completely grateful for the complement. Neither was Goodman. He was standing now, pointing towards the door with one hand while the other, surprisingly, was on his holstered gun.
"Out!"
"And I was here to tell you I got the body of Carry Fry." Otto said this all with a slightly high voice. For all his bravo, he must have a healthy fear of Goodman. Perhaps, if Pam threw her weight around, she could do the same and shut the flirt up. Otto lowered his arms as Goodman sat down. The young man let out a sigh of relief. "I'm working the rest of the day to figure out the cause of death. Should be able to tell you what you need by tomorrow."
"News reported, you can take your leave, thank you," Goodman said. Pam took a sip of her coffee, steeling herself. This wasn't her idea of fun, but it was always a good idea to butter others up, especially if they had a foot in the forensics department.
(Though she could do without the flirting.)
She stood, holding out her hand with a small smile. "Before you go, the names Pamola Wright. Good to meet you."
Seemingly bolstered by her introduction, Otto put on a dashing smile and shook her hand.
"And it has been lovely meeting you, Pams. I'll be off then. Until next time." He was as quick to dart out as he was to dart in. He had let go of Pam's hand, but she felt frozen in her place. A shock had run down her spine as soon as he had said 'Pams'. That was his nickname. No one else was allowed to use his nickname.
"Thank goodness he's gone," muttered Goodman from behind her. "Kid's more trouble than he's worth. Um…Wright?" When she still didn't move, Goodman got up and tapped her shoulder. It was enough to knock her back into the present. She robotically put her arm down. Goodman chuckled, adjusting his hat. "Hey, don't let that guy get in your head. He flirts with anyone and everyone. Just put your foot down, and he'll back off."
Pam closed her eyes, took a breath. Calm down. You are trying to keep New York a secret.
"Yeah, you're right," she said, wrapping her jacket a bit tighter around her. "If you don't mind, I'll write up what we found out today, and do some searching on Mr. Stirman."
"Right, sounds good. I'll look into things on my end too. After that, it's just up to us waiting on Otto and his gang. Let's get to work then. And make sure to take a break. You've earned it." He slapped Pam on the shoulder before walking to his desk. Pam waited a moment before going to her own.
She couldn't help but get lost in her thoughts. She still didn't have any information on Megan, or Kent. Otto using her old nickname just rubbed salt in her wounds. Even though she had a possible lead on the case she was currently on, it still felt just out of her grasp. She felt like she had no control of anything. She sat at her desk with a discouraged huff.
If only she could know for certain that Stirman murdered his wife. Pam believed in her soul that he was the guilty party. She just needed something to give her concrete evidence. She wished she could just ask someone to pull some proof out of the air, so that she could go back to investigating Megan.
And just like that, a proverbial light bulb lit up in Pam's head. Someone to pull the evidence out of thin air, huh…Pam felt like she had the weight of the world on her small shoulders, but maybe she could make it just a little lighter.
She needed to make a phone call.