"Ex Memoria"
27. The Guilty
Chicago, Illinois – in the year 2021
By the time they had been escorted out of the museum and into the police car waiting for them, both Amy and Mike had settled into a decisively locked down expression. They would not show fear, or guilt, in any way. They would also remain silent as long as they could. The longer they did that, the longer it would be before anyone had anything they could use on them. Even then, they would have to figure something out eventually, and for those brief seconds where they were alone in the car, they looked to one another.
"You okay?" Mike asked Amy.
"I'm fine, you?"
"I think so, yeah," he frowned, resettling to try and diminish the discomfort brought on by the cuffs. "Look, let me talk if we have to. You're not from around… now," he pointed out.
"What about you? You are from around now, you live here. They'll put you in jail."
"They have nothing on us, look, I'll think of something, I…"
They fell quiet again as the front doors opened and the two officers climbed in. The car took off, with sirens on, and that was all that would be heard as they rode on to the precinct. They knew what would happen once they got there, but they couldn't show themselves in any way troubled by this impending separation. They allowed themselves to be brought from the car, up into the building, and then led off, one through one door, the other through another.
In one room, Amy wondered what would happen when the fingerprints collected from her by a girl who couldn't have been on the force for very long by the looks of her. She wasn't from this city, or this state, or this country. They hadn't heard her speak yet, so they wouldn't expand their search into any databases where they might be able to identify her. That should slow things down enough for her at least.
She had nothing better to do for a while than to examine her wrists, finally freed of the chafing cuffs, and to think about this obstacle which had now come to slow their mission down. Yes, the painting had been removed from its post, but that wasn't all that needed to be done, was it? They had to disable it, and then… What if it wasn't enough?
Her glasses had not been returned to her, so they would either be logged into her possessions by one officer or another, or they would have been abandoned on the museum floor. Either way, she didn't have them, and for having worn them for hours now, she could feel the effect of not wearing them anymore. Her memories felt as though they threatened to drift away at any moment. She needed to concentrate, not to lose hold of any of them.
Mike was having the same problem in the room where they had left him, with the glaring difference in between them being that when they ran his prints, although he had no criminal record, they could still somehow identify him. This had been his city, had been ever since he'd come here for school when he'd left Lima. He was no thief, they'd have to see. He was a dancer, a teacher, a choreographer… He was going to need to come up with an excuse though, and right now all he had was that he had fallen asleep and woken up to find the museum had closed and he was still inside. That would never do.
"Michael Chang," a voice made him startle, and he looked up to find a man had walked into the room, carrying a stack of papers. "I am just dying to know what someone like you was doing, breaking into…"
"I didn't break in," he spoke; it was stronger than him, especially seeing as this was actually true. They had not broken in; they only meant to break out.
"Right, you just took the wife for a tour, several hours before opening?" the detective asked. Mike looked down to the ring on his hand. They thought Amy was his wife.
"I told you, I wasn't…"
Before he could go on, the door had opened again, and another detective walked in, escorting a woman in a suit, carrying a briefcase, and, to Mike's surprise, wearing those same glasses the Doctor had stolen to replicate.
"That'll be quite enough, thank you," she told the first detective. "Mr. Chang, please follow me."
"What is this?" the detective stood.
"My name is Lynn Evershaw, I am Mr. Chang's attorney, and this interrogation is over."
Mike didn't know how she'd known he was there, but he knew who must have sent her. At this point, he didn't think he should argue. Being out of the police's hands and being instead in those of the people likely responsible for this whole mess felt like a prudent thing, strange as it sounded.
As he left the interrogation room, he found Amy had also been sprung, by an equally bespectacled man. She looked just as confused and surprised as he did, and he was relieved to see she was attempting just as he did to keep these reactions under wraps. Neither of them spoke as they left the precinct, though they briefly skidded to a stop when they saw the black limousine waiting for them.
"Please, right this way," Miss Evershaw opened the door and stepped aside. Her associate didn't seem to have as sunny of a disposition as she did, and Mike and Amy did as they were told, much more so not to incur his wrath.
"Where are we going?" Amy finally allowed herself to speak after all four of them were seated and the car had driven off.
"Mr. Brown wishes to speak with you both," Miss Evershaw replied. "With any luck, your associates will grace us with their presence."
TO BE CONTINUED (TODAY)