“What do you mean?”
“Give me five minutes with your suspect. I simply need to ask him three questions. I’ll have all the answers I need after that.”
Amused at the absurdity of her claim he snickered, “And what makes you think he will answer your three questions after he’s refused to answer any questions that we have asked him.”
Donatella shrugged, “I guess we won’t know how he’ll respond until I ask my three questions.”
Detective Sampson considered this for a moment. Allowing this FBI agent access to the suspect without cause was highly unusual; however, if allowing her to ask her three questions – knowing they would yield no results – would move her along so he could get back to business he just might chance it.
“Alright, Special Agent Dabria. I’ll let you ask your three questions, but no more. When you are done, you’ll vacate the premises. Agreed?”
In mock answer, she simply tilted her head forward and stood. Detective Sampson was slower on the response and scrambled to his feet. He led Agent Dabria to the interrogation room and motioned for the officer posted like a sentry to open the door.
Donatella turned and spoke, “I need to speak with him alone.”
Sampson fuming at this request, “That was not part of the agreement. You are not speaking with this man alone!”
“Our agreement,” she said in a cool voice “was that I would ask the suspect three questions. To ask those three questions, I do not need your assistance. Furthermore, as you have already stated, he has refused to answer any of your questions. Seeing you will only exasperate him further and he is likely to shut down completely. Three questions, detective, and then he’s all yours.”
Reluctantly, Sampson stood aside and allowed Donatella to enter. Once she passed the threshold he motioned for the officer to close the door and he walked over to the bank of monitors to view the interior of the room. He watched as Agent Dabria casually walked across the room, sat down in the chair and crossed her left leg over her right.
“Hello Adam, my name is Special Agent Donatella Dabria with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” She said this while pulling her credentials from her pocket and laying the wallet open on the table displaying her shield and her credentials. Adam continued to stare ghostly into space and did not acknowledge the badge or the woman sitting in front of him.
In the outside room Detective Sampson began to think this was a monumental waste of time. Nonetheless, he was willing to let this play out so this Special Agent could go about her day and he could finish building his case against this sick bastard.
“Adam,” Donatella continued. “It’s a terrible thing that happened to Samantha,” she said in her cool, honey, southern voice. “It’s a terrible thing you had to witness happen to Samantha. By all indications, and from everything I can tell, you truly did love Samantha. Mr. Joseph,” she said lowering her voice now barely audible to the contingent outside. “I know you are not the one fully responsible for her death.”
Slowly, the cloud that shrouded his eyes began to dissipate and the holes that had been his pupils began to glimmer with focus. Adam Joseph blinked his eyes rapidly to clear his head of the fog in an attempt to register the words that were spoken. Donatella watched in silence as Adam transitioned from his zombie-like state to a man with determination.
“Was it your idea to kill Samantha Taylor last night, Mr. Joseph?”
Sampson upon hearing one of her three questions frowned. Of course, the answer to this question is going to be no. What person, guilty of murder, would say that it was their idea to kill the person they murdered? That would be an admission and one that would certainly have them tossed in jail.
Adam stared at Agent Dabria for what, to him, seemed like an hour, but in reality, was only 15 seconds. “No” was the word that croaked from his dry throat. He reached purposely for the warm water sitting idly on the metal table. He raised the cup to his chapped and cracked lips and swallowed a mouthful of water with an audible gulp.
“Mr. Joseph, I’m going to show you a photo. I want you to tell me if you recognize the person in the photo. Do you think you can do that for me?”
Outside of the interrogation room Sampson could feel his temperature rising and though he had a dark complexion, he could sense himself reddening. Every fiber of his being wanted to rush in the room and put an immediate end to this questioning. First of all, she had not mentioned she wanted to question the suspect by herself, and now she is preparing to show him a picture that she didn’t run past him. He wanted to burst in there and put an end to this, but he didn’t. He hadn’t walked through the door and called a halt to this interview for two simple reasons. She had asked her second question and she was 66 percent of the way through her questions. One more to go and she would be out of his hair. The second reason was those hazelnut eyes.
While in his office, she halted him from speaking when she raised her hand. The hand was not truly what caused him to halt, it was her eyes. Her deep, hazelnut brown eyes. Eyes that could hold you in a lover’s embrace, and eyes that could dissect you like a skilled physician wielding a scalpel. In that moment, he decided he would wait out the final question, the last 33 percent.
Inside the interrogation room a sliver of hope began to rise within Adam. Hope he dared not lean on to heavily, for he was sure it would crumble underneath him, and he would fall back into the murky darkness that had been the last few hours of his life. He did not verbally respond to the question from Agent Dabria because his throat was still raw. Instead he nodded his head a couple of times urging silently for this nightmare to be over.
Agent Dabria extracted a cell phone from her pocket. Outside Sampson was livid because she had taken a phone into the interrogation room, but he stayed where he sat. She unlocked the phone, the picture was already queued, and held it for Adam to take a close look at the woman staring back at him.
In an abrupt shout, “That’s her! Oh my God, it’s her!” The emotion, pain, anguish he had been feeling exploded out of him in both fear and tears.
Sampson leapt to his feet and with three quick steps forced his way into the room. “What is the meaning of this Special Agent Dabria?” By this time Adam was holding both hands over his mouth sobbing uncontrollably.
Casually Agent Dabria pulled out the chair that sat beside her and in her calm, southern voice said, “Detective Sampson, please have a seat.” Sampson’s heart raced as a bewildered look overcame his face. Like prey being stalked by a cagey predator, Sampson wearily sat in the chair eyeing Donatella.
Sliding her attention back to the sobbing Adam, Donatella fired her last question. “Would you please tell me, and Detective Sampson, what really transpired in Ms. Taylor’s apartment?”
Adam regarded her while wiping the snot flowing from his nose with the back of his left hand. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell them without a lawyer present. Anything he said would be treading on thin ice – and incriminating.
He began inhaling deeply through his nose and methodically through his mouth. “I arrived at Samantha’s apartment at roughly 6:30 p.m. I popped a couple of mints from my bag, straightened my hair and stepped out of the car. I knocked a couple of times on her door before she answered and let me in. Per usual, when I entered her apartment, she closed and locked the door. We began to... um… fool around. We kissed and fondled a little bit. Then there was a knock at the door.”
His face took on a grave sour look as he proceeded. “Samantha thought it was Tina at the door bringing her a sleeping bag for her camping trip. She asked me to go sit in the living room while she opened the door. I sat down as Samantha unlocked the front door. Once the door swung open, I heard a vicious thud followed by Samantha bellowing out in pain. I rushed back to see the source of the commotion and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. There was a woman – that woman,” he said pointing at Donatella’s phone, “Pointing a gun at my head while she reached behind herself to lock the door.”
Ad
am stopped to take a drink and then continued. “She told me to secure Samantha with flex cuffs and duct tape. She said she didn’t want Samantha interrupting as we talked. Once Samantha had been secured and her mouth taped, that woman threw me a tablet. It took me a moment, but once the tablet had come to life,” the instant horror had once again registered on his face, “there were multiple videos playing at once. They were live shots from within my house. Video of my wife in the kitchen. Video of my children, all three of them. And there was a clock. Not a clock. A timer.”
“That woman,” he said subconsciously looking back toward the phone, “told me I had a choice to make. Either I kill Samantha, or she would set my house on fire with my family trapped inside.”
Unable to hold his tongue any longer Sampson blurted, “Do you really expect us to buy this story, Mr. Joseph. A random woman who you never met tells you to kill Samantha or she is going to burn your family alive. How gullible do you think we are?”
“Damn it! It’s the God damn truth!”
Agent Dabria shot a glance at Detective Sampson. “Please continue,” she said.
Adam took another gulp of warm water, the last one in the cup. “She told me I had a choice to make. Save Samantha or save my family. She warned me if I tried to point the gun at her, she would kill me, then Samantha, and then set fire to my house. I stared at the clock as it ticked backward. She said if the clock finished its countdown, she would execute my family by fire.” The vacant horror crept back over his face and into his eyes.
“I looked at Samantha… I looked at her as she cried, her eyes pleading with me not to kill her. But my girls, Courtney, Chasity and my baby, Megan. I could not – I would not let them die. Not that way. Not because of something I had done. Not because I had been unfaithful to their mother, my wife. I again looked at Samantha.” Now the tears were streaming from his closed eyes. “I looked at her and I looked back at the timer. It was now under one minute. I would not let my girls die. So, I raised the gun, asked the Lord for forgiveness and I pulled the trigger.”
The silence in the interrogation room was deafening. Detective Sampson looked as if he wanted to say something; however, he withheld all comments. Adam Joseph looked like a beaten man. A man who relived the worst decision he made in his life. Donatella broke the silence, “And then what happened?” she asked feeling there was more to tell.
“That woman retrieved the gun from me and told me to drive straight home. She told me not to contact the police and not to make any stops. If I did either one, she would make good on her promise to execute my family, but this time, she would make sure I was part of the equation. So, I did what I was told. I left the building, rushed to my car and eventually I arrived back at my house.”
“Thank you, Mr. Joseph. Detective, do you mind if we speak a moment in private, say back in your office?”
Unsure of anything else he could say, Detective Sampson nodded his head and this time he was the first to stand.
Once they were back in Sampson’s office with the door closed Donatella began to speak. “The woman in the picture,” she lay the phone down for Sampson to observe, “Is Terri Buckley. She is cold, calculated and extremely dangerous. I have no doubt she watched Adam and Samantha until she was ready to make her move. Is there anything else I should know about this case Detective Sampson?”
Sampson pondered his response and if he wanted to share anything with this agent. True to her word she was able to extract information from the suspect in mere minutes, something they had not been able to do in hours of interrogations. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt he could trust this woman. Turning toward his computer he entered his username and password and waited for the login sequence to complete. Once it did, he pulled up the case in search of one picture he had not shared with the suspect.
“Agent Dabria, there is one additional item that we did not share with the suspect. It was something we located at the crime scene that looked out of place and thus became a clue for our team.” If Agent Dabria was interested, it didn’t show, she sat perfectly still and waited for Sampson to continue.
“We found this card stuck inside the frame of a picture. It wasn’t exactly hidden, but it also wasn’t in plain sight.” Detective Sampson swiveled the monitor so that both he and Donatella could see the screen without either of them leaving their seats.
“This first side as you can see is blank. This is the side that was visible from the picture frame.” Clicking his mouse and moving to the next picture, “This was on the back of the card.”
Donatella stared wordlessly at the image illuminating from the screen. At the bottom of the card she saw the typed written words, “Five Days”. In the middle of the card sat an embossed image of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker sculpture. Sampson could tell by the change in expression that Donatella was familiar with the sculpture as well.
“What do you think it means?”
Donatella sat pensively for several moments while staring at the image. The creaking sound of the old building along with the forced air blowing heat into the room were the only sounds that could be heard. When she finally spoke, she did so in her professorial voice.
“Detective Sampson, what we have before us are a plethora of clues. Please understand, Terri Buckley is a master of deception and nothing is ever as simple as it seems. When you look at the image on the screen you see three things. You see the image of The Thinker, you see the word ‘Five’ and you see the word ‘Days’.”
“In 1880 Auguste Rodin was commissioned to create a pair of bronze doors for a decorative art museum in Paris. As part of this work, Rodin constructed a series of clay figurines using Dante’s Inferno as his inspiration. These figurines were to adorn the doors, and in most cases, they would be parts of the doors. Those doors, that structure, was called The Gates of Hell and sitting above the gates leading into Hell sat The Thinker. The museum itself never opened and The Gates of Hell sculpture was never finished; however, The Thinker was extracted from the work and became its own central standalone piece.”
Detective Sampson hung on every word as Agent Dabria continued to speak.
“The words ‘Five’ and ‘Days’ given in this context are certainly a threat, more so, a promise from Terri. For the casual observer one would take this to mean in five days some event that she has planned will unfold. However, I’m convinced this is not the case. If you look closely at the words ‘Five’ and ‘Days’ you will notice they are separated by more than your normal one space between words. In fact, I’m willing to bet there are exactly five spaces between the words. Detective Sampson, this was no accident. This is yet another clue. Terri isn’t saying there is an event that will take place in five days. What she wants you to see, what she wants me to know is that all hell will break loose on five separate days.’”
Chapter 4
December 11th – 7:00 a.m.
I n a three-bedroom rented townhouse on the south side of Charlotte, Terri Buckley lay naked across the bed staring at the ceiling replaying the events from the night. Every element fell in place just as she expected it would. Although for a moment she really believed that fool Adam would choose that slut homewrecker over his family. That surely would have been an unexpected turn of events, but nothing she couldn’t handle. The elimination of Samantha Taylor was key to the next phase of her plan. After the debacle and humiliation, she experienced from her last case, her employers at The Syndicate had not lost faith in her. Instead, they entrusted her with this new assignment, one that if done correctly would yield them plenty of capital for future investments. She would be given the resources she needed to execute her plan, and as a bonus she could incorporate additional torment to her former FBI partner, Donatella Dabria.
Terri had to admit that on some level she underestimated the abilities of Donatella when they faced off the last time. In her zeal to see that goody two-shoes bitch suffer before her death she now realized she left Donatella too many outs. This time she would not be so foolish. While Donatella�
�s death would come soon enough, something The Syndicate stood firmly behind, suffering was the only goal for Terri at this stage in the game. Emotional and physical suffering. By the time Terri was done with her, she wanted Donatella to beg her for her own death – and then, only then she would be obliged to end her miserable existence.
Her nipples hardened with arousal thinking about how wonderful it would feel to finally rid the world of the Dabria line. When Donatella was 11, The Syndicate was responsible for the explosion that killed Donatella’s parents. While Terri didn’t know the motivation for her employers to wipe the earth clean of her parents, there were several reasons she wanted to see their daughter removed from this earth.
The last straw in her hatred for Donatella came when she informed their superiors at the FBI that she no longer wanted to have Terri as a partner. Donatella considered her a loose cannon and wasn’t sure she could be trusted any longer. Buckley overheard Donatella telling this to Senior Special Agent John Brewer. Hearing her partner utter those words was a punch to the gut that sealed the hatred. However, the beginning came several months prior.
Smithville – 4 years prior
“New case, just in from Brewer. He wants us to get started on this right away,” Buckley said handing the file over to Donatella. “Suspect is Aaron Smithville, wanted in connection to a drug smuggling ring, child trafficking, and dealing in illegal arms.”
Donatella scanned the file as Terri droned away in the background. “He’s evaded capture for several years and we received a tip that he’s going to resurface within the next few days. This is our chance to catch him and put him away for good.”
Leafing through the file Donatella spoke, “He really must have flown under the radar. This is the first time I have heard of Aaron Smithville. He has some rap sheet, did he have help to forge deeply underground?”
“Honestly I’m not sure. Everything we have on the suspect is in the file. I scanned through it enough to obtain the particulars and now I’m handing it over to you.”
Hour of Reckoning (Donatella Book 2) Page 5
