by Matt Rogers
Chapter 22
The ride back to the city was filled with questions.
“Can you believe the size of those guys?”
“Can you believe how good-looking those women were?”
“How much is oil going for these days?”
Smith was driving and Wesson was pondering when all of a sudden he had a realization.
“We’re going to the wrong place!”
They had decided to call upon Commercial Property Management Incorporated to verify if their assumptions were correct; the LeTorque family owned the company which would explain why a servant who worked for them would have power over a Warden in charge of a prison they owned.
“Huh?” Smith replied.
“Turn around. We need to go back.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
So they turned around and drove back to the little town housing an enormous prison holding convicted felons restrained through the use of trained wolves in a forested wood-line. They arrived at the same convenience store they’d visited before.
“Hello, can I help you?” the elderly clerk said.
“Yes, we were in here earlier asking about…” Smith began.
“The Correctional Facility, yes, I remember you” the clerk finished for him.
“Oh, okay good, um… I was wondering if you could tell me where the police department is.”
“Sure, just keep heading south and take your first right. It’s about two blocks up the street.”
Smith took the information in and then decided to take a chance.
“Thanks. Hey, have you lived here long?”
“My whole life” the clerk replied and Smith was happy he took the long shot.
“Did you know a Bob Simpson?”
The clerks face registered the answer before his words.
“Oh, yeah, everyone knew old Bob. Why?”
Smith didn’t like answering questions. He liked giving them but the clerk wasn’t a perp so he obliged.
“Well, we’re working on a case and his name has come up.”
“A case?’
“Yes.”
“What kind of case?”
The question and answering process was always the same. The detective would begin the questioning and the answerer would always wonder what the questioning was about. The easiest way to get someone to talk was to give them information they felt was of a secretive nature. Everyone liked to be in on the privileged side of things. The problem he had was he didn’t know the status of Bob Simpson. Was the guy liked or disliked? It made all the difference where cooperation was concerned. If he posed his questions in the wrong manner the person answering might feel an obligation to either protect or denigrate the subject matter. Smith took another stab in the dark.
“Okay, I’m going to trust the information I share will go no further. Do I have your promise you won’t repeat what I tell you?”
The clerk nodded with conspiratorial intrigue and Smith went for it.
“We have a client on trial for arson. He says he didn’t do it. He says Bob Simpson did it. Do you think it’s possible our client is telling the truth?”
He went with Bob being of the character which predominated prisons; anti-social antagonizers.
“Oh, yeah, Bob could’ve done it. That man was nothing but trouble from the minute he was born.”
“Did you know him well?”
“I knew him well enough to know he was convicted of setting his own mother on fire. Can you believe that? He killed his own mother. You know, it wasn’t such a surprise because…”
While Smith was interrogating the clerk Wesson was preparing his mid-day meal. He loved convenience store food. It was hot, it was quick and it had the one thing all food should contain; flavor. He couldn’t understand the latest trend which had sprung up in his beloved country; unflavorful food. He’d tried diets many times over and continually failed to complete even the minimal time periods suggested for successful weight-loss management for the simple reason they took all the fun out of eating. He figured they came down to two basic concepts and had given both a shot without even the slightest hint of fat removal. The first seemed the easiest; eat what we tell you. He’d bought into the program, bought their prepackaged foods with the intent on following their simple advise until he’d come across a small glitch they’d not mentioned. The meals were incredibly small. The first time he’d opened one he’d called the help number to complain they’d obviously made a mistake and would they please replace his infant’s meal with one of an adult. When they’d explained he had indeed been given the correct portion size and should take his time devouring the baby chicken-wing over three noodles he realized he’d been duped. The worst part was the price. They were charging double the going rate for half the prevailing product.
The second weight-loss solution had been the reverse of the first; don’t eat what we tell you. It seemed easy enough. Certain foods were off-limits while all others were acceptable. He’d bought their book and went to the grocery store to implement their program. It was an awakening of biblical proportions. Virtually the entire store was filled to the brim with foods on the outlaw list. After walking around for an hour in bewildered amazement at the amount of illegal product he found he had use of about one-tenth the place. He could get stuff from a portion of the back wall but that was it. The entire middle part, the good part, the tasty part was deemed forbidden territory. He tossed the book in the trash on the way out with a frozen pizza and pretzels in tow.
“Smith?”
“Yes?”
“Did you want anything?”
Smith smiled as he paid the clerk for his time, information and Wesson’s chili-cheese nachos.
The ride to the police station took less than five minutes. Wesson was through eating in four.
“Hello, may I help you?”
The woman at the one room station house could’ve worked substitute in the prison. She was five-nine, golden complexion and marvelously majestic. She wore the garb of an officer but in a way neither detective had ever dreamed possible. What was drab on others was a uniform of ultimate enticement on her. Both men later agreed they would willingly commit a crime to get locked up in the same jail with her.
“Hello, ma’am, my name is Detective Smith and this…”
“.. is Detective Wesson, I presume” she finished for him.
Wesson, for some reason, felt a thrill the cop in alluring blue would know his name.
“Yes, how did you…?”
“Lawton told me when he called in to check on your weapon’s permit.”
Wesson felt a little let down. He didn’t know why but he felt it just the same.
“And Lawton is…?”
“I am Lawton” came a thunderous reply from directly behind the men causing both to startle with fright for they’d not heard the man enter, not heard the door open, not heard a thing.
When they recovered they found themselves sitting in a small conference room with the largest cop in the cosmos and the prettiest policewomen on the planet. Lawton, of course, turned out to be the very cop who’d pulled them over earlier and the woman sitting next to him, the insanely seductive sergeant who went by the name of Luanne was either his wife or girlfriend for they did as couples did and finished the other’s sentences.
“So you two weren’t employed here during the time of Bob Simpson’s arrest?”
“No, we were hired…” Lawton began.
“… when the prison was finished” Luanne finished.
They were there for a reason. Bob Simpson had committed the crime in the very town he was later sent to life for. The jail they were visiting was the same where he was first held while awaiting trial. It was small, tidy and absent anyone of a criminal nature at the time.
“Do you by any chance have copies of the original report and any evidence gathered?”
The practice of duplication was a common theme in every department for the sole reason the people th
ey were dealing with were criminals. The law was pretty clear. Make your case and lock the bad person up but stay inside specific guidelines while doing so. One of the guidelines was of original origin. If evidence were presented at trial it must have been original. Copies were inadmissible for who knew what mischief could occur if replication replaced reality. The rule was known to all, including the guilty who were further known to go out of their way to contaminate or destroy originality. Copies were made not to show in court but to keep in case the originals disappeared. They weren’t used as replacements because the courts would not allow for them but were kept so a future crime could be compared and analyzed. If it hit on similar traits as the first then the police would have a much better time convincing a judge to issue a subpoena or even an arrest warrant without first-hand evidence the subject committed the crime. Thus, even though the courts would not allow their use during trial they were not subject to the same limitations outside the courtroom. Judges were Human, they could see fact from fiction and were very upset when men of obvious deceit were allowed to walk free because evidence went missing.
“Yes…” said Lawton.
“… of course we keep copies ” added Luanne.
They both got up without a word and walked across the room. Lawton reached in his pocket, pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door. The two detectives, still seated, realized they were about to be allowed access to the evidence room so they stood and waited as the most unlikely and impressive small-town cops anywhere led them inside a room the size of a large walk-in closet.
“This is it?” Wesson asked.
“Yep…” the monster law enforcer began.
“… we don’t have a lot of felonies around these parts” the luscious law-bringer ended.
What they were looking at was four metal shelving units, each with six trays, which rose to a full height of five feet. They were half full. Lawton pulled a box off the top of one of the shelves and walked back out to the conference table, set it down and removed the contents. They consisted of a cowboy hat, poncho, single burnt wooden matchstick and a video-cassette tape.
“That’s it?” Wesson asked again in somewhat astonished amazement.
“Yep…” he began.
“… it’s all they needed’ she finished.
The video was the key. It didn’t actually show Bob doing the dastardly act. In fact, at one time the image of the person caught on the tape should have given away their identity but something was wrong and the picture was lost. A security camera set up at the Wayward Youth Facility caught it all. A person wearing a cowboy hat and poncho was shown pouring liquid around the base of the building, striking a match and setting it afire. At one time, when the match was lit, the person’s face should have been viewed but the image faded. Something was wrong with the lens for where features should’ve been only darkness was visible. Bob was convicted because someone had seen him in the area wearing a cowboy hat and called the police after learning of the fire. The police found the hat and poncho in Bob’s truck, watched the video and the rest was a foregone conclusion.
“So this is what sent him away?” Wesson said.
“Yep” Lawton replied.
The evidence was, as most evidence tended to be, circumstantial. It could’ve been planted, it would’ve been easy to do so but, then again, most evidence was circumstantial in the hands of attorneys. Both detectives had seen clear-cut cases get tossed out of court because of exceptionally bright individuals who practiced law not for the good of society but for the benefit of wealth. Money was the arbitrator of fact, the get-out-of-jail card for those who could afford its price. A good attorney could turn any piece of evidence no matter how solid and physical of form into one of smoke and perplexity to a jury. Where once a picture of the suspect committing the crime sat, after cross examination a digital mystery remained. Pixels could be altered, shades and hues realigned and where a guilty verdict was presupposed an innocent one emerged.
“Has anyone enhanced this video since the time of the crime?” Wesson asked.
“No” Lawton began.
“The criminal confessed” Luanne finished.
Things were strange for the two detectives because everything appeared to have a different meaning. A family hired them to find a member and then proceeded to offer zero help with the process. A butler became an officer and then a gatekeeper to classified material and a prison became an oil-production business. Wesson had an idea but he needed cooperation and while the two officers were extremely helpful he was about to ask for something out of the realm of assistance, something which was in the grey area of legality.
“May we take this tape with us?”
The question was posed with all the sincerity he could muster. It wasn’t technically illegal what he was asking but it also wasn’t legal either. The tape was a copy so its legality wasn’t an issue itself but it was stored in the evidence locker of a police station so its location was the problem. He was preparing his defense of why they should allow the two detectives access to the tape and was wondering if the prospect of unlimited funds would even slightly sway the impressive duo when he heard an answer he couldn’t quite believe.
“Sure.”
“No problem.”
He wasn’t positive he’d heard correctly their response or they’d heard correctly his question so he asked again.
“I mean the video tape. Can we take it with us to get it enhanced?”
Once again their answers astonished him.
“Uh-huh.”
“Can’t see why not.”
Wesson looked to Smith to see if maybe he wasn’t hearing correctly but the look of astonishment on his partner’s face only reinforced his belief they’d run into either the most incompetent pair of cops in the world or the most helpful individuals in law enforcement ever.
“Really?” he asked waiting for them to laugh and tell him they were only joking.
“Yes, really…” Lawton said.
“… you’re privileged to that information” Luann added.
Her last response was the kicker, the cherry on the top.
“Did you just say ‘privileged’?” Smith queried.
“Yep…” Lawton began with grin.
“… Nat said to say ‘Hello’” Luann finished with a smile.
