by Alona Jarden
I was glad that I had a master's degree in psychology, as it helped me in analyzing his body language. It also afforded me the opportunity to undermine his self-confidence, in the hopes that he’d reveal his true colors.
His hands were clenched tight across the table, his eyes fixed on mine, as if they were looking for something that would justify the use of violence, and his chest rose and lowered rapidly.
"Please, sit down, Mr. Costa." Officer Swenson pulled out one of the chairs for me.
"Thank you," I answered politely, like the good boy she’d asked me to be, and sat not too far away from him. "I promised I would behave and I will." I added to the two large officers standing by me and they nodded in response.
"Tell me, Mr. Costa, do you know Mr. Briggs?" she turned her first question to me.
"Yes, I do."
"Who is he to you?"
"He is the Devil in its incarnation." I carried out my first attempt to rile him and carefully examined his responses, hoping to identify the most effective direction needed to reveal his true face.
"Okay, and you, Mr. Briggs? Do you know Mr. Costa?"
"His name sounds familiar to me, but his face is not. Not familiar at all."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure that I'm not sure where I know him from." His witty sting at Officer Swenson reminded me a little of Katarina's reactions and I felt a pinch in my heart for even the slightest sign of similarity between the two of them.
"Don’t rush to answer with such determination, Mr. Briggs," I carried out my second attempt to make him lose his peace. My description of him as a 'devil' hadn’t succeeded in doing it, so I took a different angle. "Perhaps someone planted other memories in you when you were just a little boy? Maybe someone made sure you would forget me?"
"What?"
"Don’t worry, I can help!" I smiled saccharinely. "After all, I'm an expert in dealing with such situations. Hell, that is what I've been doing for the last week with Katarina."
"What did you do to her?" his face turned red.
"I helped her remember things she had forgotten. If you want, I'm more than willing to help you understand why my name rings a bell for you."
"You... You can do what?" he seemed confused.
"Oh, don’t worry, I'll give you a hint. You definitely know me. Should I go on?"
"No, thank you." He gave me a defiant smile, making it clear that my second attempt had also failed, and continued calmly, "I just want to understand why you believe I am this devil you're talking about."
"May I answer him?" I asked permission from Officer Swenson and continued with her casual nod. "The period in time I'm talking about occurred when I was a little boy, but gladly for you, you were an adult then. You never played an active role in Katarina's life, so I assume it will be hard for you to recognize the grown-up version of the neighbor's son."
"The… The neighbor's son?"
"My facial features may have changed, but yours haven’t, Uncle Christian. You look just how you used to look. Like a dreadful monster."
"Mr. Costa!" My third attempt was defused by Officer Swenson, who warned me to keep a respectable language before turning to Mr. Briggs with a follow-up question. "Sir, would you like to address the accusations made before us by Mr. Costa?"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"I mean that he claimed that..."
"It sounds to me like Mr. Costa is confused." He interrupted her, as his patience shortened. "Honestly? I feel sorry for him. I actually believe everything he said really happened to him. I'm sure he saw something horrific in his childhood. Something that made him lose some touch with reality and, unfortunately, something that seems to cloud his judgment even today, as an adult."
"Andrew?" I noticed a change in the way Officer Swenson turned to me, but I couldn’t decide whether it was because she agreed with Mr. Briggs and felt that I was mentally unstable or because she was feeling sorry for me and didn’t notice that she had gone to call me by my first name. "I'll ask you to look at Mr. Briggs again."
"Yes. I'm completely sure that’s him."
Officer Swenson broke her eye contact with me and, for a few minutes, ruffled through the folder she had in front of her.
"You should both know that we contacted the authorities in Costa Rica and they sent us their investigative files on the old case Mr. Costa mentioned."
"Excellent," I folded my arms, satisfied with the professionalism she showed.
"Well, what did it say?" Mr. Briggs got intrigued. "Was I right? Is he really suffering from some horrible childhood trauma? Tell us what the hell happened to this poor boy." I recognized his attempt to escape his sins of the past and actually admired it.
"The files support everything described to us by Mr. Costa."
"Seriously?" I didn’t think he was surprised or panicked when he answered. "Does it say that I, Christian Briggs, murdered the parents of a girl I didn’t know and then kidnapped her, taking her to a foreign country?"
"No," She kept calm. "It says that Andrew was a child witness to the incident, when he was just an eight-year-old boy. It says he was interrogated at the scene, but insisted he wasn’t able to see the face of the man who took Katarina."
"That's right," I exhaled at the smile on the face of the monster sitting opposite me.
"Andrew." Again, Officer Swenson's voice suggested that she felt more sorry for me than actually believing me. "Are you sure that Kate is indeed Katarina?"
"Kate was never Kate and he was never her father."
"I think there are some details in my investigation that you don’t know, Andrew. We actually found out for certain that Kate is Mr. Briggs biological daughter."
"Oh, but she is" she insisted.
"She can't be… I mean… You know what? Regardless of your findings, Kate is not his daughter!" I screamed, noting that saying those words painted his face red with anger, before going on. "I didn’t see her kidnapper's face, but I saw Katarina's face then and now. I suggest you see it for yourself too!"
"How can I see Katarina myself? She was only a little girl then, wasn’t she?"
"You got a copy of the investigative files, right?" I knew the Costa Rican evidence by heart and all documents attached to the file.
"Right."
"Did they send you the pictures of the murder scene and the picture of her mother when she was still alive?"
"Yes," she continued.
"And what about the investigation into her current abduction? You have a current picture of Kate, don’t you?" I hated having to change her name so that she knew what picture I was talking about.
"Sure," she snapped her fingers at the mirror and a frantic policeman entered the interrogation room with the two pictures I was talking about in his hands.
For a few minutes none of the people in the room spoke.
The smile, which had irritated me earlier, was erased from Mr. Briggs's face and, as my fourth attempt to drive him out of his composure succeeded, I gave him a smug look.
"Now do you get it?" I decided she had looked at the pictures more than enough and the time had come for her to go on with her investigation. "Do you understand why I know for a fact that this is the man who kidnapped her?"
"Look, Andrew... I agree that there is an uncanny resemblance between these two women." She placed the pictures on the table in front of Mr. Briggs and his face began to twitch uncomfortably. "What do you say about all this Mr...?"
"Oh, you beautiful princess," he started crying even before she finished asking her question. "I miss you so much…"
I actually thought he was crying after looking at the face of the woman he once loved and not of his beloved daughter, who was on her way to the police station, but I didn’t know how I could succeed in causing him to admit it.
"Mr. Briggs, I ask again. Do you see the resemblance between these two women?"
"I... I..."
I felt he was close to confessing his guilt, but a call was hear
d through the speakers which made Officer Swenson leave the interrogation room immediately.
"Not a word out of either of you!" she fired at both of us. "If either of them opens his mouth, take him out to the small interrogation room," she ordered the policemen left there to keep us obedient, and disappeared.
The monster's eyes were fixed on mine and I wondered how this could be the man Katarina had spoken so fondly about. Was this man with the threatening look the same one who took care of her when she was sick? Did he hug her when she fell and got hurt? Is this the man who’d guided her to overcome her first heartbreak and encouraged her to persevere and succeed in medical studies?
"Mr. Briggs, Mr. Costa, I'm here with Kate." My heart skipped a beat as Officer Swenson's voice sounded over the loud speakers.
"Kate!" Mr. Briggs stood up and the cops beside him forced him back into his chair. "Kate! Kate! Let me see her! Please, let me see her!"
"Mr. Briggs, calm down," Officer Swenson continued talking to him through the speakers. "Kate is here by my side, and she's perfectly fine."
"Kate, my little one," he broke down in tears and I didn’t need an in-depth look to know that his breakdown wasn’t fake.
His body slumped in exhaustion, his hands trembled, and the tears kept running down his cheeks. I could understand why she loved him so much, after seeing how powerful his love was for her. I even wondered whether, over the years, he had convinced himself that he really had adopted her as his own.
I took advantage of all my therapeutic tools in an attempt to understand how he had managed to develop so intense of feelings for her when, in fact, he was nothing more than her kidnapper and the murderer of her parents.
"Gentlemen, with your permission, I'm going to have a little chat with Kate," she announced and I fell silent as I realized that we had to keep being with each other for an indefinite period of time.
I could only imagine what was happening on the other side of that damned mirror. I assumed Kate would be asked about her time with me in the cabin. Officer Swenson would probably try to pinpoint whether she had any memories of her parents and then ask her to identify them in the pictures.
I turned my gaze in the direction of the mirror and stretched a forced smile on my face in the hope that she would say the right things when asked about Mr. Briggs’ involvement in all this. I expected a long time to go by while they had their little chat, which is why I was very surprised when Officer Swenson opened the door again not shortly after.
"Now you listen to me! Both of you!" She was clearly impatient. "For some reason, that charming young girl standing outside the door, doesn’t want to talk to me before she talks to you."
"Is she okay?" I asked.
"No." Her answer was like a sword piercing my internal organs. I knew exactly what she meant, but Mr. Briggs was quick to jump to conclusions.
"She's not? What did he do to her?" He tried to stand up again and shouted, "Kate! Kate! I swear to you, boy, if you laid your dirty, filthy hands on her..."
"Mr. Briggs, calm down," Officer Swenson waved her finger at him and the two cops around him restrained his outburst, forcing him back into the chair. "Kate is okay, but she's upset. She's extremely upset and she refused to answer any of my questions, claiming she still isn’t sure what in her life is true and what is a lie she was led to believe in."
I should have agreed to have another session with her before I left that morning. One last treatment might have changed her response to Officer Swenson.
For five long minutes, she explained to us what was going to happen and added that all this came as demands from Katarina herself. She described how Katarina was going to enter the room where we were sitting and address questions to each of us.
"Kate also said she won’t tolerate dishonorable language or uncontrollable outbursts." She summed up Katarina's terms and added a last message of her own. "Listen, guys. One of you will remain in my custody this evening. One of you won’t be leaving the station as a free man. The only question is whether it will be for charges of abduction and illegal detainment, or whether these two charges will be accompanied by a double, first-degree murder charge."
A couple of minutes later, she came in. The light in her eyes seemed extinguished as she stepped hesitantly into the room. I was glad she didn’t look away from me. On the contrary, she poked the arrows of anger I had aroused in her at me, then, turned to do the same to the one she referred to as her father before looking back at me.
"I want to start by saying that Andrew didn’t hold me in the cabin by force. I was there of my own free will."
"There are some things I can’t agree with you on, Kate," Officer Swenson replied. "We've all seen the video where he attacked you and shoved you into his car. We saw that..."
"He didn’t force me to stay there," she raised her voice and looked straight at Officer Swenson. "He forced me into his car and into the cabin. He even forced me to hear things I wish I hadn’t, but he didn’t force me to say there."
"I'm confused, Kate. Are you saying you stayed there willingly?"
"I'm saying I stayed because he awoke something in me and I couldn’t ignore it."
"I don’t know what he told you, baby girl, but you're my daughter. You always were my daughter and always will be." Mr. Briggs cried his heart out and I believed that his weeping was sincere. "I don’t know what lies he told you, but I swear to you that you're my daughter."
"I know that, Dad." It hurt me to hear her answer him in such way. "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm your daughter, Kate." He smiled at her as she said those kind words to him.
"So you're confirming that you are the daughter of Mr. Briggs and that you have nothing to do with the accusations raised by Mr. Costa?"
"I'm confirming that I am his daughter, as of now. The question is, whether I have always been his daughter and the most important question is whether I will continue to be."
Mr. Briggs' eyes widened and my heartbeat threatened to tear the fabric of my shirt. I had been right before, there was a trigger for driving him crazy, and I decided to take advantage of the unique composition of the meeting to keep trying to expose his true face.
"Kate, we both know that you are not his daughter." As before, the redness of his face indicated that I was moving in the right direction, so I continued poking him. "Although we haven’t completed our joint journey, you already remember that you weren’t always his daughter."
"Is that true, Kate?" Officer Swenson turned to her. "Do you remember that you had other parents besides Mr. Briggs?"
"I'm not sure what my connection is to all of the characters rising in my memory since I awoke in the cabin with Andrew, but I know for a fact that I wasn’t adopted at six months, or at all, from an orphanage."
"Can you remember anything else about your parents?"
"I remember that I once had parents, who died on the kitchen floor of my childhood home."
"And you also know that it was him who killed them." I tried to upset him, but it seemed that it wasn’t the right way to do it.
He must have been adept at dealing with such accusations because he only smiled at her and tilted his head a little to the side.
"Do you have anything to contribute to this conversation, Mr. Briggs?" Officer Swenson looked up at him.
"I have no desire to start an argument with a man who suffered a terrible childhood experience like this. In any case, I'm so glad you came back to me, my little girl," he addressed Kate.
"She's not your child." Every time I challenged his position as her father it stoked an exposed nerve, so I continued to step on his sensitive spot. "Are you listening to me, Mr. Briggs? I said that she wasn’t your daughter and she will never be your daughter."
"Who are you to say such a thing?" a wild roar sprang from him in my direction, as if I had crossed a line that he wasn’t even able to take into account.
"Who, me? I'm the boy from the house next door, sir. The question is, who the hell are you?" I finally f
igured out the perfect weapon to use against him. "You're nothing. You're nobody. You're not her father nor are you even related to her. You're just a sick man who murdered her parents and kidnapped her."
"I'm her father!" He squirmed again in his chair, trying to free himself from the officers’ grip. "I am the only father she ever had."
"It's time to put an end to this false pretense, Dad." Katarina turned to him in a calm voice. "It's time for you to really tell me who you are and what your relation to me is."
"What do you mean, my girl?" His muscles betrayed him, but he just held out his hands toward her. "You know I'm your father. Please, say that you do."
"The last time I checked, faking adoption documents doesn’t make you my father, Father." I wanted to clap for her, but I was afraid it would cut off the snowball that had begun to roll in front of me.
I knew that undermining his status as her father was the only argument he couldn’t bear to hear. I hoped that when he heard such an accusation coming from his beloved daughter, he would break into pieces, make a mistake and admit to being the monster that he was.
"Mr. Briggs, calm down," Officer Swenson put her hand on his.
"She just doesn’t know yet... I never told her," he wailed and cried. "How will I ever... How can I explain all this?"
"I... I can tell her that... I mean... Can I talk to her freely?" I didn’t understand why Officer Swenson stammered and I wished she hadn’t calmed so efficiently.
"I don’t think I have any other choice," he waved his hands at her, gesturing for her to start saying something. "Tell her. Tell her everything. I'm already exposed and vulnerable as it is."
"Tell me what?" Katarina tried to speed up the conversation.
"I don’t know how to tell you this, but from lab tests we saw, we found that Mr. Briggs is not really your adoptive father..."
"Well that's not coming as a shock." Katarina's patience broke and she interrupted Officer Swenson, demanding to hear the quick version of the truth. "I already know that. In fact, I just said I knew I wasn’t adopted by him. I just want him to explain how he..."
