Grain of Truth

by V. J. Chambers

  “Um?” said Frankie. “Where’s Amos?”

  “Oh, crap,” said Elke. “I forgot about that. I can’t find him anywhere. I called the police and they said they’d send someone by his apartment. Can you call and check in with them and see if they found anything out?”

  “You think something might have happened to him?” said Frankie.

  “We can’t be too careful,” said Elke. “I’m hoping he just overslept.”

  Frankie nodded. “I’ll go check on that now.” She headed out of the conference room and started for her office. Then she paused. “Oh, what about Dr. Oliver? If I can’t find Amos, you want me to go talk to him alone?”

  Elke cocked her head to one side. “Dr. Oliver… what about Dr. Oliver?”

  Iain held up his hand. “Look, we know this.” He raised a finger. “Wheeler and Chapman are gun nuts. They had that poster on their wall when we went to see them, remember?”

  “Yeah,” said Elke.

  “So,” said Iain. “They’re more likely to have had the guns to go into the house with in the first place.”

  “That’s true,” said Elke.

  “Actually,” said Iain, “maybe it’s more than that. They knew that Dr. Mukherjee had a gun in his house.”

  “You’re right,” said Elke, raising her eyebrows. “They knew he’d been interviewed in that magazine and they didn’t like that he’d been featured.”

  “They might have planned to use his own gun against him.”

  “So, don’t go see Dr. Oliver?” said Frankie.

  “Maybe Dr. Oliver is a red herring,” said Elke.

  * * *

  “You’re lucky we could make time for you today,” said Chapman, as he let Elke and Iain into the same studio area where they’d met with the two suspects before. He was smoking a cigarette, and he blew out smoke into Elke’s face, making her cough.

  She hacked away, and her composure was completely destroyed.

  Iain patted her on the back.

  She straightened, squaring her shoulders. They were supposed to be freaking these guys out, intimidating them, but she looked like an idiot. As she straightened, she spotted something sitting out on the edge of a desk. Lock picks. She had looked them up online after the police officer had told her that her lock had been jimmied open with a set. That was what they looked like, all right, long skinny pieces of metal with various tiny teeth on the end. She licked her lips.

  Oh, these guys were brazen. They’d set them out on purpose.

  Wheeler, who was sitting next to the desk, reached out and picked up them. “You looking at these?”

  Her mouth was dry. “Lock picks.”

  Wheeler smiled. “You know what they are. Most people don’t.”

  She sucked in breath, and anger surged within her. These guys had been terrorizing her in order to try to get her to back off the investigation. They’d all but admitted it. “I know about lock picks.

  Chapman gestured to some chairs. “Why don’t you have a seat? I’m sure you didn’t come here to chat about Zach’s little hobby.”

  She sat down. Chapman sat down too, next to Wheeler. She had brought a briefcase with her, and she opened it up, scooping out several fat folders. She made a show of going through them. There was nothing in the folders except blank pieces of paper, though. She had decided it would worry them more if it looked as if they had loads of information on them. She wanted to make them worried. She wasn’t sure about convincing them to give a DNA sample, but she thought it she rattled them enough, then maybe she could get a confession, which would be better.

  She knew Iain wouldn’t agree. He didn’t think confessions were worth much.

  And true, they’d already had one false confession.

  But these guys weren’t the kind to take credit for a crime they didn’t commit.

  “Well,” she said. “We’re basically only here because we want you to confirm a few details for us in the murder.”

  Wheeler lit up a cigarette as well. “What murder?”

  “The Mukherjee murder, of course,” said Elke.

  “Oh, you’re here about that again?” said Chapman. “I thought by now you would have realized it had to be the daughter. No one else could have done it. Hell, who else knew where the gun was?”

  “Oh, yes. That was pretty brilliant. When did you think of using his own gun on him?” said Elke.

  “Did you plan that all along?” said Iain. “Did you force him to take the gun out of his safe and hand it over?”

  “Wait a second,” said Chapman, “you don’t think that we killed those people. Seriously?”

  “We’re certain that you did,” said Elke. “In addition, you’ve been harassing myself and my colleagues and their significant others. The lock picks are indicative of that. Did you really think you could scare us off the case?”

  Wheeler laughed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Hypothetically,” said Chapman, “if someone were to have put a little pressure on you to keep your nose where it belonged, they might have gotten into your apartment any number of ways. A set of lock picks doesn’t prove anything.”

  Elke sorted through the pieces of paper silently.

  Wheeler and Chapman exchanged a glance. Did they look nervous?

  “If you had anything on us,” said Wheeler, “you’d be arresting us.”

  “Oh, would we?” said Elke mildly.

  Chapman stubbed out his cigarette. He leaned back in his chair and eyed them.

  “We know you did it,” said Elke, “and we understand why.”

  “We didn’t do anything,” said Wheeler.

  “Well, someone did,” said Elke. “Let’s say someone did it because they wanted to make an example out of Dr. Mukherjee. He was a murderer, after all, or near enough. How many innocent babies had he sent to their deaths?”

  Wheeler shook his head.

  Chapman didn’t say anything.

  Elke leaned closer. “Am I right? You said it before, didn’t you? He deserved it.”

  “That doesn’t mean we did it,” said Wheeler.

  “That man had the audacity to act as if he’d done nothing wrong. He wasn’t even apologetic. He told those white girls that they should kill their babies. Kill their white babies.”

  “Look, we’re not idiots,” said Chapman. “We watch cop shows. We see what you’re trying to do.”

  “And it’s not going to work, because we didn’t do anything,” said Wheeler.

  “You think we’re just going to confess because you act like you sympathize with us?” said Chapman.

  Elke went back to her file. This wasn’t going the way she’d hoped it would. “Last night,” she said into the blank file, “I was attacked in my own apartment, and I nicked the person who attacked me with a knife. We have his blood. We have his DNA. And so we know.”

  Wheeler lit another cigarette.

  Chapman stubbed out his. He sniffed hard and wouldn’t meet their gaze.

  “Don’t worry about it, brother,” said Wheeler in a quiet voice. “She’s lying.”

  “I assure you, I am not,” said Elke. Damn it, how did they know?

  “You ain’t got anything to worry about, anyway,” said Wheeler. “You weren’t anywhere near her place last night.”

  “Right,” said Chapman, nodding. “I was at home with my wife last night. And if you had any proof of anything otherwise, you’d have a warrant.”

  “Which you don’t,” said Wheeler. “And we’ve been very cooperative talking to the two of you, but we’re thinking maybe it’s time to wrap this conversation up.”

  Elke was feeling frustrated. Why wasn’t this working? She glared at them. “Who’s this Dick person? Is he an associate of yours? And if you have anything to do with the disappearance of Amos Bradley, so help me—”

  “Dick who?” said Chapman.

  “We don’t know any Amos either,” said Wheeler. “You can’t go throwing around absolutely unfounded accusations like tha
t. Now, I think we asked you to leave.”

  Abruptly, Iain stood up next to her. “Sure thing, gentlemen. We’ll get out of your hair.”

  What? Elke looked up at him in confusion. Why was he saying that?

  Iain gestured at the ashtray where the men had stubbed out their cigarettes. “That looks like it needs to be emptied in the trash. You’re done with those butts, right?”

  “What business is that of yours?” said Wheeler. “We’ll dump it when we want to.”

  “I just mean that you’re done with those cigarette butts is all,” said Iain, picking up the ashtray. “Aren’t you done with them?”

  Oh, Elke knew what he was up to now.

  “Of course we are, you asshole. They’re smoked down,” said Chapman.

  Iain picked up the ashtray. “I’ll dump it in the trash for you on the way out.”

  Elke slammed the file folder shut and stuffed it back in her briefcase. She took out the baggy she’d brought to collect a DNA sample.

  “Wait a second,” said Wheeler.

  Iain dumped the ashtray into the baggy. “Once you’ve discarded something, you don’t really have any right to it anymore, gentlemen.”

  Wheeler was on his feet, rushing for Elke. “You give that back, bitch. You’re not taking it out of here.”

  Iain stepped into his path, pulling his gun out at the same time.

  When Wheeler saw the weapon, he stopped, eyeing it warily. He raised his hands.

  “I hope you weren’t threatening Ms. Lawrence,” said Iain.

  “Fuck you,” said Chapman.

  “Have a nice day,” said Iain, nodding at her to leave.

  She hurried out of the room.

  Iain backed out after her.

  * * *

  Amos woke up feeling groggy and disoriented. He tried to roll over in bed, and that was when he realized his arms were tied behind his back, and that he wasn’t in bed.

  His eyes snapped open and his heart started to speed up. Even so, his heart was going sluggishly, and he felt very, very strange. He felt like he was drunk, even though he hadn’t had any alcohol to drink since the weekend.

  Tied up and drugged, he thought in a panic.

  He thrashed at his bonds—well, he tried to thrash. Whatever drug was keeping his heart from pounding was making it hard for him to move too. He moaned.

  His head hurt.

  He was in a dark room. He couldn’t make anything out except a window behind him. It was shrouded in dark, thick curtains, but grayish daylight filtered around the edges.

  He seemed to be tied to a wooden chair, like one that would sit at a kitchen table. His arms were tied to the back, and his feet were tied to the legs at the bottom. Whoever had done it had used plastic zip ties. They dug into his skin painfully when he tried to struggle against them.

  He wanted to scream, but he didn’t.

  It was unlikely that anyone would hear him except the person who’d done this to him, and he figured that would only make his captor angry. He needed to play this smart.

  Only, he wasn’t sure what the smart thing was to do. It wasn’t as if he’d ever had training in being captured and tied up in a basement.

  Basement? How did he know that? There was nothing in the room to indicate that… Except that the window, while full sized, seemed high on the wall, almost to the ceiling. And that there was the telltale musty smell of a basement.

  The floor under his feet was carpet, though.

  A finished basement, like in one of those split-level houses, where part of the basement floor was above ground.

  Did knowing that help anything? If only he could tell someone where he was.

  That sparked a bright bit of memory in his brain for a moment, but then it was gone again. He groped for it, and only flashed on waking up in his bed in the dark with the knowledge that someone else was in the room with him. He’d groped for his phone, but…

  And then all he remembered was a little sting in his arm, like a bee sting.

  That must have been a needle. That must have been how he got drugged.

  Damn, what was this? Why was he here? Where was he?

  Amos felt like crying. He didn’t do that either. Wouldn’t help anything.

  “You’re awake,” said a voice from the darkness.

  Amos twisted in his chair, but the scant light from under the curtain blinded him. He couldn’t see anything else in the room except darkness.

  Suddenly, light.

  He jerked back around.

  Dick was standing on the other side of the room next to a light switch. He smiled. He looked eager.

  Amos swallowed.

  Now, he could see that he was in a tiny room, some kind of storage room. There were metal shelves on the walls, and they contained camping equipment. Tents and sleeping bags, lanterns and small bottles of propane.

  This was someone’s basement. But where the hell was he?

  “I’ve been watching you, waiting for you to wake up,” said Dick. “I’m waiting because I wanted to talk to you first. I would have left you to wake up on your own, but then you might start yelling, and I can’t really have that. Before I leave again, I’ll gag you so that you can’t make noise. I’d stay with you longer, but I have to leave for the afternoon. We’ll get started tonight, though.”

  Amos felt fear go through him like a rush of icy water.

  Dick chuckled. “Go ahead. I know you’re dying to ask.”

  “Started with what?” Amos’s voice was hoarse.

  Dick grinned. “With what I’ve wanted since the first time I saw you in that newspaper. I’m going to make you mine. I’m going to take you into myself.”

  That didn’t sound good. At all. Amos was pretty sure that meant… meant… Dick was going to kill him. “Look.” He licked his lips. “I don’t have a lot of influence over the people in the CRU, but if you let me try, I think I can convince them to drop the Mukherjee case.”

  Dick rubbed his chin. “Why do you think I would care about that?”

  “Because that’s what this is about.” Amos paused, suddenly unsure. “Isn’t it?”

  “This is about a lot of things, but I couldn’t care less about the Mukherjee case.”

  Oh, shit. It wasn’t related. Iain had been right. The masked guy that had taken Harley and broken into Elke’s place, that wasn’t Dick. Dick wasn’t after him because of the case. Dick was after him because… “Why?”

  “Why?” said Dick. “Because you’re pretty, and I want you. Because I saw you in the paper and I had to have you. I tried to talk myself out of it. You’re connected to the police, and that seemed like a stupid idea. But…” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess the danger of it made it seem more exciting, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, and so…” He spread his hands.

  Amos felt like vomiting.

  “Are you afraid?” said Dick, who sounded hopeful at the prospect.

  Amos didn’t answer. He was thinking about how he’d purposefully steered clear of the Rainbow, trying to be safe. He was thinking about how, in the end, it hadn’t made any difference.

  The Haven Hills Ripper had found him anyway.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “I don’t even know what you were thinking,” Iain was saying. He and Elke were coming back into the office. He had been quiet on the way back, and he hadn’t wanted to talk to Elke about how the interview had gone. She was his boss, and he didn’t want to criticize. After all, he couldn’t have done a better job at talking to them. He was sure he would have botched it somehow.

  “I guess I was thinking that there’s still so much we don’t understand about that night,” Elke said. “We have theories, but we can’t be sure exactly how the Mukherjees were killed. I wanted them to explain it to us. I wanted them to confess.”

  He took off his coat as he made his way past Amos’s desk. It was still empty. That wasn’t a good sign. “I understand that. But you have to realize that’s something we’ll probably never know.”r />
  “Why not?” She gave him a frustrated look.

  “Because they’re going to maintain their innocence,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense for them to confess and lay it all out for us. They’re going to claim they didn’t do it, and that they don’t know how it went down. They’re too smart to confess.”

  She sighed. “I guess you’re right, but still… it feels unfinished to me.”

  “What feels unfinished?” Frankie poked her head out of her office.

  “The case,” she said. “We got the DNA, and so we’ve just got to wait to make sure that we have a match with Wheeler and Chapman. But it still feels like there are so many questions.”

  “Maybe we need to be looking into Dr. Oliver, then?” said Frankie.

  “Maybe,” said Elke. “I mean, what else should we be doing? Should we be looking at other cases?” She bit down on her lip. “Any word from Amos?”

  “No,” said Frankie. “The police went by his place. They said there was no sign of a break in, but they didn’t find him either.”

  Elke rubbed her forehead. “If Wheeler and Chapman took him, wouldn’t they be in touch with us now? They’d want to make a deal, right? We back off them and they give Amos back?”

  “Unless they were telling the truth when they said they didn’t know anything about Dick,” said Iain.

  “Maybe we need to go by Amos’s place ourselves,” said Elke.

  * * *

  Frankie peered through the hole in Amos’s door. It was eye level for her, above Amos’s first deadbolt. She put her hand through the hole and reached down to unlock the deadbolt below. “Well, it wouldn’t be hard for anyone to get in, that’s for sure.” She was concerned for Amos. Things were looking worse and worse.

  “Maybe he went to a friend’s house and slept through his alarm,” said Elke. “Or maybe his phone’s out of power. He could be fine.”

  “Should we go ahead in?” said Frankie.

  “That’s why we came, isn’t it?” said Iain.

  “Amos!” called Elke. “If you’re in there, say something. We’re coming in.”

  There was no answer.

  Frankie pushed open the door.

  Amos’s apartment was a one-room studio. The living room area was demarcated by a couch and chair and a weathered wooden crate that had been repurposed as a coffee table. There were throw blankets and matching pillows and clusters of candles. The place was tidy. It didn’t look disturbed.