Rick grinned back her, relishing her anguish. “Actually, we’ve got one out of four,” he said after a spell.
“Are those our chances of being demoted?” Tilly asked.
“No. I just got a tip that blew this case all the way the fuck open. Apparently, the van that got wrecked was sold to our mysterious terrorists that same night. And check this: the terrorists were teenagers.”
“No fucking way. So, this is domestic?” Tilly perked up, leaning across her desk, a gesture typically reserved for realizing the building was closing.
“This is very domestic. The guy who sold the van says he sold it to some young black kid in a blue Honda Civic.”
Tilly was instantly skeptical. “A young black kid? That’s weird. I mean, I guess that fits the nature of the crime, but even then, I don’t see it. What black teen in 2019 has strong opinions on Civil War memorials?” Tilly paused, concentrating. Leads were like relationships. If you didn’t recognize where they were taking you early on, you could waste a lot of good time. And outfits.
“I’m not sure this is domestic, Rick,” Tilly declared. “He could have been African. Or Caribbean. Or Canadian. Before we get to that, though, can we trust this source of yours? Who is he? What does he do? How did he meet the kid? Why did he come in?”
“I don’t know all that shit, Tilly. You’re the actual senior agent. I’m just a specialist who got a title change because human resources doesn’t know what they’re doing. He’s in Interrogation Room F, though, if you want to interview him.”
Grabbing a clipboard and a tablet, Tilly bolted out of her office, marching toward the interrogation rooms. Rick tailed her, straining to keep up, his worn sneakers squeaking loudly through the still and empty halls.
Quietly, they entered the antechamber of the interrogation room, standing on the opaque side of the room’s one-way mirror, watching their tipper sweat onto the room’s wide table. Tilly immediately recognized him.
“I think he walked here,” Rick speculated. “He smelled like Buford Highway, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean, and I encourage you not to clarify.”
They continued to look through the mirror, watching the tipper continue to sweat. He wore plain clothing—jeans and an imageless black T-shirt—but he had a strange pride about him. His hair was immaculately wavy, his hairline delicately sculpted, and his cropped sideburns jutted down his face, terminating in a crisp needle point. He had no jewelry, but his skin shone like it had been rinsed in sunlight. He was trying to keep a low profile, “trying” being the operative word.
Tilly smiled, happy at her fortune. “Anything else I need to know before I question this guy?”
“According to the forms we had him fill out, his name is George Curio. The basics are that he lives in East Point off of Newnan Street, he was born in 1983 in Coweta County, he’s American, unmarried, and works as an entrepreneur. My guess is that he’s a pimp, but I just associate waves with pimping. Not sure why. I could never get waves. My friends said I always had the wrong brush, but I think that was their way of keeping my hope alive.”
Tilly scowled. Rick never knew when to shut it off. “Thanks, Rick. I’ll take care of this interview. You go look up his online profile and search our databases for any criminal history. Use his address, but don’t search for George Curio. It sounds a little too much like Curious George to me. Look up outstanding cases of car theft and cross-reference that with armed robbery.” Satisfied, she paused then added, “I think you might find something interesting.”
Rick nodded before waltzing out of the room, leaving Tilly alone. Rick had missed her hints. Their partnership needed work. Or at least a few more Magic City visits.
Keeping her eye on George, Tilly reviewed the case details, preparing her interview questions. It had taken her years, but she’d finally learned to stop treating interviews as open-ended. There were benefits to allowing the interviewee to get comfortable, to gradually drop their defense and answer honestly. But you only got glimpses when you watched someone voluntarily disarm. If you wanted an unobstructed view of the fiber of their fabric, you had to confront them in full armor, scanning for the chinks that were guarded most carefully. “A point guard that never shoots probably has a bad shot,” Tilly’s high school basketball coach used to say.
George dribbled his fingers on the table as Tilly walked into the room. “About fucking time. I come here to do my city a favor, and you act like you’re doing me a favor, strolling in all casual and shit with your damn blond highlights and modern pantsuit. Bitch, you ain’t Keri Hilson.”
Tilly seated herself without responding. Voluntary leads always overvalued themselves, lashing out so they could glean their actual value. If they were immediately scolded, they knew they had overshot it and quickly simmered down; if they were received warmly, they knew they had guessed just right and began to state their terms. They never accounted for indifference, though. Tilly scribbled out her questions as George stared at her, bewildered, sweat visibly pooling in the folds of his neck and continuing to drip onto the table.
After completing her list of questions, Tilly clicked her pen shut and observed George directly, remaining silent. He avoided her gaze, his eyes limply falling to the table.
“I didn’t do shit. I swear,” he eventually stuttered out. “I met the kid on Craigslist in May. Never met him before that. I promised him a van I had boosted, and on the night in question, I met up with him and sold it to him in person, cash. That’s it. See how honest I’m being? I admit that I boosted the van.” Tilly stared back at him.
“Are you even listening to me? You come in here scribbling shit, but I’m giving you everything you need to know, and your pen is lying on the table like a fucking paperweight. Are you an agent or a fucking secretary?”
Tilly jerked forward, lunging at George from across the table like an outfielder fetching a fly ball. She seized George’s lumpy neck, grasping it tightly, his milky sweat coating her palms. “What do you think?” she responded, watching the color evaporate from his face. His hands desperately slithered around her taut forearm, pleading for mercy.
Tilly squeezed tighter, his pulse resounding through her wrists like a frenzied drumbeat. His hands moved more wildly, his dull fingernails scrabbling to break her skin, her concentration, anything.
Tilly held tight, invigorated by her anger. There was a palpable pleasure in his raw desperation, his supplicating eyes. She gripped tighter.
George began to squirm, his body jerky and wild. Satisfied, Tilly finally relented, flinging George away and settling back into her chair as he collapsed onto his knees, sputtering out garbled breaths. Eventually, he slowly rose, staggering his way up his chair legs and plopping into the seat. Tilly could feel his pulse from across the room. Clicking on the recorder embedded into the table, she began the official interrogation.
“Hi, Mr. Curio, I am Tilly Erickson, Senior Agent, Cybercrimes Division. You are here today, July 28, to discuss potentially important information regarding the recent terrorist strikes on Stone Mountain. Your compliance is completely voluntary, and no charges have been brought against you at this time. However, you are strongly encouraged to answer openly and clearly about your involvement in this incident. There is nothing preventing you from becoming a suspect. Am I clear?”
George nodded, his bloodshot eyes anchored to the floor.
“Mr. Curio, please respond verbally, for the record,” Tilly instructed, a smile tugging at her lips.
“Yes,” he coughed out, his voice scratching through the air.
“Great, now we can begin,” Tilly announced, clicking her pen and twirling it in her fingers. “What is your occupation, Mr. Curio?”
“I’m a used car salesman. I buy and sell used cars.”
“How long have you been a used car salesman?”
“About five years.”
; “Where do you get your cars?”
“Just here and there, you know.”
“I don’t. That’s why I asked.”
“Um, mostly clunkers on Craigslist and estate sales out in the boondocks.”
“Where do you store your cars?”
“Next question.”
“Where do you store your cars?”
“That’s proprietary information. It can’t be recorded.”
Tilly leaned forward and clicked off the recorder. George eyed her closely. A small thump came from behind her. Someone was leaning on the mirror. They were being watched. Curio stared at the mirror.
“Are you ready to answer my question, Mr. Curio?” Tilly inquired.
“Are you ready to suck my dick?”
Tilly suppressed a chuckle. He really thought that she’d choked him because she’d lost her cool, because she had a temper like some down-and-out Law & Order cop dealing with a divorce and the death of a partner. What a fool. Tilly didn’t have a temper. She’d choked his monkey ass because she had authority. Nothing further was needed. She decided to toss out a lifeline.
“Mr. Curio, I don’t have time for games. I know you think you have a friend on the other side of the mirror, but you don’t. The person watching this interview is my boss. Notice how he didn’t burst into the room a few minutes ago? That’s because you don’t mean shit to him. So, let’s get to the point. I know that you sell crappy weed out of your grandmother’s house in East Point. I know that there are warrants for your arrest in Gwinnett County, Fulton County, and Coweta County. I know that you find cars for sale on Craigslist then stick up their owners and go back to Craigslist to sell those cars. We’ve actually been monitoring you for a few months, so I’m quite familiar with who you are, Eric Sims. Did you really think that your idiotic hustle was going unwatched? You’ve been stealing Benzes and Lexuses in a city where people spend more money on their cars than their educations.”
He stared back at her, his eyes suddenly alert. Tilly continued.
“You were doing fine with Camrys—we bought a few from you—but you just had to level up. Well, this is the next level. You can stay here with me, in an FBI interrogation room, face-to-face with the lead investigator on your stupid, worthless case, or you can answer my questions, never see me again, and steal as many shitty Camrys as you want. The choice is yours, Eric.” Tilly clicked on the recorder, easing back into her chair and looking forward to loosening her taut ponytail when she got back to her office.
Sims glared at her, malice overtaking his manicured face, his facade melting away. Tilly pointed at the recorder, and Sims sighed, his resignation drifting through the cramped room.
“The kid pulled up in a blue Civic, an old model, like ’98 or ’99. The car had two broads in it. One had mad red hair. Like Rihanna red, you know what I mean?”
Tilly nodded.
“The other looked kind of rough, like she would beat a bitch with a bottle, not because a bottle was nearby, but because she carried a bottle for beating bitches. She was dark-skinned. There was a MINI parked in front of the Civic. It was black.”
“What states were the license plates from?”
“You really lucked out, huh? Fucking with a car thief.”
Tilly’s arms flung into the air, gesticulating wildly at the recorder. Five months monitoring this fool and she still hadn’t fathomed the depth of his idiocy.
“I mean, they looked like car thieves, you know. Very fast and furious. Very, uh, multicultural? But anyway, they were both from Georgia. The MINI was from Clayton, and the Civic was from Cobb. They were probably stolen, though, so I don’t know if that means anything.” Thrilled to have finally caught on, he winked.
Tilly continued. “How old were they? Where were they from, you’d say?”
“I don’t know where they were from. They were bumping Gucci when they pulled up, but Gucci is global these days, so I don’t know. The kid had kind of an accent, but he could have just went to private school. He was American, though, if that’s what you’re asking. Speaking of school, I’d say he was still in it. He had no facial hair, and he had those baby waves. You could tell he hadn’t had to work for them.”
“How had you corresponded with him? Phone? Internet?”
“Both. Most of my clients pick one and stick to it, but he emailed me and called me. He was very suspicious.”
“Do you still have his contact information on your computer?”
“Computer? Bitch, I’m modern. I do all my business through my phone. But yeah, I keep all of my clients’ records. I gave my phone to the guy who signed me in. I hope it will help, but he probably had a burner. Those car thieves, I hear they like those. I think I saw that in a VICE documentary.” He winked again.
“Were the perps armed?”
“How the hell would I know? I didn’t pat them down. I just sold them a fucking vehicle.” Tilly rose from her seat. Sims was well past being useful. Before she could click off the recorder, he added, “But based on what I’ve seen in my experiences, they weren’t intimidating, you know? I’m no criminal profiler or anything because I’m just a businessman, but they seemed super focused, like they had a mission. If I was rolling five deep and I was a criminal, I probably would have just taken the van, but they paid me for it.”
“How much?” Tilly asked.
“A thousand. But I gave them three hundred back. The brakes weren’t so good. I wanted them to be safe. Dead clients don’t come back, you know?”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Curio. I will be in contact if I need anything else from you.”
Tilly clicked off the recorder and exited the room. Houndum was gone. He’d probably left after he’d realized she was nowhere near resolving the Black Lives Matter development. Whatever, that wasn’t her job. She hoped he had caught the choking before he left. “You know we’re not cops, right?” he had asked her after supervising her first suspect interview when she moved to the Atlanta office. She didn’t know what he meant then, but she’d learned. Cops were defined by their authority. That’s why they wigged out when they lost it or it was questioned. Tilly had scoffed when she saw her coworkers supporting #BlueLivesMatter on Facebook. Cops were so fucking needy.
Agents were defined by their resources, authority being just one among many others. Agents didn’t have to restrain themselves because of a code or pretend to be ashamed when they transgressed that code. There was no good agent/bad agent routine. There was just investigation. And good investigators closed their cases by using all of the resources at their disposal, choking included.
Case details swirled in her head as Tilly made her way back to her office. Sims had given her silhouettes, but at least things were no longer shapeless. She still couldn’t figure out why African American teenagers would be hijacking a government satellite, but if they had the money and the know-how to pull it off, they had to mostly have been from Cobb. The Clayton county tag would have to be looked into, but Clayton County barely produced graduates; there was no way it was producing terrorists.
“You look content,” Rick said as she entered her office.
“You look comfortable,” Tilly replied, eyeing his outstretched legs, which were resting on her bookshelf.
“I am. The case is back on track! I watched the live feed of the interview. I can’t believe the recorder routine still works. These plebeians really think that the FBI records interviews using a tape recorder that is embedded in a table. We always leave them in the room alone for at least fifteen minutes, phones confiscated, and they still never seem to notice the damn closed-circuit camera in the corner. I think CSI: Miami might have permanently ruined criminality. It’s really a shame because we depend on the criminals to do our jobs well.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yeah, I got Sims’s phone from the front desk. I’m going to call up AT&T and request the logs first thin
g tomorrow.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Sims was probably right about them using burners. But maybe Saint Snowden will bless us, and we’ll score some actual recorded calls. Knowing the perps’ voices won’t help us find out who they are if we don’t already have voiceprints, but it will help us verify once we know.”
“Do you feel like we’re closer to knowing?” Tilly asked, needing him to answer confidently.
“Slightly. We’ve got car models and counties. We can try to pull some surveillance footage from the night. Both Cobb and Clayton are off the interstate, so maybe we’ll get something. That new car recognition software from ATF can recognize car colors and models pretty well, but it will still be a lot of images, so we will have to choose very accurate parameters. Plus, now that we know this is ‘just’ a domestic case, that NSA money is probably gonna get cut off, so no awesome supercomputers to do all the work. We’ll have to use our eyeballs!”
That was slightly reassuring, Tilly thought. “Maybe, maybe not,” she offered. “Houndum saw the interview himself, so he knows this is domestic, but if we connect it to this Black Lives Matter stuff, he can convince the higher-ups to let us keep access to the computers for a few more weeks. They’ve got connections with Palestinian activists. It’s nothing substantial, but for our audience, that doesn’t matter.”
“Finally sounding like a closer. I see you!” Rick said as he dropped his legs to the floor and sprung from his seat. He left quietly, gathering his gear and exiting with a quick wave.
Tilly remained standing, slowly pacing her office. Rick hadn’t mentioned that the lead suspect of one of their cases had just come and become the lead witness for another case. How had that not come up?
Maybe it was pride. He had processed Sims and hadn’t recognized him. Or at least he hadn’t shown recognition. Tilly wasn’t sure why she hadn’t flat-out told him about Sims instead of dropping hints. Maybe she was testing the waters. Eccentric personality aside, Rick had always been a great partner. They had closed every case they’d worked on together, with minimal need for overtime. And Rick had never been off his game. But he still needed to earn his keep, and missing alley-oops wasn’t acceptable. He hadn’t even mentioned the fact that they let Sims go. Weird.
In the Heat of the Light Page 11