by Ryan Garner
Sergeant Blackshear turned his body to face John and stuck his hand out for him to shake as if it made any difference. But, in order to be civil John shook Blackshear's hand. Lieutenant Caspar stood half way out of his chair and also extended a pale, almost opaque hand towards John as he stared at him with his icy green eyes. John took hold of the lieutenant's hand and received a cold, limp, and moist handshake in return.
Fitting... John secretly thought to himself before adding, At least the sergeant gave me a real handshake. John then sat down between his sergeant and Sergeant Blackshear.
After John was seated, Captain Davis also sat back down in his plush leather chair. There was a split second of quiet before Davis exhaled and then said, “Well John I'm not going to beat around the bush. There's been a complaint about you, a pretty serious complaint and we're going to need you to take a Truth Verification Test.”
John's heart instinctively sank. The Truth Verification Test, or TVT for short was an fMRI device that had been rapidly gaining popularity with police departments in the last several years; especially with Internal Affairs Units. While several skilled defense attorney's had managed to keep the “reliability” of TVT's in question and out of criminal courts, the fact of the matter was that Truth Verification Tests had an accuracy rate of around 99%, and that was WELL beyond what IAU considered to be their own acceptable margin of error. John often felt as if their margin of error was much more flexible. If IAU felt they were 51% right that was good enough for them and the command staff.
Instead of measuring peripheral biological and physiological responses to questions as a polygraph would do, or measuring the “pitch and tone” of a person's voice the way a voice stress analyzer did, the Truth Verification Test used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining technology to sidestep all these indicators and instead jumped straight to the source of the lie, the human brain. By measuring the amount of blood flow to specific areas of the person's mind such as the medial and inferior frontal gyrus the TVT was able to pinpoint exactly when certain portions of the brain “lit up” when an individual was making untruthful, misleading, evasive, or flat out false statements. While John had never taken one before, he had always been told that mentally it felt as if you were being stripped naked and walked against your will in front of a crowd of people.
“Don't worry Officer Lawrence it shouldn't take that long and will be relatively easy.” Lieutenant Caspar immediately chimed in. John glanced over at him, but was unable to develop any type of immediate response. Instead he just nodded his head.
“How long will it take for you to set up?” Captain Davis asked.
“We're ready right now.” Caspar responded, “If Officer Lawrence will just accompany us up to the third floor we'll advise him of his rights and get started immediately.”
Rights? John thought, that’s a laugh.
….
John stepped off the elevator and onto the third floor of the main station of the Wilmington Police Department. Budget cuts had precluded any renovations in quite some time. The ascetic appearance of the interior of the station always reminded him of the old 1980's police shows he had seen on reruns as a child. The brownish tan tile floor mixed with the beige color painted cinder block walls. The industrial carpet that had remained in the adjoining offices that connected to the broad hallway was a worn and faded ocean blue color. Yellowish florescent lighting which had yet to be replaced by more energy efficient LED lighting illuminated their path all the way up to where the hallway dead ended. A large smoked plate glass window took up half the space where the hallway came to an abrupt halt and the other half was occupied by a large wooden open door. The glass was tinted so that no one could see through it and a large decal of the Wilmington Police badge was pasted to the glass. Above it in black block lettering were the words:
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF
DEPUTY CHIEF
&
INTERNAL AFFAIRS UNIT
John followed Lieutenant Caspar and Sergeant Blackshear through the doorway and into a large office where a cute, if slightly chubby blond receptionist sat. Her desk extended the full length of the room and ended at another large wooden fire door.
“Ms. Gillian would you please buzz us in?” Caspar said as he grinned widely at the young blond, who returned his smile with an equally flirtatious one.
“Of course Lieutenant!” she said with a southern drawl as she reached under her desk depressing a button. There was a click as the lock on the heavy oak door was disengaged.
“Ya'll have a good rest of the day.” she added in an overly happy-go-lucky voice with gum in her mouth. John had always found Ms. Gilliam to be pleasant, but a little too nice. She knew exactly where she worked and even in her “minor” civilian role she understood that thanks to her position she had the ear of the Chief, Deputy Chief, and all the Internal Affairs officers. If anyone crossed her path in the wrong way she needed only say a few words to one or two people and there would be hell to pay.
Making their way over to the door John took note of what he thought was the hypocritical sign on the door, given its location:
A Single lie destroys
A whole reputation for integrity.
Baltasar Gracian
…..
The Internal Affairs interrogation room was the size of a large office with bare walls that had been painted a drab brown color about a decade ago. There were no windows and like the other offices the floor was covered by a worn out blue industrial carpet that should have probably been replaced at some point in the late 1990's. Several tears in the carpet were covered by dirt covered duct tape strips to prevent an unsuspecting officer from tripping over the loose material. There were two or three metallic blocks about the size of three decks of cards stacked together on their side that contained power outlets and network jacks. The building itself was more than forty years old and when the dot com boom had occurred in the early 90's the police department had to scramble to keep its buildings technologically connected. This sometimes meant running new network lines through offices and positioning these out of place connection boxes at random locations throughout the building. It was a bit of a joke now with all the wireless technology, those once “absolutely necessary” connection jacks were no longer needed, but due to budgetary cutbacks the department could not afford to remove them. Every so often an employee would fall over a box and another workers’ comp check would need to be written by the city. Rather than fixing the problem entirely, Wilmington seemed to think it easier to simply pay out one or two settlements at a time.
There was a long table of the kind seen in cafeterias offset towards the front of the room and a power cord ran from one of the metallic power boxes to the fMRI Truth Verification Testing machine situated in the center, back portion of the room. It was an oddly shaped machine with white molded surface covering the entire device. A plastic seat that was positioned almost like a lounge chair so that a subject would be sitting in a semi reclining position while connected to the machine was on the side closest to where John was standing. Merged to the seat on the opposite side was a large plastic and metal box with a touch screen monitor inlaid onto it. A large “tower” that was approximately a foot and a half around was attached to the device near where John would have his head. It extended about seven feet into the air and at the top there was a large decal; a blue dot with the lettering, “No Lie” printed in yellow across it. Just below the large letters and spelled out in much smaller type were the words “Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.”
Jutting out from the side of the pylon was a stainless steel swing arm that could be manipulated at several hinge joints. At the end of the arm was a large doughnut shaped device. John new very little about fMRI's, but he suspected that the circular device contained the Magnetic Resonance Image reader.
He was prepared to see something like this as soon as he walked in the door. John was shocked however, to see another individual waiting in the room for the group.
“He
llo Officer Lawrence.” Jennifer Fields said in an arrogant tone as she leaned up against the wall next to the TVT.
“I'm so glad you could join us.”
Jennifer was dressed in her National Governing Police dress uniform. The solid black dress Ike jacket with brass buttons and epaulets was pulled taunt against her toned body and held tightly in place by her gleaming black chlorofram equipment belt which held her duty issued Colt 1911 .45 caliber handgun in its holster. Under her jacket the charcoal gray long sleeve button down dress shirt and black tie were perfectly pressed and her snug black uniform dress pants had a perfectly ironed crease in them. Jennifer always made sure to obtain pants that were just slightly smaller than those she should have been issued. She did this for the sole purpose of accentuating her curves. In her opinion her sexuality was as much a weapon to her as her 1911 handgun. Her shoes were polished to a high gloss shine and her black uniform hat was tucked tightly under her arm. This allowed everyone to see her tightly braided jet black hair that ran down the back of her neck. Her brass NGP shield glistened in the cheap florescent lighting.
John was stunned and momentarily froze mid-way into the room causing Lieutenant Caspar to almost run into him from behind.
“What are you doing here?” John asked.
“Officer Fields is here via a direct request from the NGP to observe this investigation.” Sergeant Blackshear stated as he walked into the room. “She's just an observer though, we'll be the one's actually conducting this investigation.” This did little to quell John's anxiety.
“Officer Lawrence if you'll have a seat at the table we'll get to your Garrity Rights.” Lieutenant Caspar said as he motioned over to the long table that was in front of the group.
Garrity Rights...what a joke. John thought to himself. In actuality Garrity Rights were not rights at all; they were in fact the opposite. They basically instructed an officer that he did not have the right to a lawyer, did not have the right to not answer questions, and had no right to not incriminate himself. The one “protection” afforded him under the law was that none of his statements given during a Garrity interrogation were “supposed” to be used in criminal proceedings against him. However, this did not stop over eager Internal Affairs investigators or command staff in Wilmington and around the country from running to the local District Attorney's office the moment an officer admitted to something suspicious. While the officer's specific statements could not be used against him in a court of law, the alleged story that had been obtained from the Garrity investigation could be laid out at the District Attorney's feet. All the DA had to do then was build the back story. It was like reading the end of the book first and then piecing together a version that would make sense to twelve jurors. Often times IA investigators didn't bother asking the officer for explanations. They merely wanted answers that fit neatly into their preformed pieces of the puzzle; everything else was superfluous. Nevertheless, John had no choice and he knew it. He slowly walked over to the long wooden table and sat down. Lieutenant Caspar sat at the head of the table closest to him while Sergeant Blackshear sat across from him. Jennifer remained where she was standing. Caspar then slid a piece of paper, John's Garrity rights over to him with a pen.
“Please read and sign.” he said, “Please note that if you do not sign and refuse to answer questions you will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination.”
Caspar looked directly at the camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling above their heads and spoke, “This is Wilmington PD IA case number 20IA088144; investigating officer is Lieutenant Derrick Caspar assisted by Sergeant Richard Blackshear. Officer Fields with the National Governing Police has been selected to observe these proceedings. Subject being investigated is Officer John Lawrence.”
John begrudgingly signed the Garrity Rights form and then slid it back over to Caspar who glanced at it and then looked back at John.
“Officer Lawrence, you have signed your Garrity Rights form and indicated that you are willing to answer questions, is this correct?” he asked.
Do I really have a choice? John thought to himself.
“Yes I'm willing to answer questions.” he answered.
“Good...then let’s get started. It will just take a few minutes to set up the Truth Verification Test device and get you hooked up to it.” Caspar and Blackshear both stood motioning for John to walk over to the fMRI machine; he complied.
…..
Lieutenant Caspar slid a snug fitting white plastic headband with several sets of electrodes that were attached at even intervals over John's forehead. Even though he strongly believed that he had done nothing wrong John's heart could not help, but begin to race even faster. He trembled with a surge of fight or flight adrenaline when Caspar tightened the head band. His mind was searching futilely for a reason or explanation for the interrogation. The most straightforward answer that came to his mind was that it had something to do with his release of Karina at the Occupy Congress protest. But, no one had seen him; at least he thought no one had seen him. Not only that, but a TVT seemed a bit excessive for failing to arrest a protestor, especially when her identity and whereabouts were so easily obtained. At times, certain officers and their lawyers around the country had challenged the results of the Truth Verification Tests. Win or lose civil disputes in local court systems usually dragged out for years imposing an unduly expensive burden on the department. This rationale further increased John's suspicion that this had nothing to do with the Karina incident. Then again, Jennifer was here and John fully suspected that she was not above using both federal and local resources to obtain some leverage over the object of her desire.
Sergeant Blackshear moved over to the other side of the fMRI machine and tapped a few different places on the touch screen of the TVT and John heard the device begin to hum as Caspar placed the larger plastic circular looking halo device over top of his head. He could hear the rotating magnetic coils inside the hollow disk as it prepared to scan his brain with its magnetic waves. He was starting to sweat as his nervousness increased; just as he had been told this situation created a truly nude feeling knowing that this group of people could now seemingly peer into his mind without regard for privacy or other “trivial” matters.
“Before we get started with the actual test I need to ask you a few general questions in order calibrate the device. In some instances I will ask you to purposefully lie to me.” Lieutenant Caspar said as he made a few final adjustments to the swing arm of the TVT. John nodded his head in compliance.
“Relax John...” Jennifer said in a soft and sultry tone as she leaned up against the wall of the interrogation room. “As long as you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about.” She gave him a provocative smile and playfully raised her eyebrows after making her statement. John felt his palms becoming clammy as his nervousness increased.
“You certainly don't have as much to worry about as Mr. Jansen and his family does.” Jennifer added. Her statement garnered a momentary confused look from John since he did not immediately recognize the last name of the family he had recently stopped.
“Those poor people had to endure what I'm sure they thought was hell, all because of Mr. Jansen's noncompliance to federal law and your failure to follow proper procedures.” John wrinkled his brow as he continued to give her a puzzled look.
“And all over some religious material ...a Bible.” Jennifer said in an offhanded way and suddenly the reality of the situation hit John like the proverbial ton of bricks. Was this all about him not searching that family's vehicle?
“Having their car impounded would be unpleasant enough for anyone, but we were forced into the unfortunate situation of having to take the adults into federal custody for further questioning and I had the deplorable task of turning their son over to Child Protective Services.” Jennifer spoke in an ice cold tone that she somehow still managed to impart sexuality into while trying to fight back her own devilish smile.
“I truly hope th
at young boy turns out okay and not into another statistic; maybe he'll get lucky and be placed into one of President Jordan’s FEMA youth camps. But, still I'm sure any child would probably consider that entire situation to be one of the most traumatic events in their life.” She said maintaining a taunting tone before allowing her smile to grow.
“Well…look who I'm talking to, I'm sure you of all people would know exactly how it feels to lose one’s parents.” she added, not even bothering to impart subtlety when referring to John’s life situations.
“You did what?!” John shouted in anger as he sat up from the semi reclined position in which he had been placed in. His muscles bristled as he tried to decide whether to tear across the room and attack Jennifer, to punish her for her actions towards an innocent family and her callous reference to his past.
“Officer Lawrence, please lie back down!” Lieutenant Caspar barked in a stern voice and then turned his attention to Jennifer.
“Officer Fields, please I'm going to have to ask you not to interfere with our investigation as you may inadvertently affect the results of the TVT.” While Caspar had snarled at John for his actions he now appeared to be directing a “mother may I” request to Jennifer, a glaringly obvious sign of his fear of the NGP. In actuality and given her power John knew that Jennifer could probably seize control of the entire investigation at any point and claim federal jurisdiction based on matters of “national security” or something along those lines. The IAU officer obviously knew it as well.
“Oh of course...” she replied in an overly sincere tone, followed immediately by the arrogantly toned words of, “I apologize, you won't hear anything else out of me. I'm here merely to observe.” The last comment was of course false. The whole point of her preplanned statement had been to throw John completely off guard and Jennifer could already tell that she had succeeded.