[2017] Terminal Secret

by Mark Gilleo

  “Thanks for the advice, Counselor, but I got this.”

  Chapter 38

  Dan nodded in the direction of the two-way mirror and watched as Detective Wallace entered the interrogation room and placed the stack of manila folders on the table. The woman in the cold metal chair sat emotionless. Her face was thin. Her brown hair was cut short, revealing a tattoo of a butterfly that poked out from the collar of her shirt, threatening to fly up her neck. She sat straight in the chair, eyes forward, with a level of confidence Dan deemed enviable. Dan smiled slightly as Wallace stalked the table with a couple laps of obligatory drama, eyeing the suspect from all sides as he paced.

  Dan looked at Emily. “Fifty bucks says she isn’t going to talk.”

  “What makes you say that?” Emily replied.

  “Her demeanor. She isn’t scared and I don’t think Wallace can scare her.”

  Dan watched Wallace’s lips move without sound and Emily fumbled with volume on the speaker control. A second later, Wallace’s voice echoed from the speakers in the corner of the observation room.

  *

  Wallace rounded the table for a third lap and leaned his butt against the edge of the table. The stack of folders rested on the tabletop between Wallace’s position and Amy in her chair. The suspect looked at the folders and then up at the Detective.

  Wallace spoke. “Just to confirm. You have been read your rights and you understand those rights as they were read to you at the time of your arrest?”

  “Yes.”

  “And with those rights in mind, are you willing to speak to me freely without an attorney present?”

  “You are free to ask me any questions you like. I may or may not answer them.”

  Wallace turned towards the mirror wall and winked in the direction of Dan behind the glass. “I’m going to cut to the chase. We have video surveillance of you at the bank and we have additional physical evidence that was left on the scene. As you know, DNA is virtually foolproof.” Wallace opened the first folder and moved the up-close photograph of the morphine lollipop into the middle of the table.

  “Tempting me?” Amy asked.

  “That is a Fentanyl lollipop. Prescribed to you. The DEA likes to keep track of these suckers, so to speak. We know it was prescribed to you by Dr. Smithson.”

  “So you say.”

  “So the DEA and the pharmacy say.”

  “I think all of that has to be decided at a trial, by a jury of my peers. I’m pretty sure that’s how our justice system works. You present evidence. The jury decides what to believe.”

  “We also have a witness who can identify you and place you leaving the building where the bank is located moments after the robbery.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Amy, do yourself a favor here. Help me out. We have everything we need to put you away for a very long time.”

  “Not everything,” Amy replied smugly. “I’m not doing anything for a very long time.”

  “How about we start with what you did with the money?”

  “What money?”

  “The fifty thousand dollars you stole from the bank.”

  “What bank?”

  “The one you robbed this morning. BB&T on Thirteenth and F.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “This can go two ways. You can…”

  Amy interrupted. “Detective, take a minute and look at me. Take a good look. It should be obvious this is only going one way. If it’s all the same with you, we can skip the detective routine.”

  Wallace let a moment of silence fall over the room before he spoke. “What’s your deal? Do you think you’re some kind of tough girl?”

  “I’m a single mom with terminal cancer, so yes.”

  “Why would a single mother be involved in the business of robbing banks?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But if you asked me why any bank robber would rob a bank, I imagine ‘for the money’ would be a popular answer.”

  Wallace tried not to smile. “So that’s how you want it?”

  Amy looked up at Wallace who was still sitting on the edge of the table. “That’s how it is.”

  Wallace opened a second manila folder and slipped several additional photos onto the table. The first photo was a surveillance shot of Amy, in disguise, at the counter in the bank.

  “Doesn’t really look like me,” Amy replied. “And I’m pretty sure most people on a jury would agree.”

  Wallace flipped to the next photo, a better shot of Amy after she changed her clothes. The photo was captured from a video feed in front of a Panera, after she had exited the alley. “That one looks like you.”

  Amy shrugged her shoulders.

  “And here we have another photo of you entering Metro Center, another as you walked across the platform, and yet another as you exited the far side of the station.”

  “I enjoy public transportation. I can’t afford a car.”

  “You never even boarded a train. That’s not typically how people use public transportation.”

  “I was staying underground to keep dry. It looked like rain.”

  Another photo landed on the table. “And finally, we have a picture of you getting in the back of a cab, which you only took a few short blocks.”

  Amy looked surprised and Wallace picked up on it.

  “You didn’t know they were taking pictures in the backs of taxi cabs these days, did you?”

  “I would need a lawyer to discuss the legality of that, but hey, if the government is listening to every phone conversation and reading every email, why not take pictures too?”

  Wallace opened the last folder and flipped over a picture of the suspected pusher from the bus accident. The photo was a grainy close-up of a woman with a lollipop in her mouth, taken in a doorway in Georgetown moments before a waitress face-planted into the first lane of traffic.

  “Do you recognize this woman?”

  Amy peered at the photo. “I don’t.”

  “Does the lollipop look familiar?”

  “Don’t they all?”

  “I’m curious, what do you think the odds are of two woman in the same section of DC sucking on lollipops while in the commission of a felony?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well in my quarter-century of law enforcement, I’ve never had another case involving a lollipop. This week I’ve had two.”

  “Diabetes is rampant. You have any cases with cupcakes? Twinkies? Any criminals involved with those?”

  Wallace thought he heard faint laughter from the far side of the mirrored wall. Then he moved the photo of the suspected pusher closer to Amy. Next, he pulled out two photos of the man with the cap and sunglasses. The first picture was taken in Georgetown moments before the waitress’s demise. The second photo was of the same man, behind the wheel of a van, near the junkyard after the illicit purchase of a bicycle. Wallace placed the photos next to each other and pushed them slowly closer to Amy. Amy’s eyes moved from the suspected pusher to the two photos of the man with the cap and glasses. Her eyes widened and for a split second her tough demeanor cracked.

  Wallace noted Amy’s reaction. He picked up the photo of the man in the cap and glasses and held it up. “You know this guy?”

  Amy stared at the photo. An almost imperceptible tremble surfaced in her fingers.

  Wallace pressed. “You know, I’ve been doing this a long time and I’m pretty good at reading people. I believe you when you say you don’t know the other girl with the lollipop. But there is no way you don’t know this guy. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Wallace turned the photo towards himself and stared at the man in the cap and sunglasses. Then he turned the photo back in the direction of Amy.

  Amy’s eyes locked on Wallace’s. “Do you have children, Detective?”

  “I do.”

  Amy exhaled deeply, ran her hands through her short hair, and rubbed her neck. “Okay. You want me to talk, I’ll t
alk. On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to see my daughter.”

  “We can arrange that after you talk.”

  “No. You can arrange that now.”

  Wallace stared at Amy for a long moment and realized he was not going to win the battle at hand. He focused on the war and asked, “Where is your daughter?”

  “After kindergarten my daughter stays with a sitter down the street. Kay Dines. Kay’s Day Care. She keeps a half dozen or so kids.”

  *

  “Did you see that?” Wallace asked, back in the observation room.

  “We did,” Dan replied. “Looks like she knows our man with the cap and sunglasses.”

  “No doubt about it.”

  “A silent partner in the bank robbery?” Dan asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe she’s being blackmailed,” Wallace answered.

  “Forced to rob a bank?” Emily asked.

  Dan nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Remember a few years back when some pizza delivery guy robbed a bank with an explosive collar around his neck? The guy was apprehended, or surrounded, and initially the cops thought the whole thing was an act. Authorities were under the belief the man robbed the bank of his own volition and that the whole bomb-in-the-collar was a ruse.”

  “And then… ?”

  “Kaboom. Right on television,” Dan finished.

  Emily looked through the glass into the interrogation room. “She isn’t wearing a collar.”

  “Oh, yes she is,” Wallace replied. “The collar is her daughter.”

  *

  An hour later, Detective Wallace opened the door to the interrogation room and a four-year-old girl in a pink dress walked in, all smiles. Amy opened her arms and the child scurried into her mother’s embrace. A tall woman from child protective services followed the child into the room and Wallace shut the door. The woman exchanged pleasantries with Wallace and let the embrace between Amy and her daughter run its course.

  “Mommy, I’m hungry,” the girl said. “Can I have a snack?”

  Amy’s eyes welled up and she ran her hand along her daughter’s cheek.

  The woman from protective services knelt down, eye-to-eye with the child. “If your mommy says it’s okay, I think I can find something for you.”

  Amy smiled and nodded. “Go with the nice woman and I’ll see you a little later.”

  With another long hug between Amy and her daughter, Wallace danced the fine line between being a detective and being a dick. The professional detective won out and Wallace waited until the child left the room.

  “Amy, I don’t want to seem insensitive, but we had a deal.”

  Amy wiped at her wet cheeks with the palms of her hands. “What happens to my daughter now?”

  “We will need a family member to pick her up. Or a family friend. If not, she’ll be remanded into the custody of child protective services.”

  “For how long?”

  “That depends on you.”

  Amy stared at the folders on the table.

  Detective Wallace broke the silence. “You asked to see your daughter and she’s here. You said you wanted to talk, let’s talk.”

  “Thank you, Detective. And I thank you for my daughter who is too young to understand what it means.”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  “Your job as a cop or a parent?”

  “Both.”

  “Some things only a parent can understand. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, as a parent, you would do anything for your child, right?”

  Wallace thought about the answer. “Almost anything.”

  “Then you will understand what I’m going to say next…”

  Wallace again looked over at the two-way mirror and nodded in anticipation of the flood of forthcoming evidence. All he received was a drip.

  “I said I would talk. But I didn’t say I would talk to you,” Amy said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “This conversation is over, Detective. I would like a lawyer at this time. And I can’t afford one on my own.”

  *

  Dan stifled a laugh as Wallace entered the observation side of the interrogation room. “Looks like I win the bet no one wanted to take.”

  “Smart ass. There was nothing funny about what just happened.”

  “You got played, Detective.”

  “Technically, she didn’t lie to you,” Emily confirmed.

  “She lied through intention.”

  “Cut her a break. She was only worried about her daughter. She’s a single mom arrested for bank robbery.”

  “No excuse.”

  “Lies are a part of the job, Wallace,” Dan said.

  “Now what?” Emily asked, looking through the glass at Amy, who was smiling.

  Dan adjusted his collared shirt, centered his leather belt buckle, and checked his fly. “If she wants a lawyer, let’s give her a lawyer.”

  Chapter 39

  Dan grinned as he entered the room and reached for his wallet. He forced his fingers into the crevice of his new billfold and pried loose a rarely seen business card. He slipped the card onto the table so that Amy could read it without needing to rotate it.

  Amy read the card out loud. “Dan Lord, attorney at law…”

  “At your service. If you would like to hire me as your attorney, I can start right here, right now. Anything you say, if you choose to say anything at all, will be protected by attorney-client privilege.”

  “This may sound paranoid, but it seems awfully convenient for an attorney to magically appear out of nowhere in the interrogation room of a police station.”

  “I didn’t magically appear. I was on the other side of the two-way mirror observing the earlier questioning.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “I am a lawyer.”

  “You have anything beyond the business card? I could make that card on any computer.”

  “I also have a bar card, but I’m getting a replacement. I was mugged last week. You want to see the scar?”

  “Sure.”

  Dan leaned over and showed Amy the back of his head. Amy looked closely at the healing wound.

  “You could have done that in the bathroom. Slipped and hit your head in the shower.”

  “But I didn’t,” Dan said. Then he pulled his phone from his pocket and placed it on the table next to his business card. “There’s my phone. Take a minute and search for DC attorneys in a database maintained by the court. Look me up. Confirm that I’m not lying.”

  Amy’s head dropped and she picked up the phone. As she typed, Dan continued the conversation.

  “Are you always this suspicious?”

  “Only when a lawyer pops out of the closet.”

  “It wasn’t a closet.”

  “You know what I mean. What were you doing on the other side of the two-way mirror?”

  “Working on another case. I can’t divulge the details.”

  “What if I hired you? If I hire you as my attorney, can you tell me what you were doing on the other side of the two-way mirror? Does attorney-client privilege work both ways?”

  Clever girl, Dan thought. “It does.”

  Amy nodded. “I don’t have the ability to pay whatever your going rate is.”

  “For a single mother with terminal cancer, my going rate is gratis. Pro bono.”

  “That means free, right?”

  “Right.”

  Amy finished her inquiry into Dan’s background and slid the phone back across the top of the table. “You check out.”

  “So what do you say?”

  Amy looked around the room. She eyed the camera in the corner of the room and glanced down at the files still on the table. Then she glared at the large mirrored wall.

  “Deal. You’re hired. I’ll talk to you, but not here. I don’t trust that no one is listening.”

  Dan nodded in the direction of the mirrored wall and stood. “Give me a second.”

  A moment later, Dan p
ushed the door open on the observation side of the two-way mirror. “Everyone out.”

  “What do you mean ‘out’?” Wallace asked.

  “I mean out. O-U-T. My client doesn’t trust that people won’t be listening and quite frankly, neither do I. Out.”

  “You’re not serious about this client business, are you?”

  “If you want to solve two murders, get out.”

  A moment later Dan shuffled Amy into the observation room. She looked through the glass as Detective Wallace and Detective Fields sat down at the metal table where she had spent the last three hours. The social worker with child services joined them in the room and unpacked a backpack of books and toys.

  “I like the view on this side,” Amy stated. “But you have to admit it is a little like a closet.”

  “Don’t mistake this side of the glass for freedom. You’re still in custody. And hiring me as an attorney won’t change that today.”

  “How long until you can get me out?”

  “Slow down. We’re on A, and you’re asking about Z. Before we can move through the alphabet, I’m going to need your help.”

  “One of those situations where you say I have to help you to help myself… ?”

  “Something like that.”

  Amy motioned towards one of the water bottles on a table in the corner. “Can I have one of those?”

  Dan grabbed a bottle, opened it, and handed it to her. As she drank from the bottle, Dan eyed her shoes.

  “Mr. Lord, have you ever been to a cancer ward?”

  “Yes.

  “Father, mother?”

  “Uncle.”

  “Pretty sobering, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Lots of sick people. Halls without hope. People are dying of cancer every day, everywhere. Most of them you don’t know about. Most of them you don’t want to know about. Cancer is an equal opportunity offender. It doesn’t care about skin color or background. And all these people, people like me, we are all on meds. Lots of meds. Meds for pain. Meds for nausea. Meds for constipation. Meds for skin conditions associated with radiation. Pills, liquids, gamma rays, lollipops. All bargaining chips for the chance of another day and to withstand the discomfort.”

  Dan could see his client wanted to talk. To someone. To anyone. “How bad is it?”