by Carter Chris
Angela knew that she should stop talking. This was looking horribly bad for her.
‘A thief with morals,’ she finally replied, using Garcia’s words.
‘You stole her purse,’ Hunter said, Angela’s story finally making sense to him.
‘What?’ Garcia asked again, this time addressing Hunter.
‘You don’t remember?’ Hunter asked.
‘Remember what?’ Garcia’s brow creased.
‘About a month ago,’ Hunter clarified. ‘We were at that triple homicide crime scene in Encino. Susan was the lead forensics agent.’
‘Yeah, I remember it, what about it?’
‘Actually,’ Hunter said, as he revisited the scene in his memory. ‘Maybe you weren’t in the room at the time. Anyway, Susan told me that she’d had her purse stolen from her bag a couple of nights before while out with some friends.’
Garcia shook his head. ‘No, I don’t remember that at all.’
Hunter looked at Angela. ‘That was you.’
Angela shrugged, as if she weren’t to blame. ‘She left her bag unzipped and unattended, hanging from the back of her chair. She might as well have put a sign on it saying “please take me”.’
‘Her purse,’ Hunter concluded, ‘was one of those you’ve returned to the owner.’
Angela nodded. ‘She kept everything in her purse – driver’s license, LAPD and lab credentials, medical ID, security card, everything. I’d never picked a cop before, so as soon as I saw all her documents and IDs, I sort of panicked a little.’
‘So you mailed it all back to her.’
‘Everything,’ Angela confirmed. ‘Credit cards, cash, documents, purse . . . everything. I didn’t keep any of it.’
‘So what?’ Garcia questioned. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you keep a record of everyone in this city who you have returned their wallets or purses to?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Angela replied in the same tone Garcia had used. ‘But I’ve got a very good memory. For some reason I’m able to remember things very easily. In this case, like I said, she was the first cop I’ve ever picked.’
‘She’s not a cop,’ Garcia cut her short.
‘Yes, but she works for the Forensics Science and Technical Division,’ Angela argued. ‘Which is part of the Criminalistics section of the LAPD.’
Garcia’s skeptical stare intensified.
Angela read it. ‘I told you that I remember things very easily. Anyway . . .’ preferring to talk to Hunter, she turned to address him. ‘I had no problems remembering her home address.’
‘So why didn’t you mail it?’ Garcia wasn’t cutting Angela any slack. ‘Why did you decide to hand-deliver it?’
‘Spur of the moment decision,’ Angela angled her head slightly to the right as she replied.
‘I’m not buying that,’ Garcia said.
‘That’s good, because I’m not selling it. It’s the truth.’ Once again, she addressed Hunter. ‘Yes, if Shawn was alive today, he would probably look very similar to this guy.’ She indicated the photo on the table. ‘And . . .’
This time Angela was unable to fight back the tears. She turned and looked away from both detectives.
Garcia looked like he was about to say something, but Hunter stopped him with a subtle hand gesture.
‘Give her some time,’ he mouthed.
Eighteen
Angela hadn’t lied when she told Hunter that she didn’t need that Polaroid to remind her of her brother. She really did think of him every day, but the resemblance between Shawn and the guy in the photo did stir something inside of her in a way that she wasn’t expecting.
‘Could I please have another glass of water?’ she finally said, after wiping the tears from her face.
‘Of course,’ Hunter replied before getting up and exiting the room. Less than thirty seconds later, he was back with an icy-cold metal jug of water. He refilled her plastic cup, placed the jug on the table and sat back down.
Angela reached for the cup and drank half of it down in three big gulps. Her hands were shaking.
‘It’s my fault.’ Those words escaped her lips as a choked whisper, but still loud enough for both detectives to hear them.
‘What is?’ Garcia asked.
Hunter immediately signaled to him again – a very subtle headshake.
‘I shouldn’t have allowed him to leave the house that day,’ she said. Her gaze had fallen to a random spot on the floor. Her catatonic eyes, glassed over by tears, had practically stopped blinking.
Angela wasn’t staring at the floor. Hunter knew that. To her, the floor didn’t exist. The room didn’t exist. Hunter and Garcia didn’t exist. Her memory had whisked her back to the day that Shawn had gone missing. Instead of interrupting her with questions, which would only serve to break her out of her trance-like state and dissipate the memory, the best option was to allow her emotions to talk.
‘Mom told me not to.’ Angela swallowed a lump of tears, as her nose started to run.
Hunter quickly reached into his jacket pocket for a packet of tissues and placed it on the table in front of her.
‘I was too lazy,’ Angela continued in a voice so filled with emotion it didn’t sound like her own. ‘Too lazy to get off my ass and go with him. That’s what I should’ve done. Instead, I just let him go on his own . . . and he never came back.’
From this, Hunter began getting a real idea of what had happened that fateful day, just over six years ago.
Neither detective had had time to properly research the story of Shawn Wood’s disappearance and murder. They didn’t really know what had happened on the day that he went missing or what sort of efforts were put into the investigation. Their entire knowledge of the case had come exclusively from the six-year-old article taken from the Idaho State Journal that their research team had added to Angela’s file.
‘He was eleven years old,’ Angela said, as she reached for the packet of tissues. ‘Eleven . . . and that monster . . .’ She shook her head, unable to put words to her feelings.
The article they had read didn’t really describe in any detail the circumstances of Shawn’s murder. It only mentioned that the body had been savagely mutilated.
‘That bastard took everything from my little brother,’ Angela said, after drinking the rest of her water. ‘His dignity . . . his innocence . . . his life.’
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
‘He took Shawn from all of our lives . . . mine . . . my mom’s . . . my dad’s. It destroyed our family.’
Hunter could practically feel Angela’s pain right at that moment. He knew from experience that the loneliest moment in someone’s life was when they were witnessing their whole world crumble before their eyes, and all they could do was watch.
She used another tissue before finally lifting her head to look at both detectives again.
‘Regardless of that guy looking like Shawn.’ She indicated the photo on the table. ‘He is someone’s son. Probably someone’s brother too.’ Angela paused to wipe her nose and take in a lungful of air. ‘But no, this photo didn’t remind me of Shawn. What it reminded me of was that that fucking psychopath was never caught. It reminded me that he’s still out there, probably still doing what he did to my little brother to other kids. This photo and that book reminded me that he isn’t the only one. They reminded me that this fucked-up world is full of fucked-up people just like him – predators, evil itself.’ She locked eyes with Hunter. ‘My first thought was to send that book to the LAPD, but what guarantees did I have that it would’ve been taken seriously? I might pick people’s pockets, but I’m not stupid. I know that you guys receive a ridiculous amount of calls, letters, packages, emails, whatever . . . about all kinds of bogus shit. I am sure that if I had sent that book to the LAPD, someone would’ve decided that it was no priority and put it to one side. Maybe someone would have had a look at it, or maybe not. Maybe it would’ve been considered a hoax without any of it ever being checked and the whole thing would�
��ve been thrown in the trash.’
Hunter’s eyes stayed on Angela, but he could practically feel Garcia’s stare moving to him. Her assessment of what could’ve happened was not a fantasy.
‘That was when I remembered the doctor that I had picked several weeks back,’ Angela told them. ‘A doctor with the Forensics Science and Technical Division of the LAPD.’ She refilled her cup with water. ‘If ever there was someone who could bypass the red tape and check if that book was real, she was it. I figured that unlike the LAPD, the Forensics Division didn’t get a substantial amount of bogus mail, if any at all. Choosing to hand-deliver the book instead of posting it was a tactical decision.’
‘Tactical?’ Garcia queried.
‘All I did was put myself in her shoes,’ Angela explained. ‘If I had received a package with only my name on it – no address, no stamps and no return address – it would’ve tickled my curiosity a lot more than a regular package, because I knew that that package had to have been hand-delivered . . . to my door.’ She straightened herself up on her chair. ‘The fact that I’m sitting in here with you guys two days after I delivered that book is clear evidence that my logic worked, isn’t it?’
Hunter nodded. ‘It worked.’
Garcia agreed. ‘I have one more question, though.’
Angela pulled a face.
‘Whoever made all those entries to that journal,’ Garcia said, disregarding Angela’s attitude, ‘doesn’t come across as stupid. On the contrary. We haven’t had time to check all the entries yet, but the one we did check was executed with military precision. Nothing was left behind – no prints, no DNA, no fibers, no mistakes.’ He gave Angela a few seconds to process what he was saying. ‘What I’m getting at here is: someone like that doesn’t sound like the kind of person that would be easily fooled by a regular pickpocket. But you’re telling us that just like that.’ Garcia snapped his fingers. ‘No difficulty at all, you were able to relieve this person of probably his most prized possession. His murder journal. The one thing that could bring him down. The one thing that could put an end to his years-long murder spree and his freedom.’ Garcia angled his head from left to right a few times, as if he were weighing the alternatives. ‘A little hard to believe, don’t you think?’
This time, Angela didn’t disagree. ‘Sure. The difference is – I’m not it.’
‘You’re not it?’ Garcia asked. ‘It what?’
‘A regular pickpocket.’ The look Angela gave Garcia was full of confidence. ‘You said that someone like that doesn’t sound like the kind of person that would be easily fooled by a regular street pickpocket, right? Well, I’m not one of those. I’m the best there is.’
Garcia, on the other hand, looked full of doubt. ‘You are the best pickpocket there is?’
Angela nodded. ‘For real.’
Garcia sat back on his chair, brought a hand to his chin and began scratching the underside of it. A couple of seconds later he looked at Hunter.
‘Now we have no other alternative,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to do this.’
Angela frowned at both of them. ‘Do what?’
Nineteen
There were no windows down in the interrogation room. Air was supplied by an archaic ventilation system that didn’t seem to be working too well. Consequently, the air inside the room was rapidly becoming heavy and stale. Despite the low temperatures outside, beads of sweat were starting to form on the foreheads of all three occupants. Angela used a tissue to wipe hers.
‘Do what?’ she asked again, her stare playing tennis between the two detectives.
Garcia stood up and walked over to his left, pausing about four feet from the large two-way mirror on the wall.
‘Do what you said you’re the best at,’ he finally replied before reaching into his inside jacket pocket and retrieving his wallet. ‘Here’s my wallet.’ He held it up to show it to Angela. ‘I want you to take it from me.’ He returned it to his right inside pocket.
Angela’s eyebrows moved up almost an inch. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m very serious. You just told us that you’re the best there is at this. I want to see it. I want to see the master at work.’
‘That’s not how it works,’ Angela came back, her tone now a little unsure.
‘What do you mean – “not how it works”? You’re either good at this or you’re lying.’
‘People are not exactly expecting to have their wallets stolen from them when they are out on the streets,’ Angela explained. ‘And that’s where the big difference is. Their attentions are elsewhere, not on their wallets or on their pockets, which is our biggest trump card. You, on the other hand, are not only expecting your wallet to be taken, but you also know when and by whom. No matter how much you try to pretend, as soon as I approach you, you will subconsciously be on alert and start concentrating on your wallet, which kills the element of surprise, and that’s eighty percent of the game.’
‘Well, why don’t you give it your best shot, anyway? I want to see how skillful you are. Even if I’m expecting it to happen, I’m sure that I’ll be able to appreciate your technique . . . if it’s good enough, that is.’
‘It won’t work,’ Angela insisted.
‘Give it a try,’ said Garcia.
Angela knew that she had no way out of this one. She breathed out in frustration.
‘All right.’
She got to her feet and walked over to the two-way mirror, pausing about seven feet in front of Garcia. They faced each other as if they were about to have a duel, Old West style.
Hunter repositioned his chair and made himself comfortable. He had a front-row seat to the show.
Angela quickly explained how she first observed people to identify where they had stored their wallets or purses.
‘Great,’ Garcia said back, as he tapped his torso, just under his right pectoral muscle. ‘So let’s say that you just saw me put my wallet in my inside jacket pocket, like you did. How would you go about taking it from me?’ He used his hands to urge her toward him. ‘C’mon, show me.’
Angela glanced at Hunter, who looked like he was also very interested in seeing her technique. She shook her head to indicate that she believed the whole scenario was pointless.
‘All right,’ she began. ‘Let’s do this slowly, so I can show you how it all works.’
‘That’s fine by me,’ Garcia said.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Angela continued. ‘As I’m sure both of you know, the most used approach is to walk in the direction of your target and bump into them.’ She approached Garcia. ‘We always bump into the subject at the opposite side from the target object. So if I know that your wallet is in this pocket.’ She used her left hand to tap the detective on the right side of his torso, right where his wallet was. ‘I would bump you on this side.’ She showed him. ‘If I know that your wallet is in this pocket, for example.’ With her right hand, she tapped Garcia’s left outside jacket pocket. ‘I would bump you on this side, but I’m sure you already knew that too, right?’
Garcia nodded, sarcastically.
She walked back to her original position, about seven feet in front of Garcia. ‘All right, so let me show you what I do. Your attention is on anything else, but on me, OK? On a busy street, you won’t even notice that I’m coming toward you.’
‘OK.’
Angela walked forward until she was almost upon Garcia and then she stopped. ‘The reason for the bump is to distract the person and to give me an excuse to place my hands on my target. Like this.’
Angela rammed her left shoulder against Garcia’s left shoulder just hard enough to make him turn to face her.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, looking Garcia in the eye. At the same time, both of her hands moved to him. Her right was placed on his left arm and her left on his torso, just about the exact position where his inside jacket pocket was located.
Hunter’s eyes followed Angela’s hands.
‘Now here’s the thing,’ she s
aid to Garcia. ‘Pickpocketing is very much like a magic trick, in the sense that for it to work, it mainly depends on one thing – misdirection.’ With her right hand, Angela tapped Garcia’s left arm twice. ‘And our biggest advantage when it comes to misdirection, is the fact that the human body’s nervous system is very easily distracted . . . very easy to fool. What I mean by that is, it tends to pay attention, or concentrate on only one point at a time. The point where the contact is stronger.’
Garcia pulled a ‘you’re not telling me anything new here’ face.
‘Which means that since I am touching your body at two different locations at once . . .’ Angela demonstrated by once again using her right hand to tap Garcia’s left arm, while at the same time, her left hand tapped just under his right pectoral muscle. ‘I can control where your nervous system will concentrate its attention by applying more strength or pressure to wherever I want. Like this.’
She tapped his left arm one more time. This time, just a little harder.
‘You felt that, right?’
‘Of course.’ His stare jumped to his left arm and her hand.
‘That would be the misdirection,’ Angela explained. ‘By tapping or touching this or that side of your body with a little more strength than the other, I bring your attention to that location.’ Her eyes then slowly moved across to her left hand.
Garcia’s eyes followed.
‘While my other hand would be executing the trick.’ Very slowly, she moved her left hand into Garcia’s jacket and into his inside breast pocket to take his wallet. ‘Like so.’
Garcia watched the move in silence. ‘Yes, but I felt that. You wouldn’t get away with this. I would’ve stopped you before you’d gotten two feet away from me.’
Angela took her hands off Garcia. ‘We were doing this in super-slow-motion. Of course you’re going to feel it. But remember when I said that for pickpocketing to work, it mainly depends on misdirection.’
Garcia nodded.