The Sharps Unleashed, page 11
Robin returns to the interrogation room, where Eric, Grace, and Captain Dobrowsky are talking. Eric flashes Robin an impressed smile and rubs a hand over his short dirty blonde hair as she steps up next to Grace.
“That was awesome how you both just seemed to know exactly how to unravel her so effortlessly. Why did you show her the picture of the truck out front?”
“Someone who has something to hide can typically come up with a good story in the moment, and if you feed them pieces of the story, they’ll agree to them out of desperation to make their story make sense. Feeding false bits of information or clues can be a very easy way of knowing if the story is true or fabricated. Once they accept one of your false clues, all that’s left is to unravel them point by point till you break them into telling the truth. Someone who specializes in lying and manipulation will require different tactics to bring them down. Which, I’m thinking you’re about to see. Let’s get Sara in here now.”
“Wait, the camera footage of her talking to Brooks – was that true?” Grace smiles and shakes her head. “No. Another tactic used to gain confession or testimony is a classic bluff. You pretend to have more information and evidence than you do. Your bluff has to be plausible for it to actually work though.”
“Alright, let’s do this next one.”
Chapter Fourteen
This time, Robin leans against the wall while Grace takes a seat across from Sara Fields.
Sara is sitting back with her long thin arms crossed over her small chest, and is staring at the corner of the ceiling, near the door. Robin and Grace just stare at Sara for several minutes, not saying anything. Sara smacks her lips and releases a hard sound of frustration as she shifts in her chair to cross her leg over her knee. She meets Grace’s eyes and rolls her own.
“You going to just sit there staring at me all night, or you going to tell me why I’m here? Can’t I even get a drink around this place? You know, some water or coffee, or beer if you have it.”
“Why do you think you’re here?” Sara rolls her eyes at Grace and sits forward, leaning on her forearms. “I don’t play no games. Shoot straight with me or leave me alone.”
“Alright, I’ll shoot straight with you. An armored truck was stolen in route to its destination. I think you had something to do with it.”
“Yeah? Well, I think marshmallows are disgusting, but it don’t make it fact. What would I want with your armored truck? You got gold bars on that shit?”
“Maybe.”
“If it aint gold bars, I don’t want it. ”
“Were there gold bars we didn’t know about in those cars you stole last year?”
“Bitch, I got cleared of that.”
“If we’re shooting straight, you got off on a technicality. Now, did you assist in the theft of that armored truck?”
“No.”
“Did you steal the truck on your own?”
“Do you have cotton in your head? No, I didn’t steal no stupid truck. You think I’d be stupid enough to steal an armored truck? Do you know how hard it would be to pull that off?”
“No, not really. Tell me what it would require.”
“Nice try, Nancy Drew . You not conning me into giving you a story of how this went down so you can pin it on me.”
“See, here’s the thing, I have prints and DNA samples off of the truck. So, lets shoot straight. Give us a pinch of your hair, and then we’ll be able to clear your name.”
“You want to cut my hair off? Bitch, you’re crazy.”
“I only need a few strands.”
“I’m not…” Robin walks forward and stands at the edge of the table, next to Grace, and says, “You can provide it willingly, or we book you for the crime, and you’ll be court ordered to comply. You’re looking at multiple felonies here, so your bail will probably be set to at least half a million dollars. So, I’m guessing you’ll sit in prison till we solve the case, which could take months to years if you’re not willing to talk.”
“You don’t have any evidence to lock me up.” Grace gives Sara a small smirk, and says, “We have enough.”
“Where’s my brother? I want to talk to him.”
“Officer Henley? It’s interesting you bring him up. He’s actually missing.” Sara sits forward with her cheeks turning as white as a sheet. “What do you mean, missing? When? What happened? ”
“This morning, and we don’t know what happened. Do you?”
“That son of a bitch. I want to see my lawyer.”
“Sure, you can make the call, then we’ll get you processed and booked. Hope you didn’t have plans tonight.”
Grace stands up, and starts walking to the door, but Sara kicks out at the table, causing her to stop. Robin and Grace just stare at her as she slumps in her chair with an angry scowl on her face, staring at the center of the table top.
They’re only related on their father’s side, but Sara Fields and Jacob Henley look very similar in the face. They have oval faces, dark brown eyes, and matching small dimples in their chins. Sara’s eyes are more almond shaped, and her nose is small and slightly curves upwards while Jacob’s eyes and nose are small and round. Both of them carry an air of rebellion and impatience with the world that typically comes off as intimidating and unnerving.
“Stop looking at me.”
Robin walks forward and takes a seat across from Sara. She loosens her tie and takes a deep breath.
“It sucks when you decide to trust in someone and they stab you in the back, doesn’t it?”
Sara just kicks the table again, which is bolted to the floor, so it doesn’t move.
“Can I tell you a story?” Sara looks up with narrowed eyes and a tense jaw. “Don’t waste your time. I’m not interested in no ‘coming to Jesus’ bullshit cop stories.”
“Actually, it’s not a cop story. It’s about my childhood.” Sara’s lips quirk into a small amused smile. “Oh, did someone steal your Tonka truck, Big Daddy?”
“You are really bad at filling in the blanks for other people. It’s a good thing you didn’t waste our time telling us how that armored truck might have gone missing. ”
“Fuck you. If it delays me going behind bars, just tell your stupid story.”
“I was ten years old, and it was summer vacation. I was at Flo’s Five and Dime with a few friends buying candy. I had a bookbag on because we were on the way to play in the park. So, I get to the register with a dollar and fist full of candy for myself, but none of my friends had anything in their hands. I paid for my candy, and as soon as I walked out that door, the clerk pulled me right back inside and started yelling at me for stealing. My friends took off running, and I was left to try to explain what happened.”
“Those dill holes filled your bookbag, didn’t they? Classic.” Sara laughs and shakes her head. “You ratted them out, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t. I just stood there and took it. I listened to the clerk yell at me, then waited for my parents to get there. Then I listened to them yell at me. When I got home, I got the ass whooping of a lifetime. I was grounded for the entire rest of the summer and couldn’t do anything.”
“What?! That’s bullshit! You should have said something.” Robin shrugs a shoulder and runs a hand over her head as she releases a regretful sigh. “Yeah, well, you know how it is with telling the truth. The bad guys are always trying to make you think it’s wrong. So, anyway, it wasn’t till the first day of school, when my mom dropped me off at the bus stop that the truth came out. She overheard them bragging about getting away with it and how funny it was that my entire summer was ruined.”
“Awe, did your mommy give you an ice cream sundae that night to make up for it?”
“Nope, I got another ass whooping and I was grounded for another month for not telling the truth. ”
What?! Come on, you have to be fucking with me. What parent would punish their child for something like that? You were protecting your friends!”
“Do you think I was innocent in that scenario?”
“Hell yes.” Robin smiles and shakes her head. “I may not have known before or during that a crime was taking place, but once it came to light, I knew what had happened. My silence was a crime.”
Sara sits back with realization of the purpose of Robin’s story transforming her amused intrigued look into sad regret. Sara sits in silence for a few minutes, just staring at the table.
“If I go down for this, how long would I go to jail?”
“Life, possibly, but probably twenty years, minimum, and you’d be in a federal maximum-security facility with the worst of the worst.”
Sara’s head falls forward in her hands as she rests her elbows on the table and releases a growling groan of frustration.
“What if I only sort of helped?”
“It depends on what ‘sort of helped’ means. You might get off with a slap on the wrist, or maybe a few years in a low security facility.”
“I just can’t rat on…”
“Let me explain something to you, Sara.” She lifts her head, looking very defeated and torn. “Whether you tell us what happened or not, we’re going to find out what happened. I’m giving you a chance to cooperate to attempt to lessen your sentence. The less cooperative you are, the longer your sentence will be. Given your history, a jury won’t be hard pressed to rule against you, and I can guarantee that the prosecutor is going to fight for the maximum penalty in this case.”
“Fine, I’ll talk, but can I have some water first?”
“Sure. Do you mind if we record the conversation from here forward?” She exhales hard and shakes her head. “No. ”
Captain Dobrowsky passes Grace the bottle of water and a recorder through the door. Grace hands the bottle to Sara while she sets the recorder down in center of the table.
“Can you sit for this? You’re getting on my nerves just hovering. No offense or whatever.”
“Sure.”
Grace pulls another chair into the room and sits down next to Robin. They give Sara a few minutes to compose herself, then Robin has her state her full name, date of birth, and that she is giving this testimony of her own free will and has not been coerced or coached in anyway. Then she’s asked to tell her story.
“About a month ago, Jacob showed up…”
“Can you state his full name, please?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, my half-brother, Jacob Henley. He showed up at my place about a month ago with a couple cases of beer and some primo weed he had picked off of some logger. We were just hanging out, drinking and smoking, and he brought up a hypothetical about stealing an armored truck and asked me how I would pull it off.
“I told him, the easiest way to do that is to have someone on the inside – preferably the driver or the dispatcher. He asked me how I would hide one, if I could pull that off – the insider, I mean. So, I told him the best way to move a stolen vehicle is in an eighteen-wheeler. Those things are great for that shit.”
“At any point in this, did you believe the questioning was for a real scenario?”
“No, we do hypotheticals all the time. Like, if you had to blow up a full church or a school to prevent an entire town from being blown up, which would you pick? Those sorts of things. He’s always coming up with these twisted scenarios.”
“What else did he ask you about stealing the armored truck? ”
“He asked me how I’d make sure it was never found. So, I told him those things are super low jacked, like several GPS devices on them. I told him he’s gotta find those quick, then toss them far from wherever he’s going to stash the truck. I told him he’d probably be better off just stealing the cargo and blowing the thing up, or throwing it in the river or something, but that hiding it in some obscure part of the mountains could work too.”
“Did he pose any of his own scenarios of what he would do to accomplish this?”
“Yeah, he said he’d dump the truck in the woods with some bodies in it as a gift for the police if they were smart enough to ever find it. I thought that was morbid, and asked him why he would do that when he’s a cop. He said something stupid about hating this town and the government and wanting to pay them back. I asked what he was paying them back for, and then he laughed and said, ‘Why are you being so fucking serious? We’re just fucking around here.’”
“Has he ever made comments like that before, about hating this town, the government, and cops?”
“Yeah, sure, but who doesn’t? I mean, nothing we say matters. Politicians just do whatever the fuck they want and they take all of our hard-earned money in taxes when we earn it the right away, and then lock us up when we don’t earn it how they say we can. But at least ninety percent of those mother fuckers are doing way worse shit than any of us to line their pockets with millions.”
“What specifically has he said about wanting to get back at the government or this town?”
“You know, the usual stuff, like leaving flaming bags of shit on politicians’ doorsteps, or blow up their mailboxes.”
“What’s the worst thing he has said he wants to do, even if it was hypothetical? ”
“After that logging bill was passed, he came over to drink and smoke and was complaining about how the guys in the local government had voted to give themselves raises, but the police weren’t getting raises this year. He said something like, ‘I wanna go Vlad Tepes on their asses and impale them on those fucking logs in the lawn of City Hall’. I thought it was funny that my homophobic brother would want to get anywhere near a man’s ass, so I teased him about it. Then he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll just mail them all some fucking shit bombs and blow them all up.’ I asked him how he was going to get his hands on so much shit and joked that he was going to take a bunch of laxatives, but he said he’d just use some import explosive shit. Then he changed the subject to wanting to order pizza and wings.”
“Did you know the precinct was moving a load of firearms with the use of armored trucks?”
“No, I swear on my liver and kidneys – you can take them all if I’m lying. Look, I thought this was strictly hypothetical. I didn’t know there was a real truck and I never went near a real truck. I swear. Look, I aint about hurting people or major crimes like that. Insurance will cover some petty theft, so no real harm is done there. I’ll play the hypotheticals, but I would never do any of that shit.”
“Has he ever named anyone specific that he wants to get back at?”
“He pretty much hates them all, but he really hates Governor Jack Finnigan. And that senator, what’s his name – the guy that helped get the state corporate taxes lowered while increasing our income taxes. He has the really big nose with nostrils the size of bat caves. God, what is his name?”
“If I show you a picture, can you identify him?”
“Yeah, of course. ”
Grace pulls out her phone and pulls up images online for all of the state senators. Sara leans forward and points to one.
“That’s him, Doug Shummer. He hates him with a passion.”
“Anyone else, even if they’re not politicians?”
“The Gleasons. He hates them probably more than he hates the politicians. He would never tell me why though. He would get really weird and twitchy about them – kind of like how he acts when the subject of gay men come up. I joked one time that he had an affair with Cole, but he wouldn’t leave his wife for him, and Jacob pulled his gun on me and told me never joke about that again. I was so fucking high that it didn’t even scare me till the next day when I was remembering it. I cussed him out and told him if he ever pulled a gun on me again I’d hire a fat hairy trucker to rape him. Those are the only names I can remember at the moment. My brother has always been an angry person and he hates everything and everyone, so I’m sure just about everyone would be on his hitlist if he had one.”
“What about you? Do you think you’d be on that list?”
“I’m probably at the top of that fucking list.”
“Why?”
“What the fuck are we doing right now? I’m spilling all his fucking secrets and dirty laundry. He trusts me more than anyone and here I am serving him up on a platter so I can save my own ass from whatever he got his ass into.”
“Do you know of any establishments he would want to target?”
“Maybe City Hall, during working hours. But I don’t really know. He mostly just complained about the government and the town as a whole. I don’t really think it’s just the town. I don’t think Jacob would be happy anywhere. ”
“What is Jacob Henley’s relationship with Officer Andre Brooks like? Are they friends outside of work?”
“Jacob doesn’t really have friends. He has people he tolerates. Andre was one of the few he could tolerate, but he still hated him. They fight a lot, but they still hang out. Andre loves to get under Jacob’s skin on purpose. He thinks it funny. Jacob has threatened Andre multiple times.”
“How has Jacob Henley threatened Andre Brooks?”
“Stupid stuff, like cut the brake line on his cruiser, or put pepper spray in his air vents.”
“Aside from cutting his brake line, has Jacob Henley ever threatened to kill Andre Brooks or another police officer?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“When they hang out, do you know if officers Spears and Glenn are with them?”
“We all used to hang out a lot, but I haven’t seen them around in a while, maybe like three months. Jacob said they had just drifted apart. Spears has a nice family cabin in Henderson. We used to go up there to drink and smoke and play video games. We had some great parties up there.”
“Have you ever heard Jacob Henley and Andre Brooks or another officer talking about plans to take revenge on anyone?”
“Yeah, sure, but always stupid stuff, never anything major. I think the worst they ever said together was putting laxatives in the coffee at Trudy’s.”
“Why would they target Trudy’s Donut Shop?”
“Because so many local politicians go there for their coffee.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that either of them may have said or done that would stand out as concerning? ”
