Direct evidence, p.3
Direct Evidence, page 3
Chapter 5
“Can I help you?” Jeremy Stitts asked, his eyes still on the papers he was collecting from the podium.
Tate, who had been sitting in the back row waiting for everyone else to leave, removed his feet from the seat in front of him. He stood and made his way down the steps toward the stage.
“Fascinating presentation, Agent Stitts. Congratulations.”
This got Stitts’ attention and the man glanced up at Tate. As he did, he ran a hand through his hair. Tate marveled at how every strand fell in place exactly as they had been moments ago. The FBI profiler was younger than Tate expected—having never met the man, Tate, relying on reputation alone, had assumed that Stitts would be, like him, in his late forties. Instead, he looked like he was in his late thirties. Maybe even mid-thirties, cane notwithstanding.
“You said that most killers kill for love, greed, or revenge. But I have a question for you?”
As expected, Stitts took the bait.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Cats,” Tate said simply. He waited for the next question, the one that would inevitably be, ‘What about cats?’, but Stitts surprised him.
“Sure. People have killed for a lot less than cats.”
Well played.
He held out his hand.
“Agent Tate—“
“Abernathy,” Stitts completed for him, grasping his palm, and pumping his arm.
Oh, Tate thought, he’s good, he’s trying to throw me off my game.
“And you’re Agent Stitts.”
“Just Stitts.”
“Just Tate. All joking aside, I really enjoyed your class.”
Stitts shoved the rest of his notes into his leather satchel.
“Thanks. And congratulations on the work you did in Columbus in Charleston.”
The surprises never ended, apparently.
“You heard about that?” Tate asked, eyebrow raised.
Stitts nodded.
“I like to stay up to date on things. I may not go out in the field anymore, but I try to keep appraised of what’s going on around here.” He gestured towards the projector behind him which had displayed a few sparse images and words during his lecture. “I do it in an attempt to stay relevant, I guess.” Stitts grabbed his cane from the side of the podium and leaned on it. “And, as complimentary as you’ve been, I’m assuming you weren’t here solely to listen to my lecture.”
“No, I’m here about something else,” Tate admitted.
“Someone else, you mean?”
It bothered Tate that he was so surprised that Agent Stitts was this intuitive. He should have known. He should have known because anyone who had been partnered with the enigmatic and unorthodox Chase Adams as long as they had was either mentally deranged or special.
Maybe both.
In this case, Tate assumed the latter.
“That’s right, but it’s not about her.”
Surprise was on Tate’s side this time. As much as Stitts tried to hide his assumption that this conversation was about Chase, a tiny uptick of his left eyebrow gave him away.
“Floyd then. How’s he doing, anyway? You know, I’ve been meaning to grab a coffee with him, but this,” Stitts once again indicated his surroundings, “went from a temporary gig to ten lectures a week.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why I’m here. I know what you and Chase did for him, getting him in the academy, and I don’t mean to take anything away from the kid. He grabbed his opportunity and ran with it. And even though he’s been my partner for a few months, I get the impression that you might know him better than I.”
A subtle nod of agreement from Stitts.
“I’m just going to cut the shit—to be honest with you, he’s struggling. I remember my first month or so in the FBI being a grind. And I came from law enforcement—I was a beat cop for six years before applying. My first case…” Tate let his sentence trail off. His strategy had been to open up with the hopes that Stitts would feel comfortable and do the same, but when Tate started to actually recall his first case, he immediately shut down. That was something he did not want to do.
Not now, not ever.
“I know what you mean,” Stitts agreed, taking Tate’s silence as an invitation to speak. “My first big case involved a man with a bomb around his neck. TV crews stood around and watched, as did the ATF, bomb squad, local PD, and FBI. It didn’t end well.”
Tate was familiar with the case. He was also old enough to know a time when a killer could literally cross an imaginary line, enter a different State, and be completely unknown to the local cops. There was no way to communicate between departments, let alone States. Now, it was a little different with national registries, Interpol, etc., but few changes had been made when it came to interdepartmental relationships. All you needed is one cop or Agent with a short man complex and there would be more dick-measuring than crime-solving.
“That was you?”
Stitts shrugged.
“I was a junior, my first case. And it was an absolute nightmare.”
“I can imagine.” Tate paused. “Back to Floyd—he is struggling, and I just wanted your opinion on whether or not you think he’s cut out for this gig, and I honestly mean that with zero disrespect for either you or him. I think he’s a great human, Stitts, but as you know, in this job, that can be an easy flaw to exploit.”
Another pause, this time mutual.
Stitts gnawed on the inside of his cheek and Tate appreciated the man actually thinking about the question instead of just blurting out an answer.
Five seconds passed, ten, and then Stitts looked Tate right in the eyes.
“Is anybody?”
Normally, Tate would’ve been annoyed by such an ambiguous, and quite frankly clichéd response, but he wasn’t. Not from Stitts. Even though he’d known the man for a grand total of five minutes, his read on the profiler was dead on. And if Stitts had been his partner and not Floyd, there would be no need to consult with anybody to know whether or not the man was cut out for the job.
He was born for it.
“No, not really,” Tate replied. For 99% of the population, seeing the things that he’d seen, the violent and despicable acts that humans were capable of, seeing them firsthand and speaking to the perpetrators, would destroy them. Eventually, it would eat them up and turn them inside out. They wouldn’t be able to sleep and would inevitably resort to chemical means to just stop the images from flooding their minds.
And Tate was no different. But instead of resorting to booze or drugs, he did something different.
He changed the outcome.
The problem was sleeping.
So, he simply didn’t do that anymore.
“Floyd’s got a soft heart, he cares… probably a little too much,” Stitts continued, unprompted. “But he’s also strong. Honestly? I wouldn’t have recommended him if I didn’t think he could do the job. Nothing I’ve seen since has changed my mind and that includes what he put in the most recent report.”
Tate nodded. It was as good an answer as any.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Stitts slung his bag over his shoulder and leaned on his cane as he made his way toward the door.
Tate stayed by his side.
“Do you miss it? Being in the field?”
Stitts took his time with this one, too.
“Sometimes.” There was a far-off look in his eyes. “Sometimes not.”
“Fair enough,” Tate said. He shook the man’s hand again and then made his way up the stairs and toward the student exit. He was almost to the door when the man’s voice drew his attention back to the stage.
Tate had stopped moving.
“How’s she doing, anyway?”
There was a moment when Tate wondered how one person could have such a strong impact on everyone she met.
But then he considered how much mental bandwidth he’d exhausted thinking about Chase Adams.
Eventually, Tate Abernathy shook his head.
“Chase is a fucking train wreck. So, by her standards, she is completely and utterly normal.”
Chapter 6
“Agent Montgomery, I’m glad you made your appointment—I wasn’t sure you’d show,” Dr. Matteo said from behind his desk.
Floyd sucked in his chin.
Appointment? I didn’t have an appointment.
He thought back to Tate’s ultimatum in the car.
Did Tate make the appointment for me?
“Please,” Dr. Matteo said with a pleasant smile. “Take a seat.”
Floyd didn’t want to take a seat. He wanted to run.
But when Dr. Matteo adjusted his spectacles and continued to smile, Floyd lowered himself into the soft chair across from the man.
“How long has it been since we first met, Floyd?” the doctor began as an obvious icebreaker.
“I–I don’t know. When I f-first started, I guess.” Floyd wasn’t surprised by his stutter.
He was nervous, although he wasn’t completely sure why.
“Right.” Dr. Matteo pulled out a folder and placed it on his desk. He didn’t open it. “And now you’re back. Is there something specific that you wanted to talk about, or do you just want to relieve some steam? I assure you, either is fine by me.”
“Actually, it was T-T-Tate who—“
“It doesn’t matter to me who made the appointment, either,” Dr. Matteo interrupted. Floyd got the impression that while it didn’t matter, the psychiatrist was well aware of who was behind this meeting. “You’re here now, so why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
As clichéd as this interaction was quickly becoming, Floyd also felt a level of ease and comfort with this man. He recalled their first meeting and how structured it had been. A personality assessment that was also an evaluation of his potential fit in the FBI.
This seemed different.
They were, he reminded himself, both mandatory, however.
“I just—I just—“
“Take a deep breath, take your time.”
Floyd inhaled and when it was time to let the air out of his lungs, the steady stream was accompanied by an equally consistent flood of words.
“The looks on their faces,” he said, no trace of a stutter now. “It’s the looks on their faces when I tell them that their child or sister or husband are dead. I can’t get that out of my mind, and I just get stuck. It’s as if I feel their grief, and I know how this sounds, whether it sounds fake or phony or cheesy or whatever, but I feel like it’s my own grief. Like they’re my family. And then I start to feel guilty, because deep down, they’re not mine, and I haven’t really lost anything.”
“You can’t help how you feel.”
“That’s the thing, Chase told me that—are we allowed to talk about Chase?”
Dr. Matteo shrugged.
“This is about you, Floyd, but if it helps to talk about Chase for a little while then I have no problem with it.”
Floyd nodded.
“Well, Chase has this way of not looking at these victims as people, but compartmentalizing them as something else—I don’t know what… a number? A color? Who knows? But I can’t do that. I tried, and I can’t. And then when I think that I failed at that, I get more nervous, and then the stutter comes out…” Floyd took a shuddering breath and felt tears starting to well behind his eyes.
There was no judgment on Dr. Matteo’s face, nor in his voice.
“What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for someone else. Floyd, do you mind if I steer this in another direction, just for a moment?”
“Sure.” Floyd was grateful for the interlude—it offered him time to compose himself.
“In order to help you, I need to get to know you a little better. I’m not talking about becoming friends or anything like that, I just want to know more about your interests outside of the FBI. Simple stuff.”
The question stumped Floyd.
“Interests?”
“Sure, hobbies, that sort of thing.”
Once again, Floyd was at a loss for words.
He really didn’t have any hobbies. He worked, he worked, and he worked. That was his life.
Dr. Matteo must have noticed a change in his expression because he quickly followed up with, “Before you started the FBI, what were you into?”
“Trains.”
The word just came out and Floyd cringed, thinking of how childish this must sound.
But once again, Dr. Matteo expressed no judgment.
“Trains—good, so you were interested in trains. What did you like about them?”
Floyd shrugged. He’d never really thought about why he’d been fascinated by trains, he just was.
“I don’t—I don’t know. I just like ‘em, I guess.”
Dr. Matteo adjusted his round glasses again, pushing them up his nose.
“Think about it for a moment,” he suggested.
Floyd sucked in his bottom lip.
“I guess… I guess I like the tracks, the networks of tracks all over this country, and others. I-I also like the way that they seem unstoppable, especially the old trains?” He was speaking more quickly now. “Not so much the new trains, but the old ones… steam engines. They just keep on going. Don’t slow down for nothing.”
“Good, okay. So, you like the fact that they keep on moving forward. Makes sense. You used to have a stutter, didn’t you, Floyd?”
The question came out of nowhere.
“Y-y-yes.”
Floyd laughed then and a small smile crept onto Dr. Matteo’s lips.
“Well, simply put, a stutter is something that prevents you from getting to your destination. In this case, the end of a sentence. You keep struggling to get through the word but can’t, as if your speech train has been derailed.”
An agreeable nod from Floyd. He was impressed that Dr. Matteo had managed to come full circle, to connect seemingly unrelated ideas into something cohesive.
And the man was just getting started.
“When you break the horrible news to a parent that their child is deceased you get stuck, right, Floyd?”
“Yeah.”
“What would a locomotive do?”
“Wh-what?”
“What would a locomotive do? You said so yourself, you can’t just hammer on the brakes and expect a freight train to immediately come to a dead stop, right?”
“I-I-I-“
“C’mon, Floyd, you’re the train expert. How long would it take a freight train going at, I don’t know, fifty-five miles an hour to come to a full stop?” Dr. Matteo pressed.
Floyd didn’t think about the answer; it just came to him.
“Just over a mile.”
Dr. Matteo grinned.
“Okay, okay. So, here’s what I want you to do: I want you to picture yourself as a locomotive. Not a burly inanimate piece of machinery, but something that continues to move forward, that takes a long time to slow down, let alone stop. Now, part of your job is delivering terrible news. But that’s not the destination. The destination is leaving these people with this news and getting back to the investigation. That’s what I want you to try. I want you to think about yourself as a locomotive that won’t stop, won’t even slow, until it’s back in the station. What do you think, Floyd? Think you can try that?”
Floyd thought back to when he’d told Mr. Bailey that his daughter Madison had committed suicide. How he could barely make it up the apartment stairs, how all of his mental energy had been spent resisting the urge not to turn back.
By the time he told Mr. Bailey what had happened, it was all over. He had nothing left.
The idea of constantly moving forward, similar to a train, made sense to Floyd.
Whether it worked in real life was another idea altogether. But Floyd felt the weight that he didn’t know had been on his chest ease a little.
“Yeah,” he said, almost brightly. “I think I can try that.”
Dr. Matteo nodded.
“Good. Now, is there anything else you want to chat about?”
Floyd considered this.
“Well, I know the session is about me, but there’s someone else I wouldn’t mind talking about…”
Chapter 7
“Nope.” Stu Barnes shook his head and leaned as far back in his chair as his shackles would allow. “This isn’t happening.”
Will shut off the iPad and addressed his client.
“It is happening, Stu.”
“It can’t be. This… it isn’t real.”
“You want to watch it again?”
“No—Jesus, no.”
It was bad enough watching the video the first time. A man begging for his life while another—not Stu—took aim and shot him in the head. Twice. And then left with a briefcase in his hand, but not before turning and smiling—actually fucking smiling—directly at a camera mounted on the bridge.
Will sighed.
“You might not want to watch it again, but I’ve seen it about twenty times. Unless you have a twin, Stu, that was you.”
“But it wasn’t—it’s been altered. Has to be,” Stu protested. “This is fucking insane, Will. Insane. You know me. I wouldn’t—Look, I’ve never shot a gun in my entire life.”
Will raised an eyebrow at this.
“Never? You live in Vegas… you’ve never been to a gun range to fire off some rounds? Just for shits and giggles?”
“Shits and giggles? No. Never.”
Will stared at Stu long enough to make him uncomfortable.
“Why do you keep doing that? Why are you acting this way, Will?” Stu gestured toward the iPad. “You know me—and that… that wasn’t me.”
“I’m doing this because you keep lying to me,” Will said flatly. “I’m your lawyer. If you want me to help you, you need to tell me the truth.”
“I’m not lying. Fuck.”
Will licked his lips and set his jaw.
“You remember when you were booked?”
“It happened two hours ago,” Stu said, annoyed, “so, yes, I remember it. There was this asshole cop—Tolliver, you called him? Anyway, this cop—“
Will folded his arms over his chest, which Stu desperately wanted to do himself, but couldn’t.
