Resolve by J.J. Hensley Read Free Book Online Page B

Then I added, “And I’m still pretty new here.”
    Hartz continued with another question. “Where were you before coming to Three Rivers?”
    Perfect. Time to fully introduce myself as one of the brotherhood.
    “I was a probation officer in West Virginia. Baltimore PD before that,” I said with false dismissiveness and a slight wave of my hand.
    Shand nodded with some level of appreciation and said, “Well, you know we’ll have to check your alibi. We have to follow up on everything. You know how this works since you were one of us. The D.A.’s office and the press . . . well . . . it’s a pretty college girl found dead in drug land. You understand.”
    I nodded sympathetically as he went on.
    “You said that the lecture wasn’t completely in your field. If you ask me, it sounds way out in left field for someone in your occupation.”
    “It dealt with brain functioning, sexual behavior, and touched on aggressiveness. I’ve done some research on sexual predators. I thought there might be something useful for me there.”
    “Was there?”
    “Apparently an alibi.”
    With a silent laugh he forged ahead with the next basic questions. “Do you know of anybody who would want to hurt Ms. Behram? Was she having any problems with anybody that you were aware of?”
    “No, but I truly didn’t know much about her. Seemed like a sweet girl, and she may have been just a little misguided in her intentions when it came to me,” I asserted more calmly than before. I was still cold but I was starting to relax.
    I took advantage of another short pause in the interview while Shand scribbled my response into his notepad. Hartz looked up at an obstinate tree struggling to produce buds. “By the way, how did you know she came to my office?” I asked as if I had just thought of the question.
    Returning his focus to ground level, Hartz answered, “The victim’s roommate told us she had wanted to go clothes shopping with her, but Ms. Behram said that she needed to see if you were in your office, that she had to talk to you about something. Her roommate also mentioned that she thought Ms. Behram was seeing an older man, but she was secretive about it. The victim apparently made references to her “older boy-toy” when talking to her friends.”
    He let that sink in.
    “You understand how this could look, so I need you to be completely honest with us. Are you sure there wasn’t something more between you and the victim? Something more than a student-professor relationship?”
    I could envision suspects looking up at this composed colossus and spilling their guts for no other reason than wanting to pacify the god of reckonings who was looming over them.
    “Not in any way,” I vowed, while wiping my sleeve across my damp forehead. “If she was referring to me, and I don’t think she could have been, then she was very much mistaken. But Ms. Behram didn’t strike me as the kind of person to make a leap like that. I don’t think she was talking about me.”
    Shand asked, “When she left your office, what was her state of mind?”
    I stopped in my mental tracks as it occurred to me what had just happened. Unbelievable. I was finding it hard to believe that I taught this stuff for a living. It’s like a spider showing other spiders how to hunt for prey, but then he goes for a short eight-legged run and gets gobbled up by a bird.
    Damn, I liked these guys!
    They got me to lower my guard with subtle grins and by giving me some facts about the case. Just a small demonstration of how I was being trusted with information because I had an alibi. They implicitly acknowledged our bond of the badge and then they serve up a question like that. Beautiful work.
    If I said that I have no idea what her state of mind was, then I would have appeared evasive, indicating that I’m probably hiding something. After all, what kind of former cop can’t read a twenty-two-year-old girl who’s infatuated with him? If I claimed that I knew her