On the Wrong Case

"Daniel, I know it's common now for both the man and the woman to share the household chores, but, please, calm down!" Daniel looked back up at the wide-eyed woman interrupting him from sweeping the floor. The motion also made him realize that sweat had been pooling under his own black hair.

"Sorry, Heather," he stuttered finally bringing himself to his full height. "It's something that I do. I'm so nervous to be taking this case, and I've inherited the habit of cleaning when I'm nervous from my mother."

"You sure it wasn't learned?" Heather teased. Daniel just glared at her. She put her hands up in defense. "I'm not saying it's bad. It will help in keeping this new apartment clean, but you also have no reason to be nervous right now. You earned this job, and you'll do fine on this case. Plus, if you clean any more, you're going to get that button down full of dust."

Daniel looked down and sheepishly straightened his shirt. He then turned to go put the broom back in the closet. "That's the kind of comment I should've expected from dating a hair stylist like you," he called back.

After the broom was tucked away, he came back out to accept Heather's embrace. They stared at each other before Daniel took her hand.

"I guess I should go handle the chaos now," he said. "Will everything be alright here until I get back."

"Of course," Heather replied. "Why are you so jumpy?"

Daniel took a deep breath. "It's words I've held from my mom. She said things at home are a little more controllable than the life outside. You worry about the things you can control, not the things you can't. And, right now, it seems like chaos and order are balanced. We have this new apartment together, a shared bank account, and we both have jobs. Chaos is going to come from this case."

Heather put her hands on his shoulders before pulling back a little. "Everything will be fine. Don't try to overthink. But, we should also both get out of here before we're both late."

"Oh yeah!" Daniel jumped, gave Heather a quick kiss on the cheek and bolted to the door. "I'll get in touch with you if I have to stay late!" With that, he was gone.

Even though the drive to the county's police building was 30 minutes away, Daniel managed to make it there on time. He headed to the large room where other county detectives were sitting at their desks, either making calls, flipping through files, or typing on the computers. At his own desk, a file was already lying there waiting for him. Daniel took a deep breath before sitting down and opening it up.

He read about the current killer he was investigating, Lindsey Segal. The victim was her girlfriend, Anna. The bank reports showed that Lindsey withdrew a lot of money, via cash, and then made calls to dealers to make Anna die by poisoning. Lindsey was currently in holding, still claiming she was completely innocent, but she would be transferred to the state prison to await trial.

"It seems to have already been solved," Daniel said to himself. "Seems to be an easy open and shut case. I guess I was worrying too much. So, what do I have to do now?"

"That's why I'm wondering why they put you as lead on this." The voice behind Daniel made him jump again.

"Detective Cormin."

The middle-aged, stone-eyed man was now standing behind Daniel with a firm frown on his face. "What do you gather from all this?" he asked Daniel, gesturing to the file.

"That our department is really good at gathering evidence quickly," Daniel said, hoping to lighten the older man's mood. Cormin just continued staring at him.

"So, you're not thinking patterns, motive?" he asked.

Daniel looked back at the file. "Since Lindsey is in holding, talking with her and putting together the motive does sound like a good starting point," he replied.

"I've been at this for almost 20 years, kid," Cormin said. "I've seen a lot of stuff, and I also have a track record. I'll help you out if I can, but I also don't want you taking my job."

"Of course not, sir."

Detective Cormin left without another word, and Daniel watched his stiff body head towards another desk. He couldn't help but shiver a little before standing up himself.

Daniel headed to the elevator and went straight to the basement, the holding cells. There were a couple interrogation rooms on the floor as well. The guard at the front glanced up at the young man who stepped off the elevator in front of him.

"Requesting to question Lindsey Segal," Daniel said.

"Give me 20 minutes. Gotta have her in the room for a bit."

Once the 20 minutes were up, Daniel walked into the dimly lit room that almost looked green. The brown, sport-haired styled Lindsey looked up at him as he entered.

"Have I gotten approval for my lawyer yet?" she asked with a quiver in her voice.

"I want to talk to you first before you get a lawyer," Daniel replied. "You're on some hefty charges."

"All of them are lies! Everything was going so well with Anna! I had no reason to kill her!"

"Did you find out she was dating anyone else? Jealousy is a simple motivation."

"She wasn't."

"Was there something Anna found out about you? Were you dating someone else?"

"I work at an office with mostly guys, and they know I'm not interested."

"Just a question. You positive you have no accomplices in all this?"

"There's nothing here! I just know somebody was out for me specifically which is why they targeted Anna and got me in a cell. I just wish I knew who cause I actually liked everyone at my job. Look..." she shifted in her seat and pointed at the file before continuing. "That thing has my bank account and phone records in it, right? How about you check the bank cams and call those numbers? Do some extra digging before dumping all the blame on me. Maybe one of those people can give you the truth because everything I just told you is the truth!"

She took a deep breath. "There's nothing else that you can get out of me because I don't know anything else. And, where's that lawyer?"

Daniel bit his lip and nodded slowly. He stood up and walked back out into the hallway. Making sure the door was shut behind him, he put his hand on his knee, bent over and started breathing heavily. 'I can't believe I kept my cool in there,' he thought to himself.

After one final inhale, he straightened himself out and headed back upstairs. 'I'll take what she said as next steps, since she's so adamant about being innocent,' he thought.

Once back at his desk, he took to the phone records. There were three calls to unknown numbers on the day before Anna was murdered. Daniel tried calling each one, but they all wound up being burner phones. 'That would explain the poisoning if they were illegal substances,' he thought. He did record the burner numbers though for the other departments.

The next step was now the bank. There was already a subpoena for Lindsey's bank records which documented the shared account with Anna, but Daniel had to leave the building to go view the security footage. Once he arrived, a manager in a crisp suit immediately came over.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" the manager asked clearly. Daniel looked around at the clean tile floor and the black desk where the tellers sat.

"I'm working the Lindsey Segal case," Daniel explained. "We have the bank records, but I also want to check any footage you might have of her actually withdrawing the money."

"You seem more reasonable than the last detective. I'll cooperate."

"More reasonable?" Daniel asked as the manager led him down a short hallway and opened a wooden door to the back.

"You know...forget I said that. I just don't want any more trouble coming into my bank." The manager opened one more door which was filled with monitors. "Charlie, bring up the feed from a couple days ago." A man in a gray security uniform gave a nod and started typing on the keyboard. "I'll leave you with him," and with that, the manager walked away.

Daniel squeezed his way in beside Charlie's chair as he brought up the video. "Do you want to watch the whole day? Cause, I'd like to get out of here when my shift is over."

"You can fast forward some bits," Daniel said. "I'm just looking for one woman in particular."

"You got it."

Even on fast-forward, scanning through the footage made Daniel's eyelids heavy. There were sections where five people would be waiting to speak with somebody and there were sections where only the workers were in the building. At around the 3:22pm mark, Daniel told Charlie to play it at normal speed.

"This is where the transaction happened according to the records," he said.

Two people were speaking with tellers. One man and one woman. Neither of them were Lindsey. The woman though was handed an envelope before walking away. Daniel eyed her curiously.

"Go back a few seconds," he said. Charlie did and paused it on the side of the woman's face when she was being handed the envelope. "Why do you look so familiar?"

"Is one of those two who you're looking for?" Charlie asked.

"Maybe. I think I just found Anna. But, why would Anna be withdrawing the money in Lindsey's name when they're both on the account?" Daniel shook his head. "Thank you, Charlie. I got to get back to the office." With that, Daniel was off once again.

It was almost sunset when he left, and the orange color of the sky helped him think more about what the manager said. "'More reasonable than the last detective...' I'm going to check if the bank was involved in any other crimes recently," he said to himself.

Once he arrived back, he went straight to his desk and opened the file. D.E. Banking Associates was written on the top of Lindsey's bank record, so that's what he typed into the case search bar. There was one incident last year that came up. Daniel read that a woman was killed by her boyfriend the day after he withdrew a large sum from his shared account with her at D.E. Banking.

Daniel started reading more about the case and how the man consistently claimed he was innocent. He went to the official report to see who the manager was scared of. His eyes widened at seeing that Cormin's signature was at the bottom.

He sat frozen before glancing around the room to make sure Cormin wasn't around. Once Daniel was in the clear, he started looking through Cormin's old cases. While most of the cases were theft, Daniel found six murder cases within the past three years that Cormin had been put on.

"Some hero you are, huh?" Daniel whispered.

He read through every case with sharp eyes. Similarities kept popping up. All victims were a female. All killers had fervently defended their innocence. All of them withdrew large sums of money the day before the murders took place. And, all the bank accounts were joint accounts with the deceased. The only things that were different were the methods. One was arson, one was a knife, one was poison, and the rest were guns.

He looked through the phone records of the gun killers. He figured if poison was a dead end before, maybe one of the foreign numbers on the gun killers would yield some better results. With one more look around the room, Daniel dialed a number.

"Mid-City Pawn Shop," came a voice.

"Hello, sir. I'm looking to see if you sold any guns between April 4th and 6th," Daniel said.

"Let me check the book. I'm new here, but it should be written down there." Silence. "No, sir. We didn't during that time."

"Kid! Is that Cormin?"

Daniel hung up the phone quickly, not wanting to hear what would be exchanged on the other side. That though solidified Daniel's racing thoughts about the cases. His head started to spin. It explained why Cormin seemed so stiff about not getting Lindsey's case. He'd been messing with those other cases.

"Why though?" Daniel mouthed. He got up and started walking out of the building. "I need to calm down. I need to go clean to process all this."

He took the drive back to the apartment a little too heavy on the gas making his usual drive in 20 minutes. When he arrived and was inside, the first thing he did was search for the vacuum. He found it in the bedroom closet, but it was stuck behind a couple boxes.

"Come on." Daniel yanked it upwards knocking over the box directly in front of it. It made something looking like a large rat fall out.

Daniel jerked back, but then he squinted. The "rat" was platinum blond. He bent down and picked it up. The synthetic hair was now brushing against his skin.

"A wig?" Daniel asked. "Is this Heather's? Why...?" The supposed image he had of Anna came back into his head, the hair, the shape of the face.

"No..." Daniel grabbed the vacuum and scrambled into the living room. "All of this, it can't be true."

He plugged in the vacuum and pulled of one of the couch cushions to start cleaning it. He was stopped once again, his mouth now agape. Where the cushion once was now exposed a couple of IDs.

"You really got to be kidding me," Daniel said.

BANG!

Pain suddenly shot through his shoulder. He fell backwards and landed on his butt, his hand automatically on his shoulder. It started getting squishy and wet underneath, but with a wince, he finally looked up.

Heather stood in front of him with a pistol in her hand. "My boo knows how much I hate firing his gun," she said. "I didn't want out plans to end up like this."

"You're Anna," Daniel spat. "You're all the victims. And you're...Cormin's...oh, that's gross."

"Hey, as long as we get the cash, I'll stay with him as long as he wants. It was a simple scam too. I used my styling skills to make the injuries when it called for it. I don't just do hair. It would've all worked out, and it would've worked with you too, until you had to be put on one of our cases."

"You both knew I would expose you. Why would you even want me as your next victim?"

"Of course you would've exposed us. Hence this contraption." She waved the gun. "Making you our target though, that was Cormin. He likes the glory. Says he's the one keeping the department alive. Saw you as a threat to his status and wanted you gone. I helped him get that status, and I get stuff from the cash. Now, we only have one final problem." She walked slowly towards Daniel whose face was tense and teeth clenched in anger.

"What do I need to do with you?"