Seeking Truth: Part 3

Progress

The already solemn mood invoked by the case was greatly enhanced by Wednesday's rainy weather. Even though I had gotten off the bus just outside the courthouse, my suit was already several shades darker from the rain by the time I got inside and past security. When I got out of the elevator and stepped into the offices, Lise greeted me with a laugh, “Forget your umbrella this morning Mark?”

I gave her a weak smile in response as she reached under her desk and offered me a hair dryer. This morning she was wearing a pair of black slacks and a white short-sleeve dress shirt. “Go on and dry yourself off in the restroom. I'm sure Luke has a comb he can give you if you need one.”

“Thanks, Lise, would you mind telling him that I'll be a few minutes?”

“Not at all, I'll just say you got in a fight with the weather.”

Taking the dryer, I entered the restroom and spent the next ten minutes getting as much water out of my suit as I could. That was the problem with these fancy suits, they definitely aren't designed for harsh weather. By the time I had finished and headed towards Luke's office, I could hear him talking with someone.

“You're certain it's Hayes? But Vell's record-...Yes, I understand. Of course... I had every right to! It's my job! ...Yes...sorry, sir...I'll get right on it...”

From the sound of things, he had been talking to Mr. Closeau on the phone...and from the following thud of his fist hitting the wall, it hadn't gone well. Stepping into his office, I asked, “What's wrong, Luke?”

“Closeau. He apparently took offense that I carried out further investigations, something about wasting the office's money. Bah, it doesn't matter. Let's get this case out of the way, and worry about him later. I've got some things to show you, haven't I?”

Nodding, I took my usual seat and set up my laptop. “Vell's and Hayes's records, and the list of people who accessed the original recording, right?”

“Yep, and if I get a few more calls from the detectives, I might have even more. Let's start with the list of people who accessed the recording.” Shuffling through some papers, he produced a single sheet of red paper with a chart of names and dates. None of the entries were recent, except for Luke's own entry, which was from the previous day, and most of them were within a week of the case's beginning.

“Alright, first is Officer Shaw, the evidence technician who logged it. He arrived on the scene approximately 15 minutes after the shooting had been called in, and the times on the police report show that it was stored in the room immediately after he arrived, so it's highly improbable that he watched it or tampered with it. Shortly after him is Prosecutor Closeau.”

“Closeau? Isn't that a little soon for a prosecutor to be assigned the case?”

He looked at me thoughtfully, “Those were my thoughts exactly. So I gave him call and left a message. What you heard this morning was his return call.” Leaning back in his chair and putting his feet on the desk, he continued, “He explained that he was visiting the station about a different case, and, being the chief prosecutor, made a copy of the tape to give to whoever it was assigned to. This is certainly possible, and the other evidence he checked out that night backs up his story, but he's not really known for such sincerity. He must've been in a really good mood that night.”

I nodded and looked back at the list. It was unlike Closeau to show much any kind of thoughtfulness, especially not when it came to going out of his way to help someone. “The next person is...Detective Ingle? Wasn't she-”

“The lead investigator for my last two cases?” Luke finished, “Yep. I had a nice chat with her yesterday evening. She told me than when she watched the tape, it already had that moment of silence. This means that someone got to it before her.”

I looked at him for several seconds, before he finally turned to face me and finished my thought, “I know what you're thinking, and she isn't lying. She's a bird of her word, and from experience on my last two cases, I would trust her with my life.”

“But that means...it had to be either Shaw or Closeau...”

“Indeed...both of them have the technological expertise to fabricate the tape, but why would they do it? No one will believe that either of them did it without evidence and a motive, they'll just assume the silence on the tape is natural and that Hayes knew how to draw his weapon very quietly or that the microphone couldn't pick it up.”

“Yeah...you're right...” I replied sullenly. Whatever was going on, things looked grim for the case. Either there would have to be an internal investigation at the police department, or one on Closeau. Both of these would take time. The trial could be delayed, but since Luke was only substituting for Closeau, delaying the trial at all would give the case back to him, and from the sound of the phone conversation earlier, he wouldn't investigate this at all.

Rising and taking his black umbrella from the corner of the room, “I've already made a call to a friend of mine in the Internet crimes unit. He's looking into both, and should have some answers for us tomorrow. For now, we've got another meeting with Hayes to get to. I'll tell you about their records on the way.”

I stood up and followed him out of the room. I made a quick stop by Lise's desk and asked, “Mind if I borrow your umbrella?”

Reaching under her desk to retrieve it, she handed me a bright red umbrella with a smile, “Don't want another date with my hair dryer, eh?”

Shaking my head, “Not if I can avoid it. I don't think my tail appreciated that kind of attention.”

Sending us off with a wave, Lise returned to the work on her desk. As soon as we had stepped into the elevator, Luke wasted no time in explaining Vell's past.

“He's a high school grad, didn't go on to college. Spent most of his time hanging out with future criminals before getting his own police record. Mostly small stuff like burglaries and breaking into cars. His income from those types of jobs certainly wasn't enough to pay for that suit he died in, so I cross-referenced his name and description with some other crimes in the area. With Detective Ingle's assistance, we deduced that he's one of the new recruits of the Maresti mob family. He had been witnessed with several of their known members. While there's nothing concrete to tie him to them, there comes a point where there's just too much circumstantial evidence to say otherwise.”

We had just arrived at the ground floor, and I almost tripped out of the elevator upon hearing that name. It certainly rang a few bells, “Wait...the Marestis? Didn't Closeau say that that's the family Hayes belongs to?”

Unfolding his umbrella, Luke stepped outside and waited for me to do the same, “Indeed he did. Now, I'm not half the expert on organized crime that he is, but if his observations of Hayes are correct, he might still be right. Of course, that presents us with two more questions: One, if they are both in the same mob, why would they have to meet there, in neutral territory? Two, if they are not part of the same mob family, how could Closeau have missed it?”

Following the wolf across the street, I asked, “Well, Closeau's already kind of suspicious in my book...”

“This is certainly an unorthodox case for him,” he began, “but he's not really acting too strangely. He never really investigates more than he has to, and the other problems could just be honest mistakes. He is getting up there in years, so they're more than possible. I suppose we'll be a little closer to the truth once we talk to Hayes, won't we?”

I gave a weak nod, stepping after him into the police station. It was true that Closeau's actions weren't all that peculiar, and he could've just made some mistakes...and when I really thought about it, there was still one very important piece of the puzzle missing – his motive. Why would he, a chief prosecutor, fabricate evidence and give us faulty information? It didn't make any sense. Before I could think any more about it, we passed through security and into the meeting room.

Second Opinion

Like before, Hayes was waiting for us. His time in jail really hadn't helped his appearance, as his whiskers were skewed and his tail looked like it had been stepped on several times. “What do you two want now?”

As we took our seats, Luke replied, “Just a few more clarifications, Mr. Hayes.”

“And if I don't want to talk to you?”

Luke narrowed his gaze again, speaking just slightly more friendly than a growl, “Because your case can only get better if you do. Think about it, if no one investigates that tape, the trial will be over in an hour and you'll be looking at a very serious sentence.”

Hayes fell silent, looking down at his tail. “But my attorney's already looking into it. She'll find out the truth.”

Luke's voice became more soothing, “All due respect to Ms. Tey, wouldn't you rather have both sides looking into it? Besides, she's a defense attorney and doesn't have the same,” he paused, considering how to finish, “resources, that I do.”

He looked up at Luke and sized him up for several seconds before finally conceding, “Alright, what do you want to know?”

Luke wasted no time in getting straight to the point, “Did you know you were being recorded that evening?”

“No.”

“Where did you learn that code you spoke in that night?”

His face became very hard, and it looked like he was about to end the conversation before Luke hurriedly added, “I don't need to know a name, just a method, like from talking to someone else, from emails, from a phone call...”

“Emails. One of the higher-ups in my company sent them to me so I could broker the deal with Mr. Vell.”

The finality of his tone made it quite clear that he'd be out of the room in a second if we inquired further about this deal.

The wolf seemed to sense this and changed topics, “Going back to that night and the gunshot noise, do you know where it originated?”

Hayes's face softened again and he looked up at the ceiling in thought. “...I'm pretty sure it was somewhere around his waist.”

Luke nodded. “Alright...did Vell have his cell phone with him that night?”

This time Hayes looked at the wall to think, “Yeah...I remember he looked at it to check the time before we went into the room.”

Leaning back in his chair, Luke continued, “Did he make or receive any calls that night?

“No, he just put it in his right pocket after checking the time, didn't take it out again.”

Idly tapping on the back of his chair, he responded, “I see,” taking a breath, “what about you? Anything with your cell phone that night?”

“No. I had turned it off and left it in my car. I had just managed to retrieve it when that officer caught up with me.”

“Hmm...” Luke had put his paw to his chin again, “What about your weapon...where did you get it?”

“From a police auction a while back. It seemed to be in good condition, and I was looking for something for self-defense. Best deal I could find.”

“I'll bet it was,” came Luke's reply. “I think that's all we need...see you Friday.”

“Wait!” Hayes called, reaching towards us with his one free paw, “what do you think my chances are?”

Luke looked like he wanted to say, but responded, “Mr. Hayes, you know I can't offer any information of that sort for ethical reasons,” he hesitated, “but I will say that I'm learning a lot more about your case each day, and that it's a lot more complex than any of us thought.”

He seemed to understand, and gave Luke a knowing nod as we stood up to leave. Once we were back outside in the rain, I asked Luke, “Is that really all we need? I mean, the trial's on Friday, and-”

“Mark,” he began, looking at me thoughtfully, “the answers he just provided might very well have opened some Pandora's Boxes that we can't morally close now. Not only that, but I think he's given us all the information that he could.”

“Are you sure? What about-”

He raised a finger to his muzzle, pointing up towards his floor of the courthouse. This had been one of the first gestures he had taught me when I became his intern, and it meant “I'll explain back in the safety of the office.”

I gave a slight nod, and got back to thinking. What had all that stuff about cell phones been about? I didn't really know until a line from Luke's email flashed into my head, “what made the gunshot noise?” There would've been a great deal of evidence if Vell had fired his weapon, but since he hadn't...something else had to have made the noise. Could it have been a cell phone? You could make anything your ring tone these days...and Vell had checked the time on his phone, so it had been on...it made sense. And Luke had told me that he had gotten all the evidence from the police, so that would include Vell's cell phone, or at least an identical phone with a copy of the data from Vell's phone in it. All it would take was a simple check to see what his ring tone is, and so many mysteries would be solved at once! It seemed like Luke was thinking the same thing, for as soon as he got back to the offices, he gave a quick wave to Lise and darted into his room. I stopped only briefly to give Lise her umbrella back, then entered my supervisor's office to find him fishing around in his bag. He produced a black flip-phone just as I entered the room. A few button presses later and he held up the phone between us triumphantly, and then...

Not so simple

...the perfectly ordinary sound of a bell, the ringing of a rotary phone, crept out of the cell phone. Both Luke and I sat in stunned silence for a moment, certain that this was what we had been waiting for. He looked at the device sheepishly, his tail noticeably drooping behind him.

“Are you sure that's the right ring? Perhaps the police didn't set it to his when they made the copy?”

He seemed to simply absorb my words as he feverishly looked through the phone's menus, hoping to find the tone that would be our smoking gun. All types of noises could be heard outside his office while he searched, playing tone after tone. Several different rings, a few snippets of famous symphonies, some variations of the Mexican Hat Dance, La Cucaracha, and even one or two clips from comedy movies.

“Did you rob the Sprint store on the way back, Luke?” Lise called between tones.

“Oh, you know it, all that work with criminals finally rubbed off on me,” he shouted back.

As he ran through file after file, I found my own tail drooping. We were so close...

Finally, with a sigh and disappointment that could be felt in the air, he set the phone down on the desk and scratched his head, “This is definitely an exact copy of his phone...and the ring tone was the correct one...” he played with the phone for a few seconds, tapping it on the desk before turning back to the piles of papers and rifling through them. I don't know which one he was looking for, but as he passed by the one labeled “autopsy report” he paused and turned back to it. I watched as he didn't move a muscle, his eyes fixated on one part of the page. Then he nearly made me jump out of my seat when his eyes widened and he leapt from his chair to the board.

“What is it?” I asked, my perked up ears revealing my interest far louder than my voice.

“Remember that show 'House'? There's a quote from him that fits our situation quite well. Can you guess?”

I didn't watch much television, but I usually found time to watch a few series, including House. Now, I could think of several quotes from the doctor that would reference a state of despair, but judging by how feverishly he was writing on the board, I didn't think that was what he had in mind. Ultimately, I had to shrug since nothing came to mind.

“I forget the exact words, but they went something like, 'when something doesn't fit, and it should, it means your assumptions are wrong.' So let's look at our assumptions here.” He had written a series of facts on the board: the recording was edited - the gunshot noise was removed - Vell's phone made the noise - Vell's ring tone is a gunshot. “Obviously, the last assumption is false, so we're back to testing the previous assumption. Did Vell's phone make the noise?”

“I'd still say it did...I mean, there's no evidence that he fired his weapon, and there wasn't anything else there that could mimic a gunshot...” I trailed off, not sure what else to say.

He pointed the marker at me and smiled, “Exactly,” turning back to the board, “we know Vell's gun didn't go off because it was still in its holster, the safety was on, and there's no gunpowder residue, bullet casing, or any of the other indicators of a gun discharging. So why was it the phone? Think back to the autopsy report. The bullet entered his left temple, at an angle that indicated he was looking down.” He moved to a corner of the office and motioned for me to stand about four feet in front of him. “Now then, if you're Vell and I'm Hayes, and your phone has just produced a gunshot from your right pocket, what would you do?”

There were several things I would have done if I had just heard a gunshot near my pocket, but the first...I looked down at the pocket in question.

“That's it! Don't move!” Luke exclaimed, raising his arms like he was holding a handgun. Once they were fully extended, he cautiously walked over to me, making sure not to move his arms. It took several seconds, but finally, I felt the tip of his paw touch my left temple. It was slightly shaking, from fear or anticipation, I couldn't tell, but I understood the message.

“So that would mean,” I began, “the phone at the scene of the crime...”

“wasn't Vell's phone,” he finished. Sitting back down at his desk.

Looking back at the board, I thought a moment, then asked, “but wait,” I wondered aloud, “couldn't someone have just erased the gunshot noise from his phone?”

My supervisor paused, thinking this over. Rocking back and forth in his chair, his tail slowly swayed beneath it while he thought. After almost half a minute, he cautiously whispered, “No...I don't think so.” Rising from his chair, he began to pace around the room, “I think it's growing more clear that someone else was there that evening. I don't know who, but there's so much evidence tampering here,” he fell silent, reflecting on this, “there must have been. Let's say that whoever else was there waited to hear the gunshots, then made his or her move. What would be the first thing you would do after walking in on that scene, assuming Vell's death was what you were hoping for?”

Summarizing what he said on the board, I responded, “erase the evidence of the gunshot, of course,” I began, “so that would be the phone and the recording.”

“But the police arrived, unusually quickly,” he paused mid-stride and continued, “You don't have time for both...”

“The recording is more important,” I answered, “but if the drive was removed from the camera, there would be far more inquiries about evidence tampering, and if I was found with the drive, it would all be over.”

“Right, I suspect our guest's thoughts were similar to those,” he resumed his pacing. “So that just leaves the phone.”

“And it doesn't take long to erase something from a phone. He could've easily done it before the police entered the building.”

Pausing again, his eyes fell upon the phone that had so disappointed us. Picking it up, he opened up a panel on the side and removed its memory card, carefully turning it in his paws. “No...I'm afraid it wouldn't be that simple.”

I stopped writing on the board and turned to him, “What do you mean?”

“Well, a full explanation for this would take a few classes in digital evidence, but here's the short version. When data is deleted off of a drive, it isn't exactly deleted. Instead, the file system merely tells the operating system that that space is available to be overwritten. The data is still there, until it's either zeroed out or something is written over it. For example, look at that first line on the white board.” Following his pointing finger led me to the first phrase of his assumption list, “the recording was edited.” “If that's data, and I said to delete it, it would still be there, but you, the file system, would know that you now had the freedom to erase it and replace it with something else at a later time. Not the best example I could've hoped for, but do you get it?”

It took a short while for the dots to connect, but soon they formed the image he was hoping for, “I think so,” I reasoned, “so unless something was written over it, someone can recover that data?”

Forming his paws into another steeple, he replied, “Precisely. Now, I don't know enough about video editing to say exactly how our fabricator changed the tape, but Chris down in Internet crimes already did the best he could with the kind of forensics we're talking about and turned up nothing. So I don't think our guest will have made that kind of mistake with the phone.”

So that just leaves...”Then that phone was switched for another?”

“I'd bet money on it.”

That statement drove the point home more than all the reasoning we had just done. “So who could've been in the building at the time of the meeting?”

The wolf set his feet upon the desk again, using his arms as a pillow while he thought. “Remember that quote I told you about perfection, the one that can apply to any plan?”

This one, I remembered immediately, “'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing to take away.'”

“Antoine de Saint-Exuper. The perfect plans are those with the fewest variables, and the most unpredictable variables are people. There's no doubt whoever planned all of this put a lot of thought into it, using as few people as possible. Let's start with the assumption that this is just one person. Maybe he or she had help from others, but they probably weren't aware of the whole plan, or even that a plan existed at all.”

I nodded. It seemed logical enough. Less people involved meant less potential witnesses, and less people to keep track of when it was carried out. “Alright,” I began, “so if we operate under that idea, that would mean it was either,” I paused, shocked at my own discovery, “Shaw or Closeau.”

He nodded gravely. “I'm still waiting on Shaw's records from the police station...but we can start checking up on Closeau right now.”

“And what, exactly would that involve?” Came a sweet, yet unexpected voice from the doorway, making both of us jump.

“Been practicing sneaking up on me, Lise?” Luke asked, a smile slowly forming on his muzzle.

“Only for you,” she replied sarcastically, “but I didn't think the boss irritated you that much, that you have to spy on him.”

“There's a lot more to it than,” he paused, “...than any of us expected, really.”

“Oh? Enlighten me.”

“Gladly, it'll help me understand it better as well.” Then, after a slight growl from his stomach, he added, “over lunch, that is,” picking up his umbrella again. “Care to join us Mark?”

“Nah, I think I'll get something here, keep working on the case,” I said, sitting back down at my desk and opening my laptop.

“Don't overwork yourself now, you'll have plenty of opportunities to do that once you're out of law school, trust me on that,” he finished with a laugh and stepped out of the office.

“Have a good lunch then, Mark. We'll bring you back some dessert,” she called as she began to follow Luke.

“Thanks, see you later!” I called to them before turning back to my laptop and started to piece together what we'd worked out so far.

Part 4: Seeking Truth: Part 4