Chapter One
Open and shut.
That’s what they told Detective Sergeant Antoine-jean Rousseau before he walked into the interview room. His partner, Detective Walter Forbes, didn’t agree with that assessment. And while he thought it was a side effect of his current lack of coffee, there was a feeling that he could not shake that it wouldn’t be that easy either.
He sat quietly across from the perp reviewing the case notes from the crime scene and the arresting officers. He had hoped to gauge a reaction from the man sitting across from him. After what he estimated to be five whole minutes, although that could be caused by his lack of coffee as well, to his disappointment, nothing.
Harold Eugene Feltzer, 43, he read, no criminal record, not even a single speeding ticket. No children, and no next of kin on record. The man was practically a ghost, and a long way from home too here in Cleveland, last known address is a place in northern Minnesota from over five years ago. Although, who knows where he had ventured to since then. With no obvious connection to the victim, it’s really going to be hard to determine motive, Rousseau thought to himself.
Feltzer sat in silence and seemed indifferent to the detective sitting across from him. He hadn’t said a word since he was picked up at the scene other than to, very bizarrely, verbally give up his right to counsel. And he was now taking the ‘right to remain silent’ extremely serious, Rousseau couldn’t help but get chills by the man’s demeanor.
Forbes, who had been watching through the one way glass of the interview room, opened the door and walked over to Rousseau. He handed the Detective a manila folder, inside was mostly copies of the documents already sitting on table Rousseau had been studying, but a cursory glance by the suspect would not be revealing to that fact. The hope was again, to affect a reaction from the man, or at least generate some kind of frustration to get him talking. Still, nothing. Sitting a disposable coffee cup on the table, black with three sugars, Forbes leaned in to Rousseau’s ear and whispered so the man would not hear.
“The bet is at four hundred that he’ll be Rousseau’d within an hour, John.” Forbes said, using the name Rousseau preferred to go by among colleagues, with no expression on his face so as not to give anything away.
Great, Rousseau thought, might as well throw on the pressure of a precinct bet to top this already strange case off. “Rousseau’d” was a term used around the precinct to describe his almost inhuman success at getting a confession from his suspects within the classic forty-eight hour time frame after a murder is convicted. It hadn’t happened all that often, he thought, but enough that eventually someone coined the term and his fellow Detectives within the Bureau of Special Investigations of the Cleveland Police Department began requesting he come take a crack at their perps when they’ve hit a dead end on a case. Even outside agencies have requested his assistance when they have run out of options. It had become more of a burden unfortunately, but when he had the time to spare he often entertained the request. If it did actually result in a confession and arrest, what was the harm in trying? Many of the suspects that had confessed often said that the look in John’s eyes while they were sitting across from him had convinced them. Almost all of them said they couldn’t stand looking into them anymore, a deep smoky gray color that felt devoid of life, as if they were staring into Death himself. John just chalked it up to pure luck, he didn’t feel he was doing anything special.
A few seconds passed after Forbes had left the room, looking up from the new folder with no new information in it, Rousseau said, “Alright, I have what I needed, let’s get started.”
Feltzer still hadn’t so much as blinked as Rousseau took a sip of his coffee, “So, Mr. Feltzer, this is looking pretty bad for you. We have you on scene, covered in the victim’s blood, with reasonable access to the murder weapon, which also had your fingerprints on it.” He said while motioning to the appropriate crime scene photos, particularly the one of a black hilted, bloody kukri knife.
Feltzer continued to appear indifferent to the fact anyone was even speaking to him. “15 to life if you’re lucky, but I know the District Attorney quite well, he won’t settle for anything less than capital punishment from a non-compliant defendant.”
John couldn’t even tell if the man had blinked, “Mr. Feltzer, you’re going to have to help me out here.” He said, looking the man in the eyes, “we have everything we need to convict you, it would be a hell of a lot easier on you, the victim’s family, and everyone involved if you would cooperate.” Detective Rousseau did his best to take advantage of his supposed confession powers while maintaining an in-command posture, to no avail. He was beginning to think Feltzer was a mime, or deaf and mute.
“Harold, the one thing that I can’t put together and I need to know in order to help you, is why a middle aged man from northern Minnesota would come over eight hundred miles to murder a stranger.”
This made Feltzers’ eyes light up, and finally his indifference wavered. John thought he had done it. Forbes, on the other side of the one way glass, was quieting the audience, now in suspense, that had gathered waiting to see if this perp was going to get Rousseau’d. No one expected what came next.
The man they were expecting to hear a confession out of cocked his head to one side, clicked his tongue, and said, “Now that, detective, is the correct question.”
Seemingly every mouth this side of the precinct dropped in disbelief, confusion, and disappointment. Except for Rousseau, he maintained his composure and asked what everyone listening in was screaming in their head, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Perhaps there is more to see at the scene than your investigators cared to examine, detective. When you’ve taken in the whole picture and can answer that question yourself, we may speak again, until then, I’d rather enjoy the silence.” Feltzer said with clear impatience.
And with that Rousseau knew. Open and shut was a fairy tale in this case. He and Forbes got handed one of the crazies, and it was going to get messy. “What is this a game to you?” he belted.
Nothing, no reaction, it was back to deaf and mute it appeared. Wonderful, John thought to himself. Time to regroup.
As John exited the interview room and told Feltzer’s two uniformed escorts to return him to lockup, Forbes was busy ushering the crowd nonchalantly away from Johns’ field of vision. They met at the end of the hallway to walk together back to their desks, passing a few disappointed faces who surely had less funds left in their wallets now that an hour had officially expired.
“What’s your take on this?” John said to his partner as they walked towards the elevator.
“Well, I’d say he’s fucking crazy. The guy wanted to be caught John, this whole case smells. Hell, we don’t even know how he got to the victim’s house. And now he’s playing mind games. I think we are looking at a possible multiple homicide. Maybe he’s killed before and wasn’t caught and now wants the spotlight.”
“What don’t we know about the crime scene?” John more or less thought aloud.
“Forensics is going over it top to bottom just like any other homicide scene, standard procedure. Nothing out of the ordinary, vic was an avid hunter, lots of firearms, safes, mounted antlers, on the premises. It’s hard to believe we aren’t investigating Harold’s murder instead.”
Stepping into the elevator, Rousseau opened the case file and started re-examining the crime scene photos. He stopped at the murder weapon, the black hilted kukri knife. “Forbes do we know if the murder weapon belonged to the victim or not? I know that’s a very unique blade, but with the vic being an outdoorsman, it wouldn’t be out of place in his home.”
“Still working on that, they should be able to say for sure by the end of the day, trouble is they haven’t located the sheath and sharpening blades that typically go with it.” On their floor the team stepped off the elevator and walked over to their desks.
“Call over to dispatch and see if we can get the arresting officers down here, I need to know exactly what they saw and heard upon arriving at that house. Maybe we can get some answers before we try to solve this riddle.”
“I’m on it, I’ll see if they can send us over the 911 call recording and transcript as well.”
Riddle? John thought. What could possibly drive a man to murder a stranger other than insanity? He just hoped he wasn’t insane for entertaining the riddle. With other cases on the books, this one could waste a lot of time for a wild goose chase.
Jake Hillman 