Another Day in the Life Ch. 03

Franklin was filling out the partial immunity form. "What do you want to give her?" he asked me.

"She's going to have to plead guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief, at the least." I said. "And misdemeanor possession of hazardous substances."

"Come on, she's giving you Dennis Ridley on a platter." said Gwen Munson. "She should get immunity."

"Except, Ms. Munson" I said, "the real story is that this was Susan's idea, from start to finish. Your client thought this was her only chance to be a mother. She can't have children after her miscarriage years ago. Zack is an introverted child whom I believe needs psychiatric evaluation and monitoring, but Susan has shown she's willing to ignore all that if she can marry Dennis and adopt his son as hers.... oh, wait... Zack is not Dennis's son, so the whole thing just blew up. And Susan, I think you realized in the Pastor's Room that Dennis has no intention of marrying you... and never did. I'm sorry that you've been led on like that, but it's true."

"My client has suffered greatly because of what has happened here." said Gwen Munson. "Which is yet another reason she should be given immunity in exchange for her statement and truthful testimony against Dennis Ridley."

"She's not getting off scot-free." I replied, suddenly growing weary of this, and of Gwen Munson. "She's going to be pleading guilty to lesser charges. Period." I turned to Franklin. "You good with that?"

"Actually, I'd like to walk away from this and throw the book at this woman." Franklin said harshly, making both Gwen and Susan gasp. "But a deal is a deal. Sign a confession and statement, testify, put Dennis away, and we'll drop everything to misdemeanors and three to six years probation, depending upon what the judge wants to do..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At 11:50am, Dennis Ridley was brought into Interrogation-B. As he conferred with his lawyer, I went into the Pastor's Room and told Patricia that she could go, and that we weren't going to call DFACS. I also urged her to begin divorce proceedings against her husband immediately.

"Paperwork is back from the Courthouse." said Cindy in the hallway. "Susan's statement is processed, she's been taken through booking. She'll be arraigned this afternoon, and Franklin says the Judge Folsom will very likely take the plea deal."

"Okay." I said. "Go get Warner. This is her bust."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

ADA Franklin Washington got back to HQ and went into Interrogation-B with Joanne Warner. I also went in, and sat in the chair by the wall as they sat at the table opposite Dennis Ridley and his attorney Stelling.

"It's over, Dennis." Joanne said. "Susan has turned, and will be a State witness against you."

Dennis Ridley's face fell, in the way of watching his cards in a high-stakes poker game be beaten by the turn of an unfriendly card in a better hand.

"Not much to talk about then, is there?" Ridley said.

"No," said Joanne, "but my Police Commander is a generous man who doesn't like to waste people's time. Save the taxpayers the time and expense of a trial, and I might convince the ADA here to reduce the charges in exchange."

"What deal are you offering?" asked Stelling.

Franklin Washington said "Drug charges, that being possession of oxycodone, a Schedule II drug, will be reduced to misdemeanor possession. Attempted murder reduced to assault and criminal mischief. The judge might give you anything from three years in a minimum security prison to several years of probation, and I'm sure a heavy fine will be part of it."

Ridley took the deal.

Part 17 - Blue Is The Warmest Color

3:00pm, Wednesday, April 18th. I walked into MCD, followed by Captain Cindy Ross, the Vice Detectives (and their leader, Mary Mahoney Milton), and Chief Moynahan. The MCD Detectives were hard at work on paperwork.

"May I have your attention please!" I said loudly. "Judge Folsom has accepted Susan Carrera and Dennis Ridley's plea deals, and therefore this case will be considered closed as soon as the paperwork is done, hint hint." Everyone chuckled.

"You all did great work." I said. "But it was Detective Warner that really connected the dots, as well as came up with that brilliant plan that caused Susan Carrera to confess and turn State's evidence." Everyone clapped for Joanne, who was blushing at her desk.

"And therefore," I said, "Captain Ross has a presentation to make."

"Yes I do." said Cindy, bringing a blue crowbar out from behind her back. "For solving the case like an Iron Crowbar would, you're the next recipient of a blue crowbar. Great job!" Cindy handed the blue crowbar to Joanne, who examined it with admiration amidst more applause.

"Aw, thank you, ma'am, sir." Joanne gushed.

"It's ceremonial." I said. "You can't use it in the Boxing Matches."

"Oh, any ol' crowbar will do for that, since I'm going to win the title going away." Joanne said happily. Some 'ooooohs' broke out.

"I admire your confidence." I said. "But not your detachment from reality. Red will beat blue and every other color of crowbar... especially green." More 'ooooohs' circulated through the room.

"Keep talking." said Cindy. "Crow is a dish to be served in large portions, and I will be delivering those servings." It was rocking now.

"Good grief." said Chief Moynahan. "I'm glad I have a confident Police Force, but there's only one trophy to give out."

"Who's going to win it, sir?" asked Micah Rudistan, ever jovial, and ever one to start 'trouble'.

"I'll just say this." said the Chief. "I never bet... against red." I made the 'muscles' pose amidst more catcalling.

"Okay, folks," said the Chief. "We'll celebrate at the Cop Bar tonight. Get the paperwork done and to my desk so I can clean it up before Krasney tries to drop the charges after the fact." That sort of ended the celebration. Everyone scattered as the MCD Detectives went back to their desks. The other MCD Detectives did give Joanne high-fives as they went back to their desks, and I was glad to see that camaraderie amongst them...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

3:30pm.

The blue crowbar award was the good. Now came time for bad.

I called Detective Warner into my office. When she came in, I did not invite her to sit down. "Watch the monitor, there." I said, indicating the television monitor on the wall, to which my computer was feeding a video.

"This is the video of your first interrogation of Patricia Ridley." I said. "Do you remember this?" The video showed the portion of the interview where Joanne had asked about guns in the house."

"Yes sir." said Joanne.

"Tell me, Detective." I asked. "Was that before or after the lab results came back."

Joanne thought about it and said "Uhh... before."

"That's right." I said sternly. "It was before there was any proof that a crime had taken place at all. So let me ask this: if Patricia had said there were guns in the house, what would you have done?"

"I'd have asked her to turn them in." Joanne said.

"And if she had refused? Or if they'd been Dennis's guns?" I asked.

Joanne said "I'd have gotten a warrant to confiscate them, sir. For the sake of the child's safety."

"I was afraid you'd say that." I said. "You of all people, a hunter and NRA member."

"I don't understand, sir." said Joanne.

"I will make it clear, then." I said. "If you'd confiscated any guns before the lab tests had come back... I would have fired you on the spot."

"Whaaa?" Joanne gasped. "But sir! There was a child involved."

I sighed. "Detective, there are millions of American homes with law abiding citizens and their children in them, and guns in those homes as well. My home happens to be one of them. I know a lot of people believe as you just stated... but the Constitution comes first. Until there's evidence of a crime, you have no right nor reason to confiscate legally owned arms. Period. The Second Amendment is just as much part of the Constitution as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments."

"But sir-------" Joanne started.

"Detective, this is not a two-way conversation." I stated. Joanne realized this was what it was: an asschewing. She wisely shut her mouth as I continued: "We Police are hamstrung at times like this. And since we are, we'll obey the Constitution and honor the rights of law-abiding American Citizens. If you'd waited until after we had the lab report to ask that question, I would have been a little bit more okay with it. The bottom line: don't do that again. Ever. Do I make myself clear."

Joanne did not like it, but she said in a resigned voice "Yes sir."

"Good. Dismissed." Joanne moved swiftly to get out of my office.

Yes, other Police Departments might have done otherwise, and would've violated the Constitution, I thought to myself. Me? I just remember an ancient coin in my safe at home, once the only thing my great-grandmother could take with her when she fled the Nazis. The Nazis had confiscated all the guns... and six million of my great-grandmother's fellow Jews had been exterminated.

No, not here, I thought to myself. Not if I can help it. Not if I can help it.

Part 18 - Solutions and Celebrations

8:00pm, Wednesday, April 18th. The MCD Detectives and their spouses or dates, some of the Vice Detectives and their significant ones, and the Police Force's leadership. My mother came as Chief Moynahan's date. Also present were J.R. Barnes, Christina Cho, Jack Muscone and Tanya Perlman... and I did not fail to notice a gleam in Muscone's beady little eyes.

To no surprise of mine, most of the conversation was about one thing: the Police Boxing Matches. I was sitting with the Chief, my mom, and Laura, so I didn't engage in the banter. I noticed that both the Chief and Laura were listening to it, and with frowns on their faces.

After supper, which was a barbeque buffet (that's the Southern word, which is a noun; not the Northern term, which is a verb), Cindy tapped spoon to glass to get our attention.

*DING!* *DING!* *DING!* *DING!* *DING!* *DING!*

"Okay, let's hear how you guys solved the Tylenol Bottle case." Cindy said. "Joanne Warner, you are on the spot."

There was applause for Joanne, then she started up: "Gosh, it's harder to talk about it than to have done it." she said. "We answered the call about Patricia Ridley's suspicions that her Tylenol bottle was tampered with. The lab results came back that the capsules were filled with oxycodone, and also a cyanate compound which gave off the odor that alerted Patricia to the danger."

"Of course it was easy to identify Dennis Ridley as the one who did it," Joanne said, "because, as Dame Agatha Christie and Commander Troy tell us, it's always the spouse!" That got some laughter from the Detectives, who knew as I did that Joanne was ribbing me some about that.

"We brought Ridley in," Joanne said, "and he gave us the line that his wife had planted the drugs to make it look like he did it. We did have to consider it, as we've learned from false accusation cases in the past that what appears obvious just might not be." No doubt about that, I thought to myself.

"So I'm not sure where to go with this and not be boring." said Joanne. "We found out about Ridley's finances being structured for a divorce. He sold land which he used to hunt on... and grow food plots. And as a hunter, I realized that's where the cyanate could've come from, fertilizer for the food plots."

"We also found out that Dennis had a girlfriend, Susan Carrera." Joanne said. "And we had to consider her as a suspect, as she had motive to attack Patricia, if not easy means or opportunity to do so. Last was the possibility that the child Zack Ridley was involved, perhaps co-opted by his father to do it."

"The keys for me," said Joanne, "really came from eliminating Patricia as a suspect. I really couldn't see the motive. As Steven Ridley so often said, divorce law in the United States is so one-sided against the father that Patricia really had nothing to worry about if she had a half-decent lawyer. She's going to get the house, she'll get some alimony... and maybe more if she got fired from her job... and she's allergic to codeine, so fooling around with oxycodone was not something she'd want to be doing."

"So," Joanne said, "as information started coming in, it just made more and more sense that Steven Ridley was behind it. We had to add to it that Susan Carrera was involved when we found out that Zack was not Steven's biological son. And Paul Escandes was an interesting sidebar, and maybe a coincidence despite what Dame Agatha Christie and Commander Troy say about coincidences."

More chuckles at Joanne's second dig at me... set those brackets up right, Brother Troy, I thought to myself. Set those brackets up right...

"The only question I have," said Joanne, "is why Commander Troy gave Susan Carrera such a plea deal, when she was so heavily a part of it."

"Commander Troy's turn." said Cindy.

"Yes, coincidences do happen." I said. "The main reason I gave Carrera the plea deal was to get her to turn on Ridley and give State's Evidence against him. Without that, despite knowing what happened, it would be much, much tougher to get a conviction of him without her testimony. We might have enough... as Joanne so astutely realized, that cyanate came from the old fertilizer he used for his deer plots some time ago... but the way Krasney and Ted Mason are these days, I preferred not taking the chance."

"I have a question, sir." said Jerome Davis. "You asked us to consider what happened if Patricia had died vs. if she lived. You were giving us a clue, I think, but can you tell us where you were going with all that?"

"And speaking of that," said Cindy Ross, "how much of this had you figured out long before the Detectives did?"

"To be honest," I said, "I really did not come to a conclusion before Detective Warner did. I had my ideas, of course, but I heard the data when they did if not later than they did, and I let my theories come based on those facts. So all due credit to Joanne and Theo for their excellent work digging those facts out."

"Having said that," I said, "as someone with a degree in Chemistry... which would make Dame Agatha Christie proud of me, I might add... it was obvious that the cyanate was the real key to the solution of who did it. When I made those comments to you guys, the basis of it was who wanted Patricia dead and who wanted her alive."

"Of course, Patricia wanted herself to be alive." I said. "And if this really had been a set-up, having the cyanate to warn her of the tampered bottle contents was both necessary and a good idea to explain her realizing it. But my thoughts on her guilt were along similar lines to Joanne's... I didn't see why she'd bother setting up her husband, when it didn't help her and might hurt her if he was in jail and couldn't pay alimony. And as a side note... notice that neither Patricia nor Dennis had actually filed for divorce yet. This marriage was all but over before it began, so why the delay? For Patricia, it was a measure of financial security. For Dennis, there may be other reasons, and I'll get to them in a moment."

"So... that left Dennis and Susan, as... so sorry, Captain Ross... I had also discounted Zack as being a player in all this." I said. "And my thoughts were that Dennis had good reasons why he did not want Patricia to die. But Susan Carrera did not! She would've been better off if Patricia was dead."

"Susan wanted a child, and Zack, for all his troubles, would do." I said. "And for her, that meant Patricia taking one of those pills and becoming sick or dying. If she dies, and even if Dennis goes to prison, Susan hoped to get Zack. If Patricia lived, Susan was all ready with an accusation that Patricia was a drug addict, hooked on oxycodone, and Susan would call in DFACS. Where that failed was Susan's lack of knowledge that Patricia's allergic reaction to codeine and compounds like oxycodone would preclude her, Patricia, from getting hooked on oxycodone."

"So Susan got the oxycodone," I said, "and it was Dennis who added the cyanate and then spiked the Tylenol bottle. He was looking for the angle of getting the best divorce settlement possible, with as little going to the child that was not his son. And even if his ruse failed, and we did not see fit to blame Patricia for the cover-up, maybe Zack does get examined psychiatrically, maybe taken away by DFACS."

"Dennis had no desire to marry Susan, and he certainly did not want custody of Zack." I continued. "But he had to keep Susan in his pocket, so to speak. So he dragged her into the mess with promises of marriage and custody of Zack, which a desperate Susan believed until the last moment. And that's my answer for both questions."

"Seems simple," said Chief Moynahan, "but in reality it was tricky. And I am very pleased with how all of you handled it. I did notice that you guys discussed differing theories, but didn't get into arguments nor dig in defending a theory rather than letting the facts lead you to the right answer. And that's a testament to all of your thinking skills, to your working together as the very good teams you are, and also to the training and leadership that Captain Ross and Commander Troy have provided you."

Everyone broke into applause upon that little speech... but only Cindy, myself, Teresa, and the Chief knew the true reasons behind his words.

I then looked over at Jack Muscone and said quietly and meaningfully "Would you like to say a few words, Jack?" My mother smiled brightly and even giggled as Jack gave me a 'look'.

"Four hundred years ago..." muttered Jack. He then said more loudly "As a matter of fact, there are a few words I want to say." He got up as the room quieted down, wondering what this was about.

"I've been through a lot with you guys." said Jack, addressing all of us. "You're a great team, and a great group of people. And the best part of that is the sense of camaraderie, of family, that you have, and that I wish we could have more of in the FBI."

Jack continued: "So I'm glad that you're here for this. The very best part of having worked with you is that this very special woman came into my life." He was gesturing at Tanya, who was next to him. "And so, the words I want to say tonight are..." he said as a small box appeared in his hand, and as he went to one knee, "...Tanya, will you marry me?"

Tanya's eyes grew more sparkly and her cheeks even rosier as her hand went to her mouth to cover her gasp. Then she recovered and said "Yes! Of course!"

Everyone rose and applauded as Jack slipped the diamond engagement ring on Tanya's finger and then kissed her. And after that, Christina Cho was the first to hug Tanya but certainly not the last. Jack was not one for man-hugs, so I just shook his hand.

"How did you know?" Jack whispered as we shook hands.

"I see things." I said. "And the look in your eyes all night could not be hidden from me, nor my mother. We can both see how happy you are, and deservedly so. Congratulations!"

Some moments later, I called out "Okay, let me get a picture of Cindy, Tanya, and Teresa showing off their rings. All three of my Angels now engaged to be married." It is possible that I was not the only one that took pictures of them...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Oh Cal.... you're going so deeeep..."

Cal and Drusilla Romano were the 'Ken and Barbie' couple. Both were 28, Italian, and very good looking. Drusilla had long raven-black hair, somewhat similar to Melina Allgood's, but Drusilla's body was just a bit more slender, making her look taller than her height. Her luscious legs and ass were made for wearing high heels to accentuate them, a 'problem' many beautiful women in the Town & County had.

Cal was also black haired and slender. He worked out a lot, and was a physical trainer at Town Fitness Centers. His body looked chiseled out of rock, and he could be the model for Greek or Italian statues of the mightiest gods. Women at the gym ogled him, but he was seemingly faithful to the beautiful Drusilla. Drusilla was a high school teacher at Town High, teaching French, Spanish, and Italian to the Senior class, and she was the object of the hottest sexual fantasies of the testosterone-laden young men that were her students.