Tapout (The Submission Fighter Book 3) (5 page)

Still, curiosity tempted her, as she answered it breathlessly. A man’s voice, impatient and uncaring answered her greeting, “Ms. Cross? This is Detective Crighton with the Steubenville Police Department. Do you have some time tomorrow morning to come speak to me regarding your assault and battery case?”

Chapter 5: New Leads

The police station was relatively quiet, totally not the scene she had envisioned when she imagined visiting a police officer. But what did Alice expect for a Thursday morning in her small town? She couldn’t even remember what it was like when she was last there six months ago. The police had escorted her from her hospital bed to the police station so that she could give further details and descriptions of what had happened. Everything was moving so quickly at the time—at least to her. It all felt like a distant, fleeting memory.

Alice spotted a small, glass enclosed desk at the front of the room. Metal chairs surrounded it, giving the receptionist a clear view of where everyone was seated and what they were doing. Yet only two people were actually waiting—a weeping older woman clutching an envelope and a young man sneaking in a call on his forbidden cell phone.

The receptionist, an aging woman dressed in an ill-fitted police uniform, was seated at the front desk. Despite Alice’s approach and a forced cough to grab her attention, the woman couldn’t even be bothered to look up from her magazine. Instead, she just wordlessly gave Alice a stick-on visitor’s pass and directed her with an outstretched finger to a side door leading to the detective’s offices.

Alice walked in to what seemed was a bull pen. Mostly men were seated at long metal tables and desks. Some typed away on their aged desktops while others placed phone calls while looking annoyed and tired. The smell of stale coffee and cigarette smoke was overpowering.

Alice scanned the men and their little name placards till she spotted Crighton’s in a far off corner of the room. He was alone, busy scribbling away some notes in a beat up brown folder. Alice appeared to him out of nowhere. Her frail, attractive figure dressed in a green sundress was so out of place with the gray, black, and blues of the rest of the room. He sat up a bit straighter and fixed his tie as she began to speak.

“My name is Alice, Alice Cross. You had called me earlier about my case?” Alice watched as he thumbed through several folders sitting in a stack on his desk. Hers, she guessed, was near the top. As he went through the contents, he motioned for her to sit down on one of the cheap, beat-up folding chairs. She scooted it closer to his desk, giving her a chance to see what he was reading.

“Yes, Ms. Cross… Let me see.” He looked entirely confused
—
despite having called her himself. His finger traced the notes from his colleagues and himself until he was caught up on the details. “Okay. Well, it looks like we received a call today from someone wanting to provide a tip to who allegedly beat and mugged you.”

Alice looked at him in passing disbelief. When her case became public the first time, there were several “new leads” that came through. Anonymous callers also attempted to claim the modest reward for information. Yet, they never seemed to lead to anything but additional heartbreak, anger, and confusion. After a week, everything slowed, and it became practically radio silence. The trail was cold.

She felt she should be excited by this. Even the surly detective eyed her anticipating some change in emotion. Yet, she couldn’t help but be a bit skeptical, a bit timid in getting her hopes up. Still, she forced a smile and asked him, “Is the call legitimate? What did the person say?”

Seemingly satisfied with her emotions, Crighton continued, “It seems to be a real call. The number tracers we used showed it wasn’t a number anyone else had called from before, so no repeat offenders of the fake reports. But that’s all we know about that person.”

Alice nodded, listening intently. However, she began to wonder who else would have known or remembered the details of her attack except for those deeply involved in her life.

Crighton continued, “What the caller gave us was a name of a person. He’s been arrested before—mostly petty theft, nothing violent. He ran deep with a motorcycle gang for a couple of years and got messed up in that, but we haven’t had much to go on with this guy.”

Alice replied, “Who is he?”

“You know I cannot give you names until we go through the whole procedure—search warrants, interviews, etc.” Crighton was annoyed. While he realistically knew that Alice wouldn’t have a sense of the timeline or the details that actually went in to being a detective and solving crimes like hers, it had always irritated him that the public just assumed he could go out and arrest anyone at any time.

“Okay.” Alice didn’t want to risk frustrating the detective any further. So, instead, she asked, “So how can I help you? Do you need me to do anything, sign anything?”  

“Yeah, I need you to go through the details of the case once more. I know it’s been several months, and you probably are not as clear on the specifics, but there may be something in it that will give us a reason to pull this guy besides an anon late night call from who knows where.”

Alice took a deep breath. She really had no desire to go through this again. She was sure that the detectives on her case had heard her story at least a hundred times. What good was it going to do to share it almost six months later when everything was a haze and her mind had managed to muddle the important details?

Still, she sighed and followed the man to the interview rooms she was all too familiar with. It was the first place they took her following her release from the hospital. The dimly lit rooms and the obvious double-sided glass was enough to make her think she was the one being interrogated for a crime. 

Crighton sat across from her, a glass of water in his hand. He pulled out a small tape recorder from his pants pocket and placed it in front of her. “I hope you don’t mind if I record this. It’s just easier on me and the typist.”

“Yeah, sure.” Alice watched as the machine blinked on, a red light appearing next to the ‘record’ button. She fiddled with her hands, unsure where to place them. Already, she was starting to flash back to that night. Her mouth grew dry, her palms were sweating in her own grasp, and her body felt hard as a rock.

“Okay, let’s talk about that night. According to our records, you were working a night shift at the Tick Tock Diner. Your shift started at about four in the afternoon and went until one in the morning. Is that correct?”

Alice answered affirmatively, as he went on reading from the small pieces of paper stuffed in her folder. “The people working at the diner still at one in the morning included Pete Tick, the general manager, Maria Diaz, another waitresses, Callahan Samptom, the line cook, and Tommy Lane, the back of the house cleaner. As for people dining, we have credit card receipts from about four patrons, and there was another there that paid cash. Do you remember who it was?”

Alice struggled to pull up that vague memory. She ran through the names in her head of the regulars that came at odd hours, yet was coming up blank. She then went through the names of those working that night and realized the detective had missed on person.

Alice coughed, clearing her throat, and said, “Actually, you missed a person. Maria was replacing Caroline Keller. She started at one in the morning, but Caroline was still at the diner. She usually buys dinner after her shifts using her tip cash. I’m guessing that was her.”

“Do you know Caroline?”

Did she ever.
“Yeah. She's… uh… was my roommate. I worked with her a ton. I’ve known her for about three years now.”

The detective circled something in his folder and continued on, not mentioning Caroline again. “Can you tell me what you were doing in the alley that night? Why you were out there when most workers go out the front door?”

“I really didn’t have a reason to go out that way. I just did. If I go out that way, I can avoid saying goodbye to some of the regulars, and I get out to my street that leads back to my apartment faster.” Not having motivation for going out a back alley at one in the morning sounded so terribly naive now. She was sure that the detective was judging her for her poor decisions. She would be too if the roles were reversed. She couldn’t help but adding, “Now I know better.”

He didn’t even give a moment’s thought to her endnote. Instead, he blew right past it and asked, “When did you first see the assailant approach?” 

Her mind raced. In all of her recurring dreams and visions, the man is just there. He’s already kicking her or punching her. There is no real start to it. It just
happened.
Instead, she paused, as she tried to tap into her memories.

It came to her relatively quickly as a drip of old but fresh memories and sensations. “I remember a figure of a man leaning up against the big green garbage can. His arms were folded. I thought he was a regular stepping out for a smoke, so I nodded at him, and I think I said goodnight to him as I passed. He must have come at me from behind because I never saw much of his face. I had probably taken about twenty steps out of the door.”   

“What did you see of him?”

The lights of the room flashed—at least in Alice’s head. Her mind went blank as it began to transcend deeper into the places she had long tucked away. She did not want to remember this. She did not want to bring it to the surface. She wanted it to go away, forever, permanently.

But there he was, at least, there were parts of him. She listed off the missing tooth, the dark features, and the long, black coat. The detective made notes of each of them, yet she could feel that this was all useless. They were tiny puzzle pieces that added up to nothing.

She hesitated with the last part of the description, unsure if she had dreamed it or if it was real. Still, at this point, they were both grasping at straws. “Looking back, I think he may have had a tattoo. I remember seeing this little circular detail on his inner forearm when he was pinning me down. The coat covered most of it, but it was a bit higher than his wrist. It made a spiral.”

The detective looked at her curiously, unsure if this was a note that was worthy of taking. She really did not seem like the girl who would make things up. But he knew what a couple months post a beating like that would do to the mind. Things get jumbled, memories go blank, and the mind puts in things it isn’t quite sure were there to begin with.

Still, he pushed a piece of paper from his folder and a pen towards her and asked her to draw what she thought it may look like. Her tiny hands trembled under the weight of the plastic pen as she nervously traced the image in her mind. It was small and cut off, but she filled in the lines as best as she could. When finished, Alice slid the image back to him and watched as Crighton studied it. He looked down at his folder again and flipped through a couple of pages. He silently read some more details and then made a little note in the corner of the page and stuck her drawing to that page.  

He continued to ask her more and more questions, as Alice went into detail about the actual attack. While she may have thought herself to be over it, the rawness of bringing it back to light and sharing it with someone new, someone she did not fully trust had brought her nearly to tears. The brutality of it all and having to relive it over and over again, as he pondered over every one of her details only made the process more difficult for her.

When he finished, he stood, turned off the recorder, and outstretched his hands towards her. Alice wasn’t sure what the detective meant to do, but she gave him his her hand and watched in surprise as he helped her out of her chair. Her legs buckled a bit underneath her, as she finally stood straight up. She felt heavier than before, more unsteady with the ground. Detective Crighton looked on her with genuine concern, as he brought her outside to sit on a wooden bench.

The air of the hallway was cool and crisp. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and checked the time. It was nearly eleven o’clock. She had been trapped in that room with her memories for over two hours, longer than she had thought. The detective returned with a plastic water bottle, which she quickly guzzled down, thankful for Crighton’s friendly gesture.

He sat down next to her, looking older than his real age. He rubbed his hand over his face, as he bent forward. “I know this is really tough on you. No one wants to go through this, ever. And I’m sorry we're just bringing this back up for you. But I think we’re close. What you said in there and the call that came in, it’s gonna put us a step closer. I cannot make promises or tell you much more, but I think you should save my number. I’m gonna be calling you soon.”

She turned her head to look up at him. His dim brown eyes were worse for wear. But he smiled, as he took her hand once more to shake it. He hastily said his goodbyes and then left her sitting alone on the bench outside the interview room.