Checkmate

Pawn Takes Knight

Joseph and James stood outside the house of Stacey Fisher, waiting for her to come home. After some time, she pulled up in a shiny new car, smiling and talking loudly on the phone. Not exactly the face of someone who had just lost her last living relative. “Stacey Fisher! Federal agents. Benton and Mitchell.” They showed their badges. The girl dropped her cell phone and it clattered to the side walk. A voice on the other end could be heard calling out Stacey’s name in concern. “Miss, hang up your call and come with us please. We have some questions to ask you.”

Back in interrogation, James, Clara, and Joseph sat behind the glass watching the beautiful brunette fidget and glance around nervously. Clara seemed concerned. “So, you are completely sure it’s her? She couldn’t be being framed?” Joseph nodded and looked at Clara curiously. “What, you don’t think it’s her?” Clara shook her head so that her straight blonde hair whipped across her face. “Not exactly sir, it’s just I, um… Her shoes are really nice. Usually bad people don’t wear nice shoes.”

Special Agent Benton took that in stride, not wanting to insult Clara’s ridiculous theory. He nodded and turned his head back to the suspect. James was not so kind. “That is completely ridiculous! A person’s shoes say nothing of their sense of right and wrong! That is absurd.” Clara looked abashed and shrugged her narrow shoulders. The medical examiner muttered an excuse to leave and scurried out of the room, leaving the faint scent of lavender behind her.

Joseph narrowed his eyebrows over his kind blue eyes and gave James a disapproving look. He said not a word but left the observation area and marched into interrogation. James flushed slightly, about to defend his outburst, but Benton was already gone. Joseph settled down into the chair in the interrogation room. “I am not going to sugarcoat this. We already have enough evidence to send you to prison for conspiring to murder your stepmother. We have bank records that show a withdrawal of several thousand dollars from the account set up for the money left to you buy your late father. The money was withdrawn in your mother’s name, hours after her death. And from the looks of your personal account, most of that money was deposited.”

Stacey squirmed. She was not holding up to the pressure. Her face was turning red and it looked like she was about to either cry or scream or bolt for the door. She chose scream. “That devil got my father killed! You know who he was going to visit when his plane crashed? HER! And what does she do? Try to get me to call her my mother! Take all of his money, money that he left for me, and put it in an account until I’m ‘old enough’!” Benton shook his head. That had been too easy. “Your stepmother was required by law to hold your money. But now she is dead and so are the women you hired to kill her. And you are going to prison.” He gathered his papers in silence as the girl continued her rant and he left the room, sending in the guards to take her into custody.

In Samantha’s lab, just as her audio book was finishing, she got a match on the redhead’s from Michael Hayes’ house. She grabbed her phone and called Emma. When the two agents arrived she handed them a pile of papers. “Kelsey Blount,” Alex read. Samantha took over from there. “Now that is some good reading. Kelsey Blount, age 24, born in the Big Apple. Moved to Maryland three years ago and currently resides in Georgetown. She has had not one, but two restraining orders filed against her in the last five years, by two separate ex-boyfriends. The claim she is controlling and suspicious to the point where she was having them followed. Credit cards show she was at the same bar as Michael Hayes at the same time almost every week. They even went on a few road trips together.”

Samantha bowed and soaked up the applause of her tiny audience. Alex was already on the phone with Kelsey’s landlady to see if she was home. Emma was still shaking her head. “So this loony bin finds out that Hayes’ is seeing another woman, Jess Rosenberg, who we interviewed. She, instead of going postal, hired assassins to shoot him in the head. How are we going to get her to confess to that?” Samantha smiled widely. “No need. There was a partial print on the money in the merry murderesses’ car. I couldn’t match it before, but now that we have something to compare it too… Viola!” She pulled up the AFIS match she had been hiding. “Prints match. You can make your arrest.”