Complex

Ch. 22 - A Little Reasoning

I h a d m a de it past the receptionist desk at the station—since Sara wasn't even there—and knocked on Robert's door.

            "Enter."

            Enter I did and found Robert and Mrs. R hovering over the desk with millions of scraps of paper everywhere.  Every available page was scribbled on, even a few folders.

            "Oh," said Mrs. R.  "Perfect timing.  Maybe you can help us out."

            "I just came to check in, so make it quick."

            Robert raised an eyebrow.  "You have some place to be?"

            "Yes, I do, so what've you got?"

            "Does Chloe seem manipulative to you, Jake?" asked Mrs. R before Robert could say anything else.

            I shrugged.  "I don't think so."

            "Oh, come on.  How would the boy know?" Robert argued.  "She could be manipulating him right now."

            "Manipulation isn't a spell," replied Mrs. R, rolling her eyes.  She turned back to me.  "What about sociopathic?"

            I shrugged.  "I don't even know what the word means."

            "Does she seem crazy at all?" Robert asked.

            "Not as much as you do at the moment."

            "There is nothing unusual with Chloe," said Mrs. R as Robert frowned at me.  "She's just a troubled youth.  And I found no valid indication that she was lying about Zell."

            "But you don't know for sure?" Robert asked.

            "I know Zell, even if it was years ago.  She had her own rationality, her own belief system.  She was, in a way, a purely logical and robotic woman… virtually emotionless."

            "Like how?" I asked.

            "Her ethical values matched up with raw logic, not with anything emotional or even spiritual.  Zell believed heavily in Darwinism and treated almost anyone she believed was 'beneath her' like they weren't important.  She was, in almost all ways, a scientist."

            "But that just means she was a robot," I said. 

            "That type of thinking also gave her some enemies," Mrs. R. added.

            "What type of enemies?" Robert asked, getting a piece of paper and pen ready.

            "For one thing, back in college, she got all sorts of religious groups upset.  She'd become one of the brightest in school, gradually leaning over to science.  While other science majors ignored creationism, Zell openly argued against it.  She criticized and demeaned all sorts of beliefs—that led to her getting kicked out of NYU just before I transferred.  That was the last I heard of her."

            "Then she moves to California," Robert added quietly.

            "Don't you know where she went to school here?" I asked.

            "Mmm…."  Robert flipped through a few folders.  "UCLA.  She graduates and then gets a job in Oakland, working at a police laboratory.  She works her way up, but then quits."

            "Why?" asked Mrs. R.

            "She was first on maternity leave, then she just up and moves to San Francisco.  Then, one year later, she is employed at a small branch of FTI.  She works there until six days after Joey is reported missing. We can rule out FTI."

            "Who did the reporting?" I asked.

            Robert looked up at me.  "She did."

            "Immediately after Joey's taken?"

            "What are you getting at?" asked Mrs. R.

            I frowned.  "I'm not sure yet.  We still need to see if Chloe really did babysit Joey, then we need to know when she took Joey and when his mom reported him missing; what if she didn't report him the moment she found out?  It'd be cool if we then knew how Zell acted during the six days Joey's missing."  I sighed.  "But what I think is more important is to know what connection Chloe and Zell had.  We know she said she babysat, but what if she lied about that?  Did they talk about anything?  What was their relationship like?  It'd be better if we had Chloe's identity first: her real one."

            Robert raised his eyebrows.  "I'm impressed."

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Here, I felt that I needed Jake to be more involved in the deductive parts of the investigation.  I don't know much about detective protocol (I watch Grimm, but they don't explain much) so Jake doesn't either. 

I also wanted to include stuff about Zell.  She's an important factor, but I wanted the idea of what kind of person Zell is to take shape before—SPOILER—she makes contact.