Twisted Truths

Chapter 1. As Clear as Crystal

Truth 1;

As Clear as Crystal

“James? Are you done? Officer Larry wants to see you ASAP.”

James heard Karen shouting at the door and was brought back to reality.

“Uh..Yeah… umm… Case 192762 is what we are talking in context of, right?” he trailed as he chose his words. Yes, he didn’t like to speak much, he kept mostly to himself.

He was the new detective on board. No, he wasn’t a new detective, he was new to the city and this was his first case here after solving 124 cases so far in his career of fifteen years. He was forty, had a beautiful wife and that was all he wanted. His looks were far above average with a dashing persona and a dynamic personality. Karen was his new assistant and a fairly young new detective who had worked real hard to be assisting an amazing detective like him at just the age of twenty three.  She was beautiful, sincere and trustworthy as much as James had found out yet. The only thing James couldn’t stand bout Karen was that she was far above loudness; she had a high decibel speaker which burnt his mind quite well.

“Yes, that’s right. Officer Larry is going to be your sub in it.” Karen voiced twitching a bit on Larry’s reference. James noticed that well and prepared himself to go face a person that Karen had a certain problem with. As he walked out Karen sat at the nearest side counter bench and left out a heavy sigh.

James was particularly famous for his judgments, after studying psychology as his major in college and so much field experience; he was pretty much excellent when it came to judging people. Right now his area of concern was finding out why Karen twitched at Larry’s name, what it was about. He heftily walked to Larry’s office and was greeted by a man in his early thirties. Fairly good looking, maybe over that, he walked around in pride and had a certain hint of pride in his posture which made James mentally roll his eyes.

“Well, you must be James Hollars; I’m Larry Johansson as you can read there.” Larry smirked pointing toward the name tag on his office door, which read his name and post. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yes I’m Detective James, Officer. It’s nice to meet you too.” James voiced as Larry motioned him towards the front chair at his desk and asked him to take a seat in front of him.

“So James, are you clear with all the details of case 192762?” Larry sounded serious now and James nodded.

“Any doubts and queries are most welcome.” Larry smirked again. James now realized why Karen must have twitched at this guy’s name, he was just too un-professional. James simply smiled back. Larry got up and walk towards the window of his office which gave a view of the city from its height and voiced,

“See James, I won’t lie, this case important to me, these kids aren’t criminals, although they are serving their punishments already, I still think they should at least not let the charges ruin their life. Moreover, the girl who was raped and murdered, its bout her, if someone else did that to her and is roaming free, it’s a shame on our department.” James nodded in agreement. A genuine smile came to his face and he mentally praised Larry for making it to his good books.

“Don’t worry Larry, if it’s not these kids, the one responsible will be held, I promise you. But before that I need to meet them in person, I need to know the whole story from them.” James said.

Larry looked at him smiled and nodded; “Tomorrow.”

James took it as his signal to leave. He got up and shook hands with his new partner and left the room. That night wasn’t easy for James, his wife Patricia was to come to the city the next day and a case clanged to his mind. He knew it well that sleep wasn’t an option for him tonight so he tossed up his Lenovo and searched up for Aston High school. He knew it that the case was just 6 week old, so the pictures or records of those students have to be still in there. He was determined to find out about each of those kids, not only for the sake of his case, but also because of the conviction he saw in Larry’s eyes that morning. It was the same conviction he had in his eyes 10 years ago when he saw Patricia for the first time in a police observation room totally psyched out, a little lonely girl who was a suspect for murdering her own father, but that’s a whole different story.  James was quite sure though, that Larry too had something personal to do with these kids and he was determined to find out what.

~*~

At 7:50 am the alarm started to blast at the Johansson mansion. Larry threw away his blanket and stood up in a rush. It struck his mind that he had snoozed the alarm 20 minutes ago and he was darn late to go the meeting today at The City Rehabilitation Centre. He groaned badly at the thought, he didn’t want to lose this case again after so many trials.

Larry reached for his phone after his cold quick bath and called up James. When he didn’t get a reply he left a message on his voice mail box confirming the timing and venue of the meeting that was scheduled for today. He also confirmed the same with The City Rehabilitation Centre authorities. Larry had to get those kids out of there by any chance, hook or crook. Larry was way more than determined. When he pulled over at the Centre, it was exactly Five minutes to ten and he was well behind the schedule of 9:30 am meeting. Swearing under his breath, he ran inside to only see that even James had reached ten minutes ago.  A sigh of relief ran through Larry and he greeted everyone with a larger than life smile, so did James.

“So we ready?” The In-charge at the centre asked seeking permission to bring in the convicts.

“Yes, we are” James voiced as Larry gave an eager nod.

The doors opened and seven teenagers were brought-in looking totally worked up and worn out. James and Larry observed them thoroughly where as none of them cared an eye contact just took their assigned seats.

After a series of stares and awkward silences filling the room James finally was able to draw the attention to him by clearing his throat.

“So, how are you my young buddies?” James said with a smile.

“We aren’t your buddies, you fucking jerk. Get it clear in your head, as clear as crystal, get it?” Ryan shouted

And silence filled the room again, leaving both James and Larry with gaping mouths. This certainly wasn’t what James or Larry was looking for, not at all, they were just there to help, but they surely had this now in their mind as clear as crystal that this wasn’t going to be easy, at all.

A/N: Hope you liked it. :)

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