Detective Fog and the Mission Pigeon

Chapter 22. At The Detectives' Office

"She turned herself in, she's in police custody. Cassandra, she turned herself in for Paul's murder."

Malyssa came out of her office and slammed her cracked phone onto Jimmy's desk.

Her wallet was still padded with hundreds from Jason Nakos to replace the cell phone, but today wasn't a day for visiting the Apple store. She and Jimmy both were shocked into silence.

When they recovered, he let her go first, but all she had were the same questions he did.

"How could she turn herself in — she couldn't have done it. Wasn't she with you, Jimmy? She went from our office to the police station; she wasn't at the warehouse. How could she have killed Paul? Why would she turn herself in? And," she smacked her broken phone off the desk, sending it crashing into the wall by the window, "Why is there a picture of a woman who looks like Cassandra Aniston — stabbed to death — on my phone?"

Jimmy got up and dived for the phone while he said, "Wait, it's still on your phone?" He picked it up and looked at her. "Isn't it a bit incriminating?"

"A little bit, but less so since I notified the police and forwarded the picture. At which point, deleting it became moot. If someone wanted me to look guilty, deleting the picture would make it so. It'll be obvious to the forensic techies that the texted photo was sent to me... I think."

"So you notified the police?" Jimmy dumped the phone back on the desk and sat down, "and they told you Cassandra was in custody. Did they let you speak with her?"

"No."

"So she could be dead."

"Woah, really? You think it's more likely the police arrested her, stabbed her to death, texted me a picture, and claim she's perfectly alive?"

"More likely than what?" said Jimmy.

"Than that the picture is fake. Photoshopped."

"Well, when you put it that way . . ." Jimmy drummed his fingers on the desk. "What's the point of a fake then? To send a warning? A threat?"

"Sure," said Detective Fog. "I don't know, maybe."

Jimmy shook his head. "You're the more experienced detective, Detective, but I disagree with you on this one. I think someone — a mobster, someone in custody with her, a crooked cop — killed her in her cell and texted you her picture. The police are keeping it quiet — of course they are, that is some bad press. And it's mysterious because the best suspect to stab her to death in her cell would be a fellow convict, but a booked felon wouldn't likely have a phone. So some other mobster or crooked cop must have done it, presumably somewhere with no security footage."

"But if it wasn't a fellow convict, why shank? Security footage or no, from this picture, it was a brutal attack, multiple stab wounds — messy and drawn out. There are faster ways to kill someone — I'm not saying a gunshot because firing a gun in a police department is not intelligent, but typically when police murder convicts, they go with strangulation or hanging. It's quiet and less messy. You wouldn't believe how many prison inmates are beaten to death or gassed in their cells — poisoned. Hundreds of suspicious deaths like that every year in California alone."

"Believe me," said Jimmy, "I don't find that surprising. And they usually get away with it. When we're talking about a holding cell and not prison, stabbing is much less common than strangulation.

"Right," said Fog. "So, that leaves us with a mobster — who freely walked into a police station and stabbed a prisoner multiple times somewhere with no security footage. Right under the cops' noses. I'm sorry, no. There's just no way. I can think of only one way it could have gone down. A police officer could lead the victim away from the cameras, out of her cell, and let a mafia member in to commit the murder. That kind of overkill fits the mafia's Modus Operandi: punishment, revenge, sending a warning. But even collaboration seems improbable. The officer could be risking his or her job, for what? Cassandra's not that important."

"Well, you know what Sherlock Holmes says. 'When you exclude the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"

"But you haven't excluded the possibility that the picture is a fake."

"Call that gut instinct."

"So maybe Cassandra is dead. So what? It's not our case; figuring out the mystery won't bring her back to life. Here's what we're going to do. You're going to get back to solving Athena Rex's murder, and I'm going to find out who killed Paul Aniston and Nick Minardos. Until such time that Cassandra's death reveals itself to be connected with this case and can help us to solve these other murders, you need to forget about her. You have better leads. Find out what the switched wedding ring means or who the other belongs to. Maybe ask some questions around town, figure out who you're looking at in the security footage. You're not at a dead-end, not even close.

"For Pete's sake, you've got the son of a gun on video! That's a much better lead than any of these other murders. It made sense to look at every article of clothing back when you were twiddling your thumbs. Now there's work to be done. Stick to the leads connected to Athena. The ones that are going to bring in the real killer."

"Cassandra's not an article of clothing, boss. She's a missing person who might be dead. Killing in police custody."

"That sounds like a problem for the police."

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