When Detective Willows arrived back at his desk there were three messages waiting, one of which was the anticipated call from the District Attorney's office advising they would be dismissing the case of The People vs. Gerry Jerry. It didn't matter that Willows was expecting the call and knew the outcome. His mood darkened nevertheless.
He pulled the file from his briefcase and placed it on his desk. Ironically he noted how thick the file had become. Considering the lack of evidence it should have been paper thin. what made it a mile thick were the pictures and information on the three victims along with countless surveillance logs of the defendant. In addition were interviews with anyone having any association with the defendant of any kind. Also in the file were medical records for the defendant which included a dentist report indicating the defendant had been behaving in a threatening manner while having dental work done. The file also contained a criminal record of said defendant which of course had been inadmissable during the trial.
Willows leaned back on his chair and recalled the day in Court. Gerry Jerry had sat there expressionless throughout. He gave Willows the impression of a mannequin. Still and lifeless, and rather ugly. Actually a better word to describe that creep would be zombie thought Willows.
There wasn't a whole lot of useful information available on Gerry Jerry. The work history was sporadic and out of date. The man had to live, right? why didn't the surveillance logs give anything away? Gerry Jerry didn't appear to go out of his apartment much at all. Dectective Willows had only done a few days of surveillance in the beginning of the case. As not much was doing in the surveillance he gave it up to one of the precincts surveillance teams so that he could run some leads in the case and personally handle the interviews.
As much as he liked to be a one man show murder cases were too active for that. Instead he tried to keep the higher priority items for himself and pass off the more tedious aspects and usual dead end stuff to general assisting staff members. He handpicked the assisting members of the team himself. He knew which officers followed through and which ones dropped the ball.
For instance he knew one of the surveillance teams frequently left the surveillance site to go get midnight snacks and another team that often let one or the other go home for a little shut eye. This meant there was no team. There was only one lone member at the surveillance site which was worse than stupid. It was dangerous. Now add to it that the remaining member usually got bored all by himself so spent half the night sleeping as well.
Detective Willows knew he had picked the best team members available. He knew mistakes could still happen but overall he felt reasonably sure of the quality of the reports handed in. He had reviewed the file many times and hadn't noticed any glaring changes of protocol for handling this type of crime. Everything appeared in order.
One danger of reviewing a perp's criminal record was the propensity it gave to assuming the suspect was guilty if the crime matched with prior history or occurrences. Many a cop had barked up the wrong tree. The trick was to realize you didn't want to drop the suspect too soon either.
Willows questioned himself now in this regard only because of what the reports and surveillance showed. By those indications they had the wrong guy. The suspect was tagged long before he knew he was a suspect. This meant his behavior should not have changed in any way, yet it had. Detective Willows felt it deep down in his gut. When he felt it there he didn't question it. He shook his head trying to clear it and put it to better use.
They had the right guy. There was no point in examing that. The letter was from the suspect. The writing was matched to the suspect by qualified handwriting experts. That was what really got to Detective Willows. Who cares who Gerry Jerry intended that letter for he had delivered it to the Police Department himself. He was on surveillance tape in the police station as well as by the stakeout team. In fact how that happenned was kind of a riot.
The tag team called Detective Willows to advise that Gerry Jerry was making his way into the police station. After their initial surprise the surveillance team wondered just what the supect was up to and made the call. In their excitement both officers were trying to speak into the cell phone at the same time. This caused a lot of distortion. Detective Willows was trying to hear what was going on when the desk officer came to tell him there was someone at the front desk with a letter for him. Detective Willows had snarled that he was on an important call and waved the desk officer off.
Police departments often have various protocols. In the case of Detective Willows' precinct if someone was dropping off anything to an officer or detective the desk officer always tried to get the person delivering it to give it personally to the officer they wanted it to go to. It was this way for a number of reasons, one of which is the chain of evidence. The second is that almost always the receiving officer had questions about what was being dropped off. At any rate whatever was being dropped off was surely incomplete in some way and more information or documentation would be required.
The third is of things dropped off many are anonymous tips and by the officer seeing the deliveree for himself he could sometimes eliminate the anonymous part or get additional information out of the informant which they hadn't realized would be helpful or pertinent. Many times anonymous tips can't be acted upon solely for the reason of having been given anonymously.
When Detective Willows waved away the desk officer he gave up the one and only way to have eliminated the issue of the envelope. Had he gone to the front, identified himself to the suspect, confirmed he was in fact the detective to receive the letter the spelling no longer would have mattered. When the desk officer arrived back at the front to his desk the letter was on the counter and the suspect was gone.
After having clarified with the surveillance team what was happenning Detective Willows rushed to the front desk. Despite that the desk officer had already handed the letter off to one of the clerk's delivering mail around the office. Twenty minutes later the letter and envelope finally hit Detective Willows' mail tray. The desk officer had known it was for Willows as did the mail clerk. The only one with any question as to who should have received the letter was Judge Lark. In this regard the one who questioned it was the only one who mattered.
Detective Willows chided himself. No more dwelling on the envelope issue. The Judge ruled and it was done. He could sulk all he wanted to but that wasn't going to get the case resolved. He would start on page one of the file and go through each and every page until he found what he was looking for. This guy was not going to get away with this.
Willows was exhausted. He leaned back in his chair and wearily rubbed at his eyes. The office was a tomb. Everyone was gone for the day. There was only the front desk officer on. Anyone else on shift was out on the streets somewhere.
Having reviewed the file there was only one thing clear, the same thing that was clear from the beginning. There was a solid lack of evidence, lack of information, and lack of suspect activity. Sometimes it is not what you see it is what you don't see. Detective Willows was going to start surveillance again. This time he wasn't going to watch Gerry Jerry come and go. This time he was going to watch everyone else to come and go.
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