Part 1 1/2
Thursday - Salem Police Station
Salem Police Files Date 03.25.03
Case: The Murder of Colin Murphy
Case No: 87179
Code Name: Bopping Butler
Statement no. 140203
Tape Transcript no. 140203B
Interviewing Officer: Det. Irving
Also Present: Commander Carver
Interviewee: B. Henderson
Relationship to the deceased: butler to Murphy’s married lover, Nicole Kiriakis, and her husband, Victor Kiriakis
Irving: Henderson, can you tell me exactly what happened the night of New Year’s Eve?
Henderson: Everything, sir?
Irving: Drop the sir. I’m not your employer. No, not everything. Just start when the guests began to arrive.
Henderson: I was watching the hired caterers, we use the same caterers as Tuscany’s, but without Maggie around, you have to watch them like a hawk.
Irving: Henderson, all we want is the facts, just the facts.
Henderson: Well I’m telling you the facts. It’s a fact that those caterers are thieves!
Irving: OK, Henderson, we’ll do it another way. We have the guest list here for the night of the murder.
Carver: Evidence document no. 999465.
Irving: Now I want you to tell me if you saw any of them leave the house around the time Colin Murphy was killed.
Henderson (excitedly): It would be faster if I told you who stayed inside around the time Dr Murphy was killed!
Irving: Henderson, please, just tell us who was missing at the exact time of Dr Murphy’s death.
Henderson: The most obvious missing person was the bride herself.
Carver: Would you care to explain to me the exact relationship between Dr Murphy and Mrs Kiriakis nee Walker?
Henderson: No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that.
Carver (louder): Why the hell not?
Henderson: It’s against my moral code.
Carver (shouting): I don’t care if that’s against your religion, a man was murdered!
Henderson (sound of arms crossing): I won’t talk, and you can’t make me.
Carver (sound of hand hitting table): Damn it man, we’re talking about murder. Tell us what was going on between Nicole and Colin or so help me…
(Henderson squeals)
Irving: That’s enough, Carver. Henderson, you aren’t under arrest. We can’t make you tell us any information you don’t willingly volunteer. Carver, outside now. Interview suspended 14:52.
********
"If he knows, he’s not telling who killed the good doctor," Detective Irving rubbed a weary hand over his handsome face. At thirty two, he was still young, but his deep blue eyes had begun to show the weight of all the horrific things he had seen on the Chicago Homicide squad.
"I can make him tell," Abe was as tense as a high wire and was cracking his knuckles as he spoke. The sound was irritating Det. Irving, making his nerves curl at the ends. This case was one of the bad ones. A murdered doctor, families of two senior detectives intimately involved and too many suspects. He liked simpler cases, where there was a woman standing over the body with bruises on her face and an axe in her hands, crying ‘I had to do it. I just couldn’t take it anymore.’ The reasons for the murder might churn his stomach, but at least he felt that it left one less bastard in the world.
The Commander’s face expressed his discontent and reminded the Detective why he was in Salem at all.
Irving breathed deeply to soothe his own nerves. No good would come of losing his temper now. There was always his motel room trash can for that. He wasn’t going to start his stretch in this backwater town by bawling out his local liaison officer. There would be enough yelling later. Even though the first hadn’t worked, he took a second calming breath before he spoke again, feeling no less aggravated than before. "Abe, I know this case means a lot to you."
"Most of the suspects are good friends of mine," Abe interjected quickly, shifting his body into a less threatening pose as he watched the other man barely control a seething temper.
"That means that we have to do the best, most impartial job we can. Absolutely by the book. I don’t want any prosecuting D.A. telling the jury that we didn’t look hard enough at the suspects who were Bradys or Hortons, just because they were Bradys or Hortons or friends of ours. We need an airtight case to make this stick. That means," Irving stared hard into the older man’s eyes, willing him not to be stubborn, willing him to realise that if he turned this into a head-butting contest, he would lose, "no badgering the witness, no off duty investigating, and no, and I mean no, discussing the case outside of this office with anyone who isn’t OK’d by me. You get me?"
Abe stared back at the young detective, half resentful of his intrusion. This was his turf, and it should be his case. He didn’t welcome outside help, but he didn’t welcome his friends getting thrown in jail even more. "I get you alright."
Irving nodded, moving back to sit in the swivel chair behind the desk of his temporary office. "Good. Now get some coffee and tell me about Dr Murphy again. You missed a few things out last time." Abe’s expression flickered. The other detective put his elbows on the desktop and leaned forwards. "Like what exactly happened to the other bullet." Abe’s mouth dropped open. Irving opened the file from the Crime Scene Officer’s report with a lazy flick of his wrist. "The one fired from the veranda that was buried in the trunk of the tree," he glanced down briefly to refer to the file, "approximately two feet from where the body was found."
Abe started to answer him, trying to defend himself, but Irving put up his hand to stop him. He wished for no excuses.
"I don’t want to know why I wasn’t told this at first," a slight grin came onto his face, "I can guess the reasons," and then died away again, "but if you don’t tell me everything, and I mean everything, then I’m going to make a phone call to the commissioner and get you taken off this case for good. Get me?" The nod sufficed as an answer. "Good. Now tell me," Irving leaned back again, "why hasn’t Larry Welch been brought in for questioning? And don’t give me that he’s dead, drowned after being shot by Bo Brady in self defence and in the line of duty. We both know that’s not true. So, Commander Carver, why are you covering up for the man who nearly killed your best friends and is a wanted felon?"
*******
"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Rex shifted uncomfortably. He was a Dimera, that meant his moral code was faulty from birth, but he was trying to be good, and this didn’t seem like something a good person would do.
Belle sighed in exasperation. It was so hard to find good sidekicks that didn’t interrupt your romantic scenes, as Mimi had done so many times, or continually whine about themselves, as Chloe had done when going out with her Dimpled Greek God, or just plain annoy you, as Rex was doing now. "Do you mean is this morally reprehensible and irresponsible of us?"
"Yes," he waited for his answer patiently, back braced against the wall. He was a Dimera, that meant he had a lot of patience.
"Only if we get caught," Belle grinned. It was a smile that had made her brother Brady reach for his baseball bat to fend off whatever was coming next, Mimi to hide her barbie dolls and Shawn to grin at her in return in her childhood. Now it served only to make Rex even more nervous than before.
"I don’t know," he was hesitating, his always dubious moral sense wavering.
She pulled herself on top of the wall, "See you later, then."
"Huh?" Rex still wasn’t used to this side of the girl who had rescued him and his sister again and again, and who was usually so sweet and mild.
She looked back down from her position, sitting side straddle across the stones. "Well if you’re not coming with me, I’ll just have to do this myself."
"No," even he knew when it was time to give in, and a sense of honour that had absolutely nothing to do with burning curiosity forced him to give in. "I’m coming."
"Good," Belle glanced at the drop from the wall and felt her nerve waiver. "You go first."
That was why Det. Irving, trying to crack one of the toughest murder cases of the year, was faced with two and not one teenaged trespassers on his crime site when he went to examine it for the fifth and certainly not final time.
*******
"This is crazy," John stomped over to the Detective’s desk and dropped his knuckles onto it hard enough to rap. "They weren’t doing anything."
"They were trespassing on a crime scene," Det Irving was not impressed by Mr Black’s air of authority. "My crime scene."
"It was just fun and games, kids’ stuff," John argued, his eyebrow twitching. "My daughter was the one to discover the body, surely you can’t believe she would do any damage to the investigation now!"
"Criminals are known to return to their scene of their crime," the Detective’s expression was impenetrable.
"You can’t believe that Belle killed Dr Murphy!" John was beginning to go red in the face.
"Everyone is a suspect until I can prove that they didn’t do it," Det Irving was almost smiling now.
John was turning scarlet, "Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’?" He slammed his knuckles down hard enough to make the Detective’s coffee splash onto the desk and the pens rattle. "What happened to the law around here?"
Det. Irving’s face muscles did not even twitch in response to this sally. "In my experience, Mr Black, everyone is guilty of something, and the law is as intact as it ever was."
Exasperated beyond endurance, John stormed out of the office to find someone senior to whom he could complain about his treatment at the hands of Salem’s newest detective.
Back in his office, Irving smiled, It wasn’t everyday that he got to seriously annoy someone with so much natural authority and power. If his then-girlfriend, the one who had broken his heart after singing ‘You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman’ to him, hadn’t made him quit, he would have lit a cigarette in celebration. Instead he just grinned more broadly. Another day, another ass kicking. He was really beginning to like Salem.