“Well that didn’t take very long.” The Sergeant sneered.

On the monitor, the man spoke again, “I guess we’re doing this the hard way.” When the door cracked to reveal Sweeney, he gestured the police commander to join their interrogation. “Would you mind sharing some of the evidence we found comparing across several crime scenes, Sergeant?”

“Uh, sure.” Max soon assumed an air of importance himself and pulled out some reports from the stack of paper he carried, “so, miss Porter,”
“Sorry to interrupt, Sergeant, but we don’t address the suspect as mister or miss, can’t encourage their attitudes.” Robinson quickly jumped in.

Max eyed him with irritation. He wanted to argue that the suspects should be treated with respect too and “innocent until proven guilty” still applied, but he decided not to. “Ok, so we tested the ballistic, the gun found in your car was a match to the bullets we found on two victims, Leonard Eisenberg and Lorenzo Mendoza, in Jorge Perez’s property. And on another gun that killed Jodi Lerner and injured a police officer, we found your fingerprints.”

“What do you have to say?” The agent pressed on.

Bette held her arm and remained unaffected, “can I talk to my lawyer?”

“Too late.” Agent Robinson impatiently cut her off, “you missed that chance when you were still in police’s custody. Now you’re officially under federal investigation.”

“Hey, I tell you what,” The other agent, Morris, spoke to her in a gentler demeanor, “if you plea guilty, we still can help you. The victims are all criminals themselves, if we talk to the jury, might be able to knock a few years outta your time.”

The brunette didn’t even give him a glance, knowing too well of their “good cop bad cop” play. “Your evidence is flawed.” She knew, if they had enough evidence, even though circumstantial, they wouldn’t need a confession from her. And from what she had observed, the several pieces of things they put together were contradictory.

When the three of them looked among themselves, ambushed by her statement, Sergeant Sweeney felt his face burning. The woman was right.

“The evidence is perfectly solid. We’re doing you a favor, Porter.” Robinson remained expressionless. “We found YOUR weapon in YOUR car that YOU used to kill people. Simple as that.”