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J'accuse! - Part 1: Accused

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J'accuse! - Part 2: Redemption

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J'accuse! - Part 3: Perseverance

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(The Reid Technique)

There are nine steps of police interrogation.

Step one: positive confrontation. Advise the suspect that the evidence as led the police to the individual as a suspect. Offer the person an early opportunity to explain why the offense took place.

Theo shifted in his seat. Of all the cases he had worked in his admittedly short career, this was turning out to be the most difficult yet.

“Let me start again and make this abundantly clear,” he said after a light sigh, “we have photographic evidence that proves that not only were you right at the scene of the crime, your hand is reaching out behind you and grabbing the Amethyst Spider…I don’t know what else to tell you Mr. Bel, this case seems open and shut as far as I can see.”

“But I didn’t…”

“Save it, Mr. Bel. Listen to me, I get that things happen. Sometimes we do things that we don’t feel good about, and sometimes it’s out of our control. I’ll give you an opportunity to come clean: why did you do this?”

Martin shook his head. “I didn’t, sir.”

Step two: try to shift blame away from the suspect to some other person or set of circumstances that prompted the suspect to commit the crime. That is, develop themes containing reasons that will psychologically justify or excuse the crime. Themes may be developed or changed to find one to which the accused is most responsive.

Theo shakes his head. “You know,” he starts, “I get it. Money’s tight these days, especially as we’re still clawing our way out of the pandemic. Rent’s due in a couple weeks, and maybe you didn’t have enough to cover it—like I said, I get it. We all get desperate sometimes.”

Step three: try to minimize the frequency of suspect denials.

Martin opened his mouth to protest, but Theo cut him off. “You know, sometimes these things are just out of our control. One medical emergency, unexpected car trouble, and now suddenly you’re over the edge. And we don’t think straight when we’re fighting for survival. Sometimes, when I’m out there, you know, chasing down like an armed robber, when they start shooting, you just block everything else out and go full survival mode. So you know, I get it.”

“Wait—” Martin started again, more fervently but still to no avail.

“The truth of the matter is, Mr. Bel, that we have you on camera grabbing the Amethyst Spider while the fire alarm is tripped.” Theo spreads the printed pictures out on the desk yet again, pointing vigorously at the outstretched hand grasping the jewel.

Step four: at this point, the accused will often give a reason why he or she did not or could not commit the crime. Try to use this to move towards the acknowledgement of what they did.

Agitated, Martin almost burst out of his chair. “The truth of the matter is, detective, is that the hand has a burn scar on it, and mine doesn’t, so I couldn’t have been the one to take it.”

Theo simply shook his head some more. “But you were at the scene of the crime when it happened.” He looked up expectantly at Martin.

Martin nodded. “I guess I was.”

Theo pursed his lips. “Okay, good, and you paused for a few seconds in front of the stolen object before leaving the building.”

Martin shook his head. “I…I guess I did.”

“And when you left, the stolen object was gone.”

A long pause. “Yes.”

Step five: reinforce sincerity to ensure that the suspect is receptive.

“Look, Mr. Bel,” Theo said in his calm and resonant voice, “I’m just here to help you. You make life a little easier for us, cooperate with us, we’ll see what we can do about getting you off a little easier, okay?”

Martin didn’t respond. Instead, he was busy battling the doubt that was starting to enter his mind. He knew he didn’t have the Amethyst Spider—but the greater problem at the moment was the relentless detective sat right in front of him.

“Why don’t we take a little break, you’ve been at this for a long time.” It was true—when Theo had checked his watch, already over an hour had passed since Martin had been brought to the station. “Can I get you something to drink? A water, tea, coffee? Soda?”

Martin simply shook his head. Theo slowly made his way to the door, keeping an eye on Martin. Just as he was about to leave, he saw movement in the corner of his eye.

“Actually, on second thought, some water would be nice,” Martin replied hurriedly.

Theo nodded. He slipped out of the interrogation room, leaving Martin alone with his thoughts. Going in, he was so sure that he would be quickly exonerated and released; after all, he didn’t have the Amethyst Spider on his person, wasn’t that evidence enough? But the more he thought about it, the more that he began to doubt himself.

He was, as the detective had said, standing right next to the Spider when it was stolen, and he hadn’t noticed anyone else around that was acting suspicious. But no, he still had the bullet of the scarred hand in his arsenal. He couldn’t give in.

Theo returned quietly, two glasses of water in hand. He set one down gently in front of Martin, who still seemed lost in his own world. As he sat down, the scraping of the metal chair on the concrete floor brought Martin’s attention back to the detective in front of him. “Let’s continue,” Theo said, pulling his notepad back out of his pocket.

Step six: the suspect will become quieter and listen. Move the theme of the discussion toward offering alternatives. If the suspect cries at this point, infer guilt.

“Let’s review what we have so far.” Theo glanced over his notes. “You confirmed that you were right next to the case containing the Amethyst Spider when it was stolen. You confirmed that you paused for a significant amount of time in front of the case, during which time the object became missing. And you also confirmed that as you left the case, the Spider was no longer in its case.”

Martin nodded. “But the hand—”

“The hand, the hand, it doesn’t matter the hand.” Theo said, the beginnings of a sly smile gracing his face. “I mean, what’s to say that you didn’t just apply an effect with makeup, and then remove it later?”

“…because I didn’t?” Despite this, Martin could feel that the tides were turning against him.

“Mr. Bel, if we listened to everyone who said that they didn’t do it, we would never catch any criminals.” Theo finished, flipping his notebook closed and tapping it against the desk.

Theo took another a deep breath. “How about this: I’ll offer you a deal, because you seem like a good guy, and I’d hate to see a good guy like you get the book thrown at him. So why don’t we sit down, write down a confession, and because you’ve been so cooperative, I can ask the DA for a lesser sentence, or some kind of plea deal.”

Martin sighed but said nothing. He was so exhausted by this whole process, but he knew that he had to hold it together.

Step seven: pose the "alternative question", giving two choices for what happened; one more socially acceptable than the other. The suspect is expected to choose the easier option but whichever alternative the suspect chooses, guilt is admitted. There is always a third option which is to maintain that they did not commit the crime.

Theo shook his head. “Tell me exactly why this happened, Mr. Bel. I can think of two scenarios, correct me if I’m wrong.”

“Scenario one is this: maybe you were a little behind on rent for the month, or maybe you just needed that extra little bit to make sure you didn’t go hungry…whatever that may be, you saw the opportunity to make some quick money by taking the Amethyst Spider, and in the chaos of the fire alarm, that was all you needed to slip your hand in and snatch it.”

“Alternatively, maybe you aren’t the good guy that I pegged you to be, and maybe you just like to steal things for self-gratification. You started small with small items at stores, and clothes, and maybe some small-scale home invasions. But you felt unfulfilled, and so you chased that high all the way to a priceless object at the museum.”

Martin sat there in silence. He simply shook his head.

“Well?” Theo said, “was I wrong?”

Martin silently nodded his head.

“And in what way was I wrong?”

“I didn’t steal it,” Martin responded quietly.

Step eight and step nine require a suspect to have admitted that they committed the crime. Without an admission, it is not possible to get a recorded confession.

Out of options for the time being, Theo simply tapped the table as he stood up from his chair. Without a word, he walked out of the interrogation room, leaving Martin to stew in the silence.

(The Universal Spider)

“So let me understand you clearly—you have the item, but your partner the Midnight Princess has backed out of this project for…conscience reasons?” the low voice crackled over the phone line.

“As far as I understand, that is the case,” Mal said quietly.

There was a pause, and then a sigh at the other end of the line. “That certainly throws a wrench in our plans.”

“I’m sure we could handle the whole situation with just the two of us,” Mal replied. “I mean, the hardest part of the job is done already.”

“Not when Midnight Princess is still out there.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that our little rogue friend needs to be eliminated.” The coldness of the reply shocked Mallory. The three of them had worked together for years—to just turn their back on Shirley, it couldn’t, no it shouldn’t be that easy.

“We can’t just do that, Sh—Midnight Princess and I have been working together since I started, there must be a better way,” Mal scrambled to think of alternatives. “She doesn’t know any information about the buyers, no one will be able to track down where the artifact goes.”

“That doesn’t stop her from turning us in, Illusion Queen.”

“I don’t know what you’re worried about, she doesn’t even know who you are. Hell, I don’t even know who you are.”

“You know exactly as much as you need to about me.”

Mallory shook her head. She’d heard it so many times before. She reached into the inside pocket of her coat and reached around. Her hands clasped around the hard lump, wrapped underneath a few layers of cloth.

She pulled it out and unwrapped it. In the low light of the moonlit twilight, the gems shone with a remarkable brightness, almost as if glowing. She turned it over and ran a gloved finger over the intricate carvings on the back. Letters in an unfamiliar language, preserving a long-unspoken phrase for generations in the future.

“What if I try to talk her out about it?” asked Mal. “Maybe she’d be more receptive if she knew what was at stake here.”

The voice at the other end of line sighed. “It is possible,” he conceded. “We still have to wait some time,” he added bitterly. “How is your hand doing?”

“Much better,” Mal answered curtly. She rubbed the side of her hand, taking her glove off to look at the inflammation. “Still bad,” she conceded.

“That’s why we don’t trust commercial makeups.”

“You can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head right now.”

A light chuckle. “Never change, Illusion Queen.”

“Where are we in terms of a buyer?” Mallory asked.

“Well the fence is ready to take delivery of the item, and then after that the final buyer is out of out control. Rest assured, we will be getting a cut of the sale profits after that.”

“And what about the investigation?”

There was a pause at the end of the line. “Well, my sources say that they’re doubling down on the first suspect, Martin Bel, for the time being. But they haven’t been able to get a confession out of him yet.”

“And did you take my advice regarding the makeup trick?”

The voice sighed. “I did. They said they used it. But I have to warn you—”

“I know, I know, it is the trick that I used so if they figure out it wasn’t Martin Bel, then they’ll know they can’t rely on the scar. You’ve said it many times,” Mal replied dismissively.

“You can never be too careful.”

“What’s life without a little danger?” Mal teased.

“I haven’t been in this line of work for so long for nothing, Illusion Queen. You can’t just gallivant around stealing artwork and flaunting it around. You’ll get caught.”

“I know,” Mal said with a chuckle.

There was a short silence before the voice spoke up from the other side of the line. “Why don’t you speak to Midnight Princess about the situation, and let her know that she is likely to be targeted if she doesn’t at least prove somehow that she can be trusted. In the meantime, I’ll reach out to my contacts everywhere and keep you updated.”

Mallory sighed. “Roger that, Universal Spider.”

(Disappearance)

The quest to retrieve the Amethyst Spider was a race against time. It was imperative that the detectives find the artifact before it left the country, or before it got into the hands of whatever collector was waiting on the other side of the transfer.

“How did the search go?” Theo asked as he approached two police officers standing outside the evidence room.

One of them shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

Theo paused. “But we apprehended him the night after he visited the museum, and he hadn’t gone anywhere.”

“I mean, we still haven’t gotten the word back from the team searching his house, so that’s worth a shot,” the officer replied.

Nodding, Theo headed with an uncharacteristic vigor toward his car. He needed to find the Spider to ensure that this case would be open and shut. Otherwise, without physical evidence, it would be much harder to convict Martin.

Theo arrived at the Bel residence scarcely half an hour after he left the station. Parking sloppily across from the police, he grabbed his things before bumping his head on the way out of the car. As he hurried toward the house, one of the officers just leaving flagged him down.

“Detective Theo Benson,” Theo said curtly as he flashed his badge.

“I know who you are, detective,” the officer said with a smile. Theo studied his face briefly, wondering if he should know the officer, but nothing came to mind. Notwithstanding, there were more important matters at the moment.

“How is the search going so far?” Theo asked, looking around to see what the other officers on scene were doing.

The officer shook his head. “Nothing so far, and we’ve pretty much turned over everything there is to turn over. I don’t know what more we can find here.”

Theo pursed his lips. “Just how thorough was this search?”

“More thorough than most of the searches we do.”

“And…there’s not anywhere you might have missed?”

The officer thought for a second and then cocked his head. “Well, there could be something…”

“C’mon, spit it out man.”

“We haven’t looked inside of the furniture itself,” the officer remarked. “A lot of the things in there are really old, and I know for a fact a lot of older furniture contained lots of secret compartments and hidden drawers.”

Theo nodded in agreement. It was very astute of the officer to think of that. “And what kind of timeline are we looking at for that?”

The officer shook his head. “Probably longer than we’d like, because there are a lot of places where something so small could be.”

Theo shook his head. “We don’t have that kind of time. At this rate, it could probably be on an international flight heading for Singapore, for all we know.”

“These things take time, detective. The Amethyst Spider could be hiding inside one of the couch cushions right now, for all we know.”

“So what do you need to make this process smoother?” Theo tapped his foot impatiently.

“More time.”

“What can I do to help, then, officer?” Theo was getting progressively more annoyed.

“Well, let’s go look for some secret drawers,” the officer responded coolly, either not seeing or completely ignoring Theo’s growing frustration. The officer beckoned for Theo to follow him into the house, where they were immediately greeted by the smell of food that had sat out for two days.

“Why can’t we get someone to clean that up?” Theo asked, pinching his nose with his gloved hands.

“Oh perfect, that’s the first way you can help!” the officer replied cheerily, shooing Theo off into the kitchen. Theo shook his head in disgust, but complied nonetheless.

Not a minute into picking up the loose noodles with a pair of tongs, the officer rushed into the kitchen.

“Come, Detective, we’ve found something that might interest you.”