The Demise of Mayor Frye

Chapter 8: The Main Suspect

The light in the middle of the room caused by the lamp attached to the ceiling faded as it moved toward the dark walls of the room. The walls themselves weren't visible to the eyes of neither the suspects nor the interrogators. There was nothing inside but a simple table and four chairs, all made of metal and all old. One didn't need an eye to tell that all of them were rusty as the whole room smelled like old deserted iron factories. A camera must have been there at a corner, but it, too, wasn't visible. And there was no heater of any kind inside, leaving the room as cold as a night in the street.

Two chairs were on each side of the silver table, and Detectives Stone and Walker sat face-to-face to Mr. Mason the assistant director, and his attorney Mrs. Simmons in Room 04.

Detective Stone put his cassette recorder on the table, in the middle, its microphone pointing to the other side. Mr. Mason opened his mouth to talk, but Detective Stone, with a much louder voice dissolving the words of Mr. Mason, looking directly into his eyes, said, "Scenario oh two, Mr. Mason, and I believe the final one. Don't you think so?"

He didn't expect any answers, but Mr. Mason did talk. "I will tear this place down," he shouted, "while you are in this exact room, sitting on this exact stiff-as-hell chair, handcuffed to this exact iron bars. I will —"

"No, you won't Mr. Mason," Detective Stone said confidently. "Not with the evidence we've got."

The attorney told Mr. Mason to sit aside and let her talk instead. "You better have some evidence, Detectives, or, with all due respect, sirs, we would need to sue you."

With a slight smile on his face, Detective Stone, with its hands on the table and his face toward her, continued, "As I was saying, Scenario oh two. It's February 26th, 2020, and your client is getting back from his office. On 51 Nevil Street, in front of Spring Hour Library, under the shadow of a rather tall palm tree, leaning on the stem, he stands, putting his brown leather briefcase on the ground. He observes the people walking on the sidewalk on his side and finds someone whose car is parked on the other side of the street. He acts as an exhausted person who wants to give the briefcase to the young man with the dark brown hair and a gray jacket on the other side, and asks the stranger he just met to do this on his behalf —"

"Nonsense," Mr. Mason said. His attorney tried to stop him, but she wasn't successful. "Nonsense after nonsense. How many nights have —"

"Silence, Kobe Mason," Detective Walker who had been quiet all this time finally said, sounding thunderous. "Detective Stone is stating the evidence."

"The stranger man," Detective Stone continued, "whose name is David McLaren, by the way," he looked at Mr. Mason, "grabs the briefcase and gives it to the man on the other side, Freddie Norman, the security room officer of the city hall, knowing nothing about the amount of money inside it. Fifty thousand dollars, in cash, and a tiny black bottle of monkshood poison..."

Detective Stone then told Mrs. Simmons the whole story that he'd heard from Freddie Norman. Then it was time for the story of Brent Scott, but it wasn't much different. It had been the same way, but a day earlier, involving another stranger, Tony Murphy.

The attorney asked for a private time with her client, so the two detectives went to Detective Stone's office until Max would inform them to go back. "Still have doubts about him, Brian?" Detective Walker said.

Detective Stone was walking back and forth in his office. "I still don't see a reason why he would be behind this. I mean, for instance, he spent a hundred thousand dollars for that. Really, why would he do that?"

Detective Walker took his phone out of the back pocket of his pants. It was covered by a robust rugged phone case with a bullet hole in the middle. He'd only been an assistant to Detective Carter when he got shot from behind, and the bullet went through his phone and didn't reach his body, and as a symbol of "honor", as he himself had kept saying, he continued using that case for his new phone. He brought up a picture of a document for an old case of his. "The perpetrator of this case... He spent not only thousands of dollars — that vanished after investigation —, but also had his ear cut to be able to get into an organization," Detective Walker told Detective Stone. "For what reason, you might ask... We still don't know. He admitted to the crimes but said nothing about the reasons. It happens."