Looking down at the ground, Dad shook his head. “That’s what Pops was trying to do with his will. Bring us back together, and move us forward.”
Reaching out, I shook his shoulder like I was going to knock him off his feet. “And that’s what we’re doing.” Then, looking up at the lawyer who was just making his way back behind his desk, I said apologetically, “And I’ll get you a new rug.”
Bursting out laughing, he looked at the area of his wooden floor that the rug had been in. “I think I prefer it without one. It makes the space more open, and I don’t have to worry about mud and shit on people’s shoes.”
I was nervous about where life was taking me, but I wanted to live it to the max like Pops had, so I had to trust in what he’d set up for us.
Grinning at my parents, I nodded once, my decision made. “Let’s do this shit.”
Chapter Three
Logan
Let me be straight, watching someone being questioned wasn’t like in the movies. You couldn’t usually just ask outright what’d happened or piece it together as easily, it took patience.
And patience really sucked when you wanted to know the answers right then and there, but you weren’t getting them or were being given the wrong ones.
The whole time you spoke to the person, you were trying to read between the lines as well.
What were they going to do next?
What did the eye shift and shoulder shrug mean?
And I’d been watching all of this for going on two hours now.
Leaving the woman, Cinder Murphy, with her lawyer, Alex came out and joined us in the room attached to the one he’d been in
“What do you think?”
I didn’t take my eyes off her as I answered. “I don’t think her tears were fake. Her recent memory recollection is to the left and slightly down. Her farther back memory is to the top right, and she accessed it about sixty percent of the time. When you asked her who took Mrs. Johansen’s medication, she blinked rapidly, signaling increased anxiety and adrenaline.”
There was a misassumption that it was an exact science—everybody looks in one precise direction if they were lying. No, it was individual to each person, so you had to watch and read everything they were doing when they answered carefully.
DB was standing with his arms crossed, watching and listening to Cinder and her lawyer whispering. “I agree with Logan, and,” he glanced at me, “I’m kind of impressed right now you paid that much attention to the body language course.”
“Pays to be able to understand body language if you go into a situation thinking someone’s innocent, then they pull a gun or knife on you, or totally lose their shit and attack you.” The latter was something I had a lot of experience of, the former only a little experience, but it only took once for you to approach calls differently.
Moving to stand between us, Alex copied his son’s pose and frowned at the two people in the room in front of us. “What else did you see?”
“When you asked her if she knew about what’d happened, she did a lot of grooming inside her mouth with her tongue when she replied with that long-winded story.”
“Damn,” DB murmured, “he’s right. I saw that but didn’t add it to my list.”
“That’s important, son. The buildup of proteins inside the mouth happens because of increased anxiety, so the suspect will instinctually lick around their cheeks and where they feel it gathering.”
“That can happen if someone’s stressed because they’re innocent, though.”
Clapping DB on the shoulder, Alex pointed out, “That’s where the rest of the body language and the context of the situation all come into play to help you make a choice.” Then, turning to me, he asked, “What do you think?”
“I don’t think she’s guilty of all of the crime,” I hedged. “I do think she was part of it and is covering for Diego Mantoya, though.”
The crime itself was breaking and entering into an elderly lady called Mrs. Albright’s home, knocking her out with one punch to the eighty-eight-year-old woman’s face. They then stole cash, jewelry, and her medications, some of which they’d be able to sell for a lot of money, given that it included drugs like Gabapentin and Morphine.
We’d found three sets of fingerprints on the jewelry box and medicine cabinet that didn’t belong to her or her daughter and had traced them back to Cinder Murphy, Diego Mantoya, and one unknown suspect.
The key was getting her to talk.
“Why don’t you send in Logan?” Garrett asked, laughing in the doorway. “When she saw him as we were bringing her through, she stopped and practically drooled.”
The two Bells—DB and Alex—looked at me, making me feel uncomfortable.
“You up for it?”
Was I?
Cracking my knuckles, I nodded toward the door. “Let’s do it, but you’re coming in with me,” I told Alex, needing the support for this.
As we entered the room, the shifty-looking lawyer sneered at me. “Is it rookie day?”
Ass wank.
Ignoring the guy, Alex introduced me to Cinder, and both of us made to sit down on the uncomfortable plastic chairs. Thanks to my nerves and how uncomfortable I was, I dragged mine and made the feet screech loudly across the floor.
Thankfully it acted as an ice breaker. “My bad, I apologize for that.”
Cinder burst out laughing, and miraculously so did the skeezy lawyer.
“I hate it when my chair does that. Like, in high school, I was always in trouble ‘cause we had these stools that were old and falling apart. If you breathed, it made it sound like an owl screeching,” Cinder giggled.
Leaning in, I smiled gently, and started on the basics of making her comfortable so that I could read her body language correctly like I’d been taught. “That must have been really embarrassing. Which school did you go to?”
Her blink rates were normal, and
