there were no holes in his story he led him back to the foyer and left him with a pen and a statutory declaration form to formally record his statement. Natalie had been waiting where they had left her and Nelson led her to the same interview room after signing her in. She sat quietly in her seat while Nelson sorted out his voice recorder, taking extra care not to erase Bryce’s file. He looked up at her and was momentarily lost in her cool green eyes but pulled away and forced himself to focus on the job at hand.
“Alright Ms Bassett, thanks again for coming in.”
“Please call me Natalie, Detective. Ms Bassett sounds like my mother,” she said smiling.
“Alright Natalie. I’m going to ask you the same questions I just asked Bryce. I’d like to know what you know about Craig Thoms and then I want you to tell me your version of events from last Friday night.”
Natalie began to tell him how she had met Bryce about six months previously and that they had soon become lovers. The thought briefly crossed Nelson’s mind that Bryce must be a tiger in the sack to catch and keep such a hottie, but he kept the thought to himself.
Natalie told him she had become involved with his circle of friends, which included Craig Thoms, and had joined them in their regular stalking evenings. As with Bryce, she made no effort to hide her involvement in the game, and to the contrary, admitted that she was intoxicated by it. She told him that she enjoyed the thrill and excitement of following strangers to see who they were, where they were going and what she could find out about them. She told him about the events of the previous Friday as she remembered them. It had been her turn to randomly choose each mark for the group. When she mentioned Craig leaving to follow his mark, Nelson questioned her closely, pushing her for details and a description of the man she had sent Craig out to follow. Nelson had realised during Bryce’s interview that Natalie had been the only person apart from Craig to see the mystery mark who Craig claimed to be the real murderer of Emilio Fogliani. Therefore, Natalie’s memory and description of him was vital to Craig’s version of events if he had been telling the truth.
She stared intently at the blank wall to her left, trying to recall the images of the man Craig had followed, but struggled to recall any distinguishing features.
“I just don’t know. I’m trying, but he’s just a blur in my mind.”
“What did he look like?” pushed Nelson a little harder, a little louder.
”I only saw him for a few seconds. He was just one face out of the hundreds walking past the bar that night.”
”Try harder, it’s important. What did he look like? How tall was he? What colour was his hair?” Nelson demanded, his voice rising in tone and with a hard edge to it.
“Maybe medium height? Brown hair, yes I think short brown hair but I think he was wearing a baseball cap.”
“Any emblems?”
“No, he was too far away but I wouldn’t know one team from another anyway. I’m not really into sports.”
“What about his clothes? Tell me about his appearance. How old did he look?”
Natalie tried again to remember. “I’m not sure,” she started hesitantly. “He was probably wearing jeans and a jacket. Probably a brown leather jacket or maybe suede, I’m sorry Detective,” she said throwing her wide in a gesture of frustration. “I wish I could be of more help to Craig, but it all happened so quickly.
“If he was so plain and unremarkable then why did you choose him to be followed out of all the people in the street?”
“Good question. I guess I just felt he looked a little sneaky. He was moving a little quicker than everyone else and yet he was looking down. It’s all my fault that Craig’s in jail isn’t it?”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because if I hadn’t chosen that guy for Craig to follow then none of this would ever have happened.”
“So you think Craig had nothing to do with this then?”
“Of course not. Why would he?”
“But you’ve only known him six months. How can you be so sure?”
She thought for a moment at the question and Nelson thought he detected a shadow of doubt cross her face before it quickly resumed its normal countenance.
“I’m sure.”
Nelson continued to question her for another fifteen minutes but it added little to her recollection of events.
“Ok. That’s enough for today I think. I need you to make a statement about what we talked about today and I’ll need your contact details in case I’ve got some more questions for you.”
“Sure thing.”
“And in the meantime, you need to keep trying to remember, because apart from Craig, you were the only person to see this guy. If you remember any more details, no matter how small, I want you to phone me immediately,” Nelson said sternly.
“I will Detective.”
“I’d also like you to work with one of our identification experts to try and develop a likeness of the man you saw. Will that be an inconvenience for you?”
“I’ll do what I can to help.”
Nelson ended the interview and led her back to the foyer where Bryce was waiting, sitting with his hands clasped between his thick thighs.
“Oh, one more thing. You might be contacted by the media, asking about this case. I advise you to say nothing and to keep your heads low until this is sorted out. Don’t go giving any front page exclusives or you may end up facing charges yourself for hindering the investigation.”
Chapter 27
Nelson returned to HQ and found Robards at his desk. He gave him a brief rundown of the interviews he’d conducted with Bryce and Natalie before turning his attention to what Robards had been doing.
“How’d you go with forensics?”
Robards had expected the question. If he knew anything about Nelson, it was that he always followed through.
“They didn’t find any GSR on the clothes taken from Thoms’ apartment, or on the latex gloves found near the scene of the crime.” Robards waited for Nelson to smirk or show some sign of superiority but he showed none. He just sat at his desk staring out the window.
“As I said before though,” he continued, “it doesn’t prove anything. There could be any number of genuine reasons for finding no GSR on the gloves or the clothes.”
“I know,” replied Nelson. “But one thing it doesn’t do, is strengthen the case against Thoms. If the test results had been positive, it would have gone a long way to discounting his claims.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Well, whether Thoms pulled the trigger or not the game plan is still the same. We have to dig deeper and chase up all the loose ends and find out if there is more going on here than meets the eye. We need to discover if there is any credence to Thoms’ claims that he was setup.”
Robards felt frustrated but tried to hide it. He had heard the ‘chase up the loose ends’ philosophy from Nelson a hundred times before. He knew Nelson lived by it, but it didn’t stop him from again suggesting an alternative.
“I think we should lean on Thoms again,” he replied hopefully. “You might have your doubts about him being the one, but if we keep at him I reckon I could crack him. I’m certain he knows more than he’s letting on.”
“We can still do that. The prosecutors gave me an iron clad guarantee that he’s not going to get bail based on what we’ve already got on him. He’s not going anywhere. And if he is guilty, then I’d like to have more evidence to support that before we go back to him. If he has been setup though, then I want to know who did it and why. If this mystery shooter exists then I want to find him.”
“You know, I still think it could be something as simple as a robbery. I mean Fogliani’s an old school hood and maybe Thoms stumbled onto him making some sort of deal or something and took advantage of it. Or maybe
