"Table For Four Ch. 2" by jadeoshow

1.

2. The family, Mother and two siblings, lived in Alexandria, Virginia. It was a two hour car ride that passed with little conversation and a lot of hard rock music. The house was a colonial build, at least four stories. It was surrounded by beautiful countryside, with green grass and cornfields surrounding it on every side. The gravel driveway was almost a mile long by itself, leading us to two stone lions on either side of a large gate.

3. “Awfully protective for a house in the middle of nowhere,” Hanson said, pressing the button on the call box. He held is badge over the camera, “Special Agents Todd and Hanson, FBI.” The gates creaked open and we pulled onto the property. The gardens were massive and beautiful, surrounding the walkway and wrap-around porch. Before he had a chance to knock on the big white door, it swung open. Rachel flashed her credentials.

4. “Agent Todd, this is agent Hanson. Can we come in?” She didn’t like to waste time and beat around the bush. She just wanted this part to be over.

5. “Please, come in,” the man at the door said, stepping aside so we could cross the threshold into the mini-mansion. He looked like he was in his early thirties, with jet-black hair and a little scruff around his jaw line. He was taller than she was by an inch or two, and had the deepest, green eyes she had ever seen, nearly olive in color.

6. They stepped in to the spacious hall, where white walls met white carpet and the accenting black décor hung. The man led them into a large living room, also a spotless white with more black furniture. An old woman, frail and wrinkly, sat in a motorized wheelchair reading. “Mother,” the man said in his gravelly, and surprisingly pleasant, voice. “We have guests. Please, sit,” he indicated for the agents to sit on the love seat across from the couch. When they both obliged, he himself took a seat next to his mother. “I am Charlie Manning, this is-”

7. “I am perfectly capable of introducing myself, Charles,” the aged woman cut him off. “I am Lyssa Manning. And you are?”

8. “The FBI, mother,” Charlie Manning explained. “Agents Todd and…”

9. “Hanson,” Hanson reminded him, not offended by the fact that his name went forgotten in such short a time. But Charles did not pay much attention to him, but maintained eye contact with Rachel, a look she could not help but return.

10. “And what is this concerning?” Lyssa Manning asked.

11. “It’s about your son, Robert.” Hanson told her.

12. “Oh, what did he do now? Forget to pay some parking tickets? I can take care of those right now, if that’s it.”

13. “No, no, it’s not anything like that,” Hanson looked down, averting her gaze.

14. “They don’t send FBI agents to collect parking fees,” Charlie observed solemnly, not breaking eye contact with Rachel. Those green eyes were unnerving, and she felt like she was being read, yet she could not break the stare.

15.  “I'm…I’m afraid Robert Manning is dead, Mrs. Manning. We are so very sorry for your loss,” she said when Hanson did not. This is when she forced herself to look away from the young man in front of her. She hated talking to the family. She couldn’t be for sure why Hanson insists on bringing her along, but she secretly thought it was because he got choked up. He would never admit as much, anyways, so it was only a theory. She eyed Charlie, watching his face, eyes looking down, almost shamefully. People’s reaction to this kind of news was most particular, especially when they know something.

16. “What-what happened?” Lyssa asked, the news sinking in like a ship with a gaping hole into the sea. A sea, like murder, most unforgiving.

17. “We believe he was murdered,” she continued, only to be interrupted by a loud gasp. A tall woman was standing in the hall. She was beautiful, with tan skin and a cascade of black hair. It was obvious just by her phenotype that she was Allyson Manning, daughter of Lyssa and sister of the deceased. She walked in on what was possibly the worst part of the grim conversation, and her face was the paragon of distress.

18. “What?” She looked as if she thought the whole thing was a lie, as if they were just playing some sort of sick joke. She made her way into the main room and sank onto the sofa next to her brother, who wrapped an arm around her.

19.             “I’m sorry,” Rachel told her, and she meant it. And after a moment, “Did you know your brother was in town?”

20. “Yeah,” She sounded winded, as if she had just run a marathon and hadn’t quite caught her breath. Her brother looked at her, genuinely shocked. “It was a surprise; I wasn’t supposed to let on.”

21. “Which explains why he was at a hotel,” Hanson told to Rachel more than the family. “Do you know why he was coming to see you, or why he didn’t want you to know about it?”

22. “No…no idea…” Charlie looked off, thinking hard.

23.             “Do you know why anyone would want to harm him or his wife?”

24.             “Lisa was with him?” Lyssa asked. Rachel could not tell how this made her feel, which perturbed her to a great extent.

25.             “Yes,” she said, angling for a more conclusive reaction.

26.             “Is she, um…dead…too?” Allyson asked, clearly upset. The word ‘dead’ was like poison in her mouth. She didn’t like the taste of it; she didn’t like anything about it.

27.             “She’s missing.” Hanson took over, watching his partner profile. It was best that way. He asking and her watching. She could read people, and even better when she could devote all of her concentration to it.

28.             “Oh God,” Allyson covered her eyes with her hand, as if to stop the images that were no doubt circulating her mind. Charlie, on the other hand, didn’t seem that troubled. His eyes even rolled slightly. Before Hanson could probe any farther, Rachel stood.

29.             “Thank you for your cooperation, if we have any more questions-” She began.

30.             “You know where we live,” Charlie smiled towards her, a warm, almost forgiving smile. Hanson held out a card to Allyson Manning.

31.             “If you remember anything of importance…or unimportance…doesn’t hesitate to call,” he told her warmly. She was still overwhelmed, but accepted the card, trying her best to smile back at Hanson’s less than shrewd methods.

32.             The agents got into the black SUV, and Hanson started the engine. They didn’t talk until they got out onto the main road. “Did you see Charles Manning’s face when you mentioned Lisa was missing?” Rachel asked, going over the scene in her head.

33.             “No, what?”

34.             “He rolled his eyes. He did seem upset at all. I don’t think he liked her. I wonder what she did to ***** him off,” the question was rhetorical, and Hanson didn’t even try to conjure an answer.

35.             “Why didn’t you just ask?” He said instead.

36.             “Hanson, Hanson, Hanson. He wouldn’t have talked, especially not in front of Ally. No, whatever Lisa did to Charlie, it was personal. I need to get Charlie alone.”

37.             “How on earth do you do that?” Hanson asked, truly intrigued.

38.             “Do what?”

39.             “Read people like that. Seeing between the lines. All that context from an eye roll and a facial expression?”

40.             “I got my PhD in Psychology. Picked up a few tricks.”

41.             “I didn’t know that. I guess you learn something new every day.”

42.             “Funny how all I know about you is every one of your sex conquests,” she whipped back. “But the real question is: how do you hit on a woman, minutes after informing her that her brother was brutally bumped off?” At this he looked at her and grinned, obviously pleased with himself. She pointed to the road so he would look away from her and pay attention to his driving. “That wasn’t meant to be amusing. Poor girl. You, my friend, are very sad.”

43.             “Hey- she might need someone to talk to,” he defended, innocently. He let go of the wheel to hold his hands up in a sort of mock defense for his dignity. She had to motion for him to take the wheel again, so they wouldn’t crash and die. She hated when Hanson drove. Hanson always drove.

44.             “Yeah, mhmm, and good ol' Gordon will be a nice crotch to cry on.”

45.             “Well! You saw her! Can you blame me?”

46.             “You dog,” was her only response. “Now pay attention to the road before you kill us both!”

47.             “So…you going to tell me who your Secret Santa is?” Hanson changed the subject.

48.             “I’m not telling you.”

49.             “You got me.” And then after a trice’s silence, “You did, Didn’t you?”

50.             “No. Who did you get?”

51.             “O’ Grady. Your turn. It’s me, I know it.”

52. “My lips are sealed.” She used the handle on the roof of the vehicle to steady herself. “Where in the hell did you learn to drive?”

53.  

54.  ••••••••••

55.  

56. Rachel drove home that night, thinking about the case, Charlie Manning in particular. Once she opened the apartment door and saw Ted, she forced those thoughts out of her mind. Ted heard her come in and walked into her kitchen. Technically, she live alone. But they completed the first few steps: the overnighter, the weekend overnighter, the weekend vacation, and then they exchanged keys. It was as serious as she had ever been with a man, and she picked the perfect person for it.

57. She dropped her bag on the counter and threw her arms around Ted’s neck, dramatically. She gave him a big kiss before letting go. “I am going to go shower and then-”

58. “Dinner will be waiting,” he promised. She smiled and kissed his grin before extracting her arms from its loose hold around his neck and disappearing into her bedroom.

59.  

60.  ••••••••••

61.  

62. Eaves handed Lexi a coffee and immediately, the very grateful scientist launched into her findings. “No match on our prints, I guess AFIS is having a bad day, so he gave up. I’m not all bearer of bad news, though, because we retrieved the data from the memory chip,” She looked at him with her big green eyes.

63. “And?” Eaves was obviously in a disagreeable mood. O’ Grady rolled into sight on a wheeled desk chair from behind a computer.

64. “Most of it was just codes and algorithms. I tried decoding them, with no luck. They aren’t htmls, https, passwords, emails, anything. They aren’t even messages; they don’t mean anything at all. They are just a bunch of crap that the company the made the card put on there. I’m positive the ciphers are meaningless.”

65. “So that’s your big reveal? You got nothing?”

66. “No, I got something and that something just happens to be nothing.”

67. “So you got nothing.”

68. “I actually got photos off the card, too. Hanson was right; it was a camera memory card. It took some time to restore, because the card was damaged, and hadn’t been reformatted in-”

69. “O’ Grady,” Eaves warned. Sam didn’t say anything else but pulled the pictures up onto the plasma. They were all of Lisa and Robert Manning at a black tie engagement. Toasting champagne, kissing over breadsticks and wine, dancing. Robert twirling his wife, Lisa being dipped back in what was obviously the same dance. All these images cascaded onto the screen, all with the same date and time stamped in orange letters in the bottom right-hand corner.

70. “We were here all night, Eavesy, you should be proud,” Lexi pronounced, and Eaves smiled.

71. “Good work. Email them to Rachel, Hanson, and Just-”

72. “Done, done and….done.” Lexi told him.

73. “Now all we need to know is who was taking those pictures.”

74.  

75.  ••••••••••

76.  

77. “Autopsy results are in; we have a cause of death, which is, indeed, the stabbing. Poor fellow, it was designed to be painful. I can say with fair certainty that it was no crime of passion.” Eaves came up behind the doctor, who had launched into his results without even looking back at him.

78. “How did you know it was me?” Eaves asked, puzzled.

79. “Believe it or not, the morgue isn’t exactly on the J. Edgar Hoover Tourist trail.”

80. “Fair enough. So why not crime of passion?”

81. “You see these knife wounds, here on his chest? They are deliberate around the heart, not directly in it. The killer thought a lot about this. No blunt force trauma, no signs of a struggle, no anything. The killer wanted him awake for this. They wanted him to be awake when they ripped out his beating heart.” Dr. Hopewell circled the table, grabbed his notes from its hanging spot on the table, and began to read off it. “He died of massive blood loss, and the removal of his heart ended it all.”

82. “I’m trying to match the murder weapon now, so you know what to look for,” Cain came in the lab with a handful of sharp objects. “I’ve ruled out your basic cleavers, butcher knives, and garden shears.” He indicated to the weapons respectively.

83. “Okay then,” Eaves left, leaving Cain smiling as he held up the box cutters and a clay block to Hopewell, who mirrored the grin.

84. “Would you like to do the honors?”

85.  ••••••••••

86.  

87. “The interview with the family wasn’t entirely inconclusive. We discovered that Robert was in town to surprise his brother.” Rachel leaned back in her chair, pulling her long hair out of her face and into a ponytail.

88. “Rach also noticed that for some unknown reason, Charlie had certain…distaste for the Mrs.,” Hanson offered.

89. “Unknown?” Eaves demanded.

90. “Yes, well, we are working on that one. He wasn’t gonna crack in front of his sister, so I’m meeting him again, away from…distractions.” She informed him, struggling to find a word Hanson could not use against her.

91. “He will be plenty distracted sitting across the table from you eating salad and bread sticks.” Hanson teased. She made a face, her efforts in vain.

92. “You mean you’re going on a date with a potential suspect?” Eaves asked, raising an eyebrow.

93. “Apparently it’s an interview tactic,” Hanson told him, turning from Rachel to Eaves and back. “I wonder what she’d do for a written confession,” He too raised an eyebrow in her direction, scandalous thoughts on his mind.

94. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the prestigious Manning family?” Eaves asked.

95. “Allyson Manning is really hot,” Hanson offered. Eaves took this as a no.

96. “You dog,” He muttered before picking up a folder from his desk and leaving.

97. “Did you tell him to say that?” Hanson asked Rachel, but she only laughed and followed Eaves out without another word.

98.  

99.  ••••••••••

100.  

101. Ben Just walked into a large office, with many tiny cubicles and a bored looking receptionist at the main desk. “How can I help you?” she snapped her pink bubble gum rather obnoxiously.

102. “Ben Just, FBI. I’m looking for a Mr. Eisenhower.” He took his badge off his belt to show her. She pushed a button on her phone and then returned her attention to him.

103. “I could see it from your belt. Right next to your gun and your-” but she did not get to finish her last thought, for a rather corpulent, balding man toddled up to them.

104. “Mr. Eisenhower?” Just asked, silently praying that it was.

105. “Indeed I am,” The portly man’s voice came out deep and booming, a voice one would imagine appropriate for his build. “Someone paged me, I came running. Please, follow me,” the man led him into the only private office on the floor- a big one with all glass windows for a perfect, all seeing view of the cubicles. Just was painfully aware of the receptionist’s elevator eyes as he walked away.

106. “I understand a Mr. Robert Manning was employed here?” Ben asked when he was seated on the opposite side of Eisenhower’s big oak desk.

107. “Sure, Rob was a spokesman for us here. Went on TV and everything. He was doing CNN one night and the next he was on Good Moring America, talking stocks. He could really speak the lingo- handsome man, too. Perfect for the job. It’s a shame what happened. He was always a nice fellow, had a beautiful wife, came from a wealthy family. Destined for greatness, he was. Haven’t found a replacement yet, and I’m doubtful they will fill the shoes. Got a press release soon, too.”

108. “Did Mr. Manning have any enemies, maybe some angry co-workers or disgruntled partners?”

109. “No, no, like I said before, he was a good man, everyone loved him. You can feel free to talk to my employees if you think they will be more helpful. Mary Hawthorn had the unit next to his; you might want to start with her.”

110. “Point her out to me?”

111. “Of course,” the burly man stood and led Just to one of the cramped cubicles. At the desk sat a young red headed woman, fashionably dressed in a sharp work suit. After a quick introduction, the Eisel left him to his own resources.

112. “So how well did you know Robert?”

113. “Oh, you know, not very well,” her smile was charming, and her voice melodic. “He sat in the space next to mine. Wife, but no kids, nice hair, charming smile, always flattering people. He listened to heavy metal music. He tried to keep it low, out of politeness, you know, but I could still hear it.”

114. “Do you know if anyone had a problem with him? Any issues at home at all?”

115.  

116.  ••••••••••

117.  

118. Rachel sat across from Charles Manning, sneaking glances over her menu. She eyed him over her laminated literature, trying to be inconspicuous about it. He was more than happy to accept her invitation to lunch, and even more pleased when he discovered Hanson would not be joining them.

119. They met at the Pinnacle, a small café just outside D.C. She in her official FBI field attire that consisted of a tee and jeans, and him dressed smart in a striped oxford and moccasins. “I’ll just have a salad,” she told the waiter.

120. “I’ll take a Philly cheese steak; hold the onions, and a Pepsi.” Charlie handed the waiter his menu, folded his hands together and rested his chin on them, looking at his company with thoughtful eyes. She smiled, charm turned all the way up. “So,” he stirred his water around with the swish of a glass. “What did you need to talk about?”

121. She shrugged and smiled shyly. “I don’t know. Your interests. The weather.” She leaned in a little closer. “Anything you want.”

122. “Are you hitting on me, Agent Todd?”

123. “Call me Rachel.”

124. “Okay, Rachel.”

125. “So tell me, what is it you do exactly?”

126. “Well, I’m an IT professional. I program computers at the Hanover Institute, a private school.”

127. “I never would have pegged you for a computer geek,” She told him, all smiles and laughs. To be honest, it wasn’t exactly difficult to be convincing.

128. “I hide it well,” he smiled a sparkling smile. “And you? I mean, I know you do the whole criminal justice system, but how did that happen?”

129. “Well, I majored in Criminal Justice at Columbia U, with a double minor in English and Psychology. It makes me very valuable in the field.”

130. “I never would have pegged you for the ‘shrink’ type.”

131. “It’s the badge, It always throws people off,” there was a few moments of silence while they snickered inwardly, like there was an inside joke only they understood.

132. “So how’s the case going?” he asked, providing her with a seamless transition and making her task a lot easier.

133. “Not very well. We don’t have many leads. It seems no one has any problem with your brother at all.”

134. “I wish I could help, but what can I say? He was a great guy. Can’t see why anyone would want to hurt him.”

135. “Hmm,” she smiled again. “What about his wife? Lisa?” There was that annoyed look again. Facial expressions can be involuntary. Facial expressions like hate for instance. And they do not lie. “You had an issue with her. What?” She didn’t waste time being nice about it. He said nothing for a moment, and then:

136. “She didn’t love him. She loved his money.” He was almost sneering. Anger is one of the most unattractive emotions, even worn on a man as handsome as Charlie. “I walked in on her with some other man! In Rob’s own home!”

137. Wow. She thought. That was easier than I thought.

138. “I never told anyone,” he continued. “But it made me sick to see my sister all best-friend-y with her. And my oblivious brother, totally smitten. He loved her. When they got married, I’m pretty sure she stopped fooling around. That’s why I kept my mouth shut.”

139. Rachel nodded, not agreeing but mostly sympathetic. “Ignorance is bliss. So did you know the guy? The one you caught her with?”

140. “Not by name. I saw him at one of Roberts benefit things. I think they work together.” She was about to probe farther, but just then, their food arrived.

141.  

142.  ••••••••••

143.