1960: My uncle is the FBI Director

Chapter 138 Bernie: DC people are really weirdos

Mr. Halleke re-identified the body.

After careful observation, he confirmed that the deceased was not Anne Hallecker:

"Anne is a little taller than her, and also thinner. Much thinner."

Mr. Halleck stood beside the body, gesturing with both hands above it, then pointing to the scars on the corpse:

“Anne wouldn’t torture herself like this.”

Bernie asked him, "Where is she now? Can we find her?"

Mr. Halleck nodded somewhat hesitantly:
“I saw her last month, and she said she works at Xingchen Laundry.”

Mr. Halleke provided the address of the Starry Sky Laundry Factory.

Detective Thomas wrote down the address and went to verify it with the patrol officer.

While waiting, Theodore received a call from the FBI lab.

The fingerprint comparison results are in.

The deceased's fingerprints did not match those of Anne Halleck.

The deceased was not Anne Halleke.

Detective Thomas was bewildered upon hearing this: "If she's not Anne Halleke, why is she registered under the name Anne Halleke?"

He looked at Theodore and Bernie: "Who is she?"

No one can answer this question at the moment.

More than an hour later, the patrol officers brought in the real Anne Halleke.

She was much thinner than the deceased, and had long reddish-brown hair styled in a ponytail.

This is a very rare hairstyle for someone her age.

Anne Halleke had deep nasolabial folds, loose and slightly rough skin, and looked much older than the deceased.

After registering, Anne Hallecker was led into the interrogation room.

She looked at Theodore and Bernie across from her with a blank expression, wondering what had happened.

Bernie asked her, "Did you go to the Riverside Hotel on the evening of April 3rd, which is Monday night this week?"

Anne Halleke shook her head:

"Never been."

"What are you doing?"

Anne Halleke replied, "I spent the rest of the day with my boyfriend after get off work."

“We watched a movie at the drive-in theater,”

"We went home around 11 p.m. after watching the movie."

Bernie asked her for the address of the drive-in theater and her boyfriend's address, then gave them to Detective Thomas to verify.

He softened his tone: "On Tuesday morning, a woman was pushed off a building and died."

"She registered under your name at the Riverside Hotel."

Anne Halleke covered her mouth in surprise.

Theodore found a photo of the deceased and handed it to her, asking, "Do you know her?"

Anne Halleke picked up the photos and examined them carefully, then glanced at Theodore and Bernie, before finally shaking her head and pushing them back.

"Sorry, I don't know her."

Theodore put away the photos and then took out the deceased's clothes from room 511:
"Are these your clothes?"

Anne Halleke picked up the clothes and looked at them, unsure:
"I think I used to have an outfit like this."

Bernie asked her, "When?"

She thought about it carefully, her face stiffening slightly: "Ten years ago."

Anne Halleke put down the clothes and pushed them across the table:
"Later, I moved and didn't know where it was left."

Theodore put the clothes back in the bag and asked her directly, "Was this what you wore the day you were assaulted?"

Anne Halleke looked at Theodore, her whole body tense.

She paused for a moment, then relaxed completely.

"No, it was what I wore the day I testified in court."

“The media took pictures of me wearing it and called it a ‘slut outfit’.”

There was a moment of silence in the interrogation room, then Bernie asked:

"Did you contact Agent Vincent R. Lombardi last week?"

Anne Halleck nodded:

"Yes."

"I want to apologize to him."

“Last year I went to his house and his workplace and said some things to him.”

"I didn't have a good time during that period."

“I blamed him for some of my bad experiences.”

“I called him to ask to meet him, hoping to get his forgiveness.”

Bernie was curious about her change in attitude, but Theodore was no longer willing to waste any more time.

He chose to end the questioning.

Anne Hallecker apparently did not know the deceased.

Even if the deceased was clearly imitating her.

Registering under her name, wearing the same clothes as her, dyeing his hair reddish-brown, and even having the same scars as her.

Emerging from the interrogation room, Detective Thomas, undeterred, arranged a 'family reunion' for Anne Halleke.

He first arranged for police officers to take her to meet Mr. Halleke.

Mr. Halleck was delighted to see his daughter, and the atmosphere between father and daughter was harmonious.

He also brought Mrs. Halleke along.

The atmosphere in the small conference room immediately plummeted to freezing point.

Mrs. Hallecker directly criticized Anne Hallecker's clothing and said that she would be assaulted sooner or later.

Anne Hallecker was provoked and started arguing with her mother.

Mr. Halleck tried to mediate, but the two women had no interest in listening to him.

The mother and daughter grew closer and closer as they argued, and eventually started fighting.

Detective Thomas had to call his officers to rush in and separate them.

During this process, Anne Halleck grabbed his face and scratched him, leaving three bloody marks.

Detective Thomas covered his face and waved repeatedly at the officers.

Seven or eight police officers worked together to separate the mother and daughter, and it took a lot of effort to get the family away.

Theodore leaned closer to Detective Thomas and examined the three stripes on his face:
"Now you're sure she's Anne Halleke."

Detective Thomas sat down in a chair, wiping the blood from his face with a tissue, and asked in a muffled voice:
"What should we do now?"

The thought that they couldn't even confirm the identity of the deceased and had to start all over again made Detective Thomas feel discouraged.

Solving cases is indeed too troublesome; it's better to leave it to FBI agents.

Detective Thomas thought to himself, then looked up at Theodore and Bernie.

Theodore thought for a moment and then suggested that he go back to the crime scene.

Detective Thomas pointed to his face:
"I won't go with you. I need to get this treated to avoid leaving scars."

He made a phone call gesture: "Call me if you need anything."

After saying that, he hurriedly left the meeting room.

Theodore and Bernie drove to the Riverside Hotel and met with the hotel manager again.

The manager was very cooperative, readily taking the keys and leading them to the fifth floor, and then asking again when the lockdown on the room could be lifted.

Bernie repeated Agent Lombardi's answer, telling him to ask the Third Precinct.

Upon arriving on the fifth floor, the manager helped open the door to room 511.

Theodore stood at the door and glanced inside; the room remained exactly as it had been when he last left.

He asked the manager:

"Could you also open rooms 509 and 513?"

The manager sent someone to the front desk to check the registration. After confirming that no one was in either room, the door was opened.

Theodore picked up the lamp from room 509 and asked the manager, "How much is this?" The manager, puzzled, replied, "Nine dollars."

Theodore nodded, took out ten dollars and handed it to him, then took the lamp and asked the manager to have an employee bring over a glass bottle.

He took a desk lamp and a glass bottle and went into room 511, directing Bernie and the manager to return to rooms 509 and 513 respectively, and then closed the doors.

He first observed the damage to the lamp in room 511, made a rough estimate, and then picked up the lamp and smashed it on the ground.

After waiting for about ten seconds, he picked up the glass bottle and smashed it on the ground.

After falling, he walked out of room 511 and asked Bernie and the manager if they had heard anything.

The manager looked somewhat embarrassed and turned to look at Bernie.

Bernie nodded. "Very clear."

He looked at Theodore, a hint of excitement in his expression:
"It seems we need to talk to those two testers again."

It turns out that the soundproofing in the single rooms at the Riverside Hotel wasn't very good.

The manager pointed to the mess in room 511 and asked them:
"Can I have someone go in and clean it up?"

"Can we leave this room unsealed?"

No one answered.

The manager sighed, muttered a couple of things silently, and locked the three rooms again.

In the afternoon, Dennis and Cooper, the test sleepers, were brought back by detectives from the Third Precinct.

After registration, they were sent to two separate interrogation rooms.

Theodore and Bernie questioned Dennis first.

Dennis stuck to his story from yesterday.

Bernie told him that they had already conducted experiments at the Riverside Hotel.

Dennis paused for a moment:
"I really didn't hear anything."

"I went to bed very early that day."

"I slept very soundly until the next morning."

"I didn't even know that someone lived next door."

"real!"

Theodore shook his head, not wanting to waste any more time with him, and got up to go find Cooper.

At first, Cooper acted just like Dennis, insisting that he hadn't heard anything.

But when Bernie told him that "you could hear the neighbor farting perfectly clearly," his expression began to shift between light and dark.

After a moment of silence, Cooper looked at Theodore, who had been writing and writing since he entered:
“I can tell you what you heard, but you can’t tell my boss.”

Bernie nodded: "Okay."

Cooper swallowed hard and whispered:
Dennis and I booked a room this morning.

"After getting off work in the afternoon and having dinner, we went straight to the Riverside Hotel."

"There was nothing in that single room. I read for a while and then went to bed early."

"Around 10 o'clock, I was woken up by noises from next door."

Cooper heard cries for help and screams. Thinking that the people next door needed help, he ran out of the room and pounded on the door.

The shouting inside quickly stopped, and then a naked man opened the door and asked him what he wanted with a fierce look on his face.

Cooper then realized that he was the one who had disturbed others.

He returned to his room, looking embarrassed, buried his head in the covers, and couldn't fall asleep no matter what he heard from next door—a mix of cries for help, pleas for mercy, insults, and screams.

He endured the noise for over two hours until it finally subsided. Just as he was about to drift off to sleep, the noise started again next door.

It wasn't until after 2 a.m. that things finally quieted down next door.

Cooper paused at this point.

After a moment's hesitation, he added:
“I only slept for two or three hours, and I got up at five in the morning to wake Dennis.”

"You know how traffic is on Pennsylvania Avenue in the morning. If we don't leave early, we'll definitely be late."

“I went to tell Dennis to check out. Dennis, like me, hadn’t slept well at all.”

"We were still complaining about how noisy the next room was and how poor the soundproofing was in our room when we came out of our room and ran into the woman from the next room."

Bernie pulled out a photo of the deceased and handed it over: "Is it her?"

Cooper glanced at it briefly before quickly looking away: "I...I don't know."

"I don't recognize him."

He seemed to have thought of something and began to gag.

Theodore glanced at Bernie, picked up the photo, held it up to Cooper, and asked, "You went into room 511 with Dennis, right?"

Cooper turned around and bumped right into the photo, so startled he almost fell backward:
Dennis and I left quickly.

She was perfectly fine when we left!

"If we had known she was going to die, neither of us would have vomited..."

His words were interspersed with retching, and his voice was trembling with sobs.

Theodore took the photos back, looked at them, and then looked at Bernie with a puzzled expression.

Bernie silently shook his head and kicked the trash can over.

Cooper hugged the trash can and continued to gag.

His reaction was so intense, it was as if he were pregnant.

The questioning had to be temporarily suspended.

Bernie called two officers to take him to the restroom to calm down.

Theodore put down the photo and asked Bernie, puzzled:

Is it really that disgusting?

Bernie stared at him: "You'll see when you try."

Theodore glanced at him: "How would I know who's about to die?"

Bernie sensed that the two were discussing something a bit perverse, so he got up, went out to pour two cups of coffee, and abruptly changed the subject:
“Cooper and Dennis, along with the two in front, make a total of four people. This matches the four small umbrellas found in the trash can at the crime scene.”

Theodore, still staring at the photo, nodded upon hearing this:

"Cooper said he heard pleas for help, shouts of abuse, and beatings, which may be the source of the injuries on the deceased's body."

Bernie glanced at the photo of the deceased, then thought of what he had just discussed with Theodore.

He suddenly felt that the people in DC were all weird, not at all like the conservative and simple people of Texas.

A dozen minutes later, Cooper was brought back and the questioning continued.

Theodore put the photos away and asked Cooper, "Did you and Denise tie her up and have sex with her too?"

He gestured twice: "Just like those two you mentioned earlier."

Cooper turned pale and shook his head repeatedly in denial.

Theodore rummaged through the pile of photos, found the wine bottle photo pieced together by the Third Precinct's medical examiner, and handed it over:
Have you seen this before?

Cooper hesitated, unsure of what to do.

Theodore then asked him about the lamp.

Cooper: "That's good."

"The room was dark at the time, only the desk lamp was on."

Theodore found photos of the scene and had Cooper identify them one by one, noting the differences from when they left.

Besides the broken wine bottle and lamp, Cooper also recognized the wardrobe and blankets after Theodore pointed them out.
According to him, the wardrobe was closed and the blankets were fully spread out on the bed when they left.

Cooper denied seeing the rope.

However, he mentioned that the room was dimly lit at the time, and he was not paying attention to the interior environment, so he may have missed something.

Theodore put the photos away and asked him one last question:
Are you sure there were only two people before you?

Cooper hesitated for a moment: "I only heard a pause in the middle, it should have been two people."

After the conversation ended, Cooper repeatedly asked the two not to tell his boss about it.

Bernie told him directly that he should worry about Dennis instead of them.

This relieved Cooper.

Before leaving the interrogation room, Theodore asked him curiously, "How did you feel when you learned of her death?"

Cooper's face immediately turned pale: "Ugh—"

(End of this chapter)