1960: My uncle is the FBI Director

Chapter 178 A Summons

"The murderer and the victim had a long-standing grudge."

"The conflict between the two sides has a long history."

Detective O'Malley looked up: "Impossible!"

The three of them looked at him.

He wanted to say that Allen was a good person and that no one would ever have a conflict with him, but when he opened his mouth, the words wouldn't come out.

Allen is indeed a good person.

But he is not a saint, loved by everyone.

Walter Reid and Evelyn Shaw have told him in their latest conversation that they have a conflict with Allen.

Despite their previous statements that "Allen is a good person and no one will have a conflict with him."

That's how it is for those two, what about the others?
Detective O'Malley fell silent.

Theodore continued:

"The deceased must have had something on the murderer."

Bernie looked up at him:
"Like Walter Reed?"

Detective O'Malley defends Alan Brennan:
"Many safety officers do this."

"Safety officers have to sacrifice their energy and time to ensure the safety of the community."

“Communities usually reward security personnel.”

Billy Hawke asked him, "Are you like that too?"

Detective O'Malley glanced at him:
“When our community holds events, they always reserve the best spots for my family.”

Billy Hawke pressed him further, "Did they waive your rent?"

Detective O'Malley was somewhat angry:
"I live in my own house! I don't need anyone to waive my rent!"

Billy Hawke raised his hands in surrender.

Bernie steered the conversation back on track:
"Did Alan Brennan also have something on the killer?"

Theodore shook his head:

"It's not necessarily a weakness."

"In the previous conflict, the deceased held a dominant position, while the murderer was in a vulnerable position."

He thought about it and felt that Walter Reed's example was very good, so he used it as an example:
"Just like Walter Reed's relationship with the dead. The initiative is not in Walter Reed's hands, but in the hands of the dead."

"Walter Reid threatened to evict the deceased from the apartment, to which the deceased immediately responded with respect by saying that the apartment had failed a fire inspection."

"Walter Reid was immediately at a loss and had no choice but to compromise with the dead."

"The murderer is the same."

"The two are likely to argue again inside the fire due to their core conflict."

"The killer tried to break free from this unbalanced relationship."

"However, instead of kicking people out of the apartment, he attacked them with wooden sticks."

"This is a stress response."

"During the conflict inside the fire, the perpetrator felt he had been cornered."

"The murderer believed that he had no other way out but to kill the victim."

Detective O'Malley looked up again, ready to interrupt.

Theodore didn't give him a chance.

He continued:

"There was a significant difference in physical strength between the murderer and the victim; he may have been thin or elderly."

"At least the murderer was not a threat to the victim at all."

"The deceased had always held an absolute advantage in their previous interactions, which made him completely unprepared for the murderer to act directly."

Bernie raised the question: "But Alan wasn't killed directly; he was burned to death."

Theodore nodded: "So the murderer committed a crime of passion."

"During the conflict, he angrily knocked the deceased unconscious, but then did not take any further action, and even tried to save the deceased's life."

Detective O'Malley was shocked by this statement.

Billy Hawke is the same as Bernie.

Theodore said with certainty:

"That's right, the murderer was trying to rescue the victim from the fire."

"The conflict likely occurred on the third floor."

"But the body was found in the middle of the stairs on the second floor."

"The murderer discovered that the victim was not dead, but only in a coma."

"He tried to drag the dead out of the fire."

"But perhaps they heard the noise of others, or perhaps they thought that dragging the person out of the fire would be difficult to explain, or that the deceased might get into trouble if he woke up."

"Or perhaps the fire was too intense, and the perpetrator was too exhausted to sustain two people at the same time."

"In the end, the murderer left the victim in the stairwell."

Detective O'Malley took notes, full of questions.

He felt as if Theodore was watching from the sidelines.

After writing the last word, he raised his first question:
"How did you know?"

Theodore thought for a moment:

"Crime scene analysis."

"Through on-site investigation, the crime scene and process are reconstructed and simulated..."

Detective O'Malley nodded, his mind automatically translating the incomprehensible words into "I guessed."

He actually had many more questions, but he didn't intend to ask them.

This question leads to a unified answer for all other questions: I'm guessing.

After explaining, Theodore looked at Detective O'Malley:

"After confirming the victim's death, out of a complex mix of emotions including wanting to cover up the truth, clear his name, and guilt, the murderer insisted on praising the victim as a good person during your interrogation."

Detective O'Malley muttered to himself, "Allen was a good guy to begin with."

Theodore ignored him.

He reminded everyone:
"The killer's motive for attacking the victim was rather urgent."

"The murderer believed that the threat posed by the conflict between the deceased and him was equivalent to the survival threat posed by the fire."

"That's why the killer felt he had no other way out and attacked the victim."

"Once the deceased is knocked unconscious, this threat is temporarily eliminated, and the survival threat posed by the fire once again becomes the primary threat."

"The conflicts between Walter Reed and Evelyn Shaw and the deceased, when placed in the context of the fire, are completely incomparable to the survival threat posed by the fire."

"So although they both had a motive to kill the victim, they were not the murderers."

Bernie understood:
“If the killer had been Walter Reed or Evelyn Shaw, they would have fled the fire immediately instead of killing Alan Brennan.”

Theodore nodded.

Billy Hawke thought for a moment, then said uncertainly:

"There are only three people on the third floor and above, but four including the firefighters."

"The firefighters in charge of the search and rescue were Carter from the fourth floor, Ed Warren from room 401, Cecilia Flynn from room 402, and Henry Crawford from room 301."

“Evelyn Shaw and Frank are both outside.”

Detective O'Malley glanced down the empty hallway and stubbornly added, "If she's not lying."

Bernie patted him on the shoulder.

He understands the pain of losing a close friend.

Billy Hawke was somewhat excited:

"Is the murderer among those four?"

Bernie shook his head, reminding him:
"It's also possible that someone from another floor went up to the third floor and was discovered by Alan Brennan."

"For example, firefighter Paul, who was in charge of the search and rescue on the second floor, or firefighter Reed, who was in charge of the search and rescue on the first floor."

Billy Hawke had a sudden inspiration:

"Paul was rescued from the fire four times by Alan Brennan. Could it be because he ran to the third floor that Alan Brennan threatened to report him and force him to leave the fire station?"

Theodore looked at him: "Why did Paul go to the third floor?"

Billy Hawke thought for a moment, then shook his head to indicate that he didn't know either.

Detective O'Malley asked Theodore:
"Who should we go to next?"

Theodore pointed to his wrist.

It's already past closing time.

He has been going to and from get off work on time recently and has never volunteered to work overtime.

The main reason was that he had already started writing the article he was going to publish in the FBI's internal publication, "Law Enforcement Gazette," and he thought about going home to write it every day.

Detective O'Malley was somewhat unwilling to give up.

He wished Theodore could stay up for three days and three nights like him.

Both parties agreed to meet at the Fourth Precinct the next day and then went their separate ways.

Back in his office on the basement floor of the Department of Justice building, Theodore found a letter on his desk.

This is very rare.

Theodore usually receives one package after another, which mainly contain periodicals and magazines from various states.

This is the first time I've received a letter.

Bernie and Billy Hawke both curiously came over to watch.

Upon opening the envelope, there was only one page of letter inside.

It is a court summons.

The summons, issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, requires him to appear in court at 9:30 a.m. on May 4, seven days later, for the trial of “Federal District v. Henry Thompson, Incitement to Bank Robbery”.

As a witness.

Billy Hawke looked somewhat bewildered:

"Didn't Henry Thompson plead guilty?"

He had just finished reading the case's closing report and still vividly remembered the ins and outs of the case.

Five months ago, Bernie and Theodore had just arrived in DC when they were assigned to a veteran agent who looked like he hadn't woken up yet.

Together they investigated a post office robbery.

Theodore's profiling analysis confirmed that the robbers were a gang with an organizer, and their ultimate target was the bank.

By communicating with the bank and setting up surveillance in advance, they caught the robbers red-handed.

During his trial, organizer Henry Thompson confessed to his crimes.

Billy Hawke thought the matter was over.

Theodore didn't answer; he casually put the summons aside and prepared to go home.

In his eyes, the summons was not as important as his writing career.

Bernie picked up the summons and read it carefully again:
"This is the first time we've received a federal subpoena."

The contents of the summons were no different from what they had received in Felton.

They've only been back in DC for less than six months, and three of those months were spent in selection training, so it's normal that they haven't received any summonses.

Bernie estimates that they should start receiving summonses in the second half of the year.

He even suspected that this subpoena wouldn't have appeared here if a certain sleepy veteran agent hadn't been far away in Chicago.

He left the summons and explained to Billy Hawke:
“Sometimes, even if the criminal pleads guilty, out of caution, the judge will still require the police officer in charge of the case to appear in court to make a statement.”

Billy Hawke didn't quite understand:

"But isn't there a confession from Henry Thompson? What else does the judge need the police officers to say in court?"

Bernie looked at Billy Hawke, then at Theodore, and felt that the two were really similar in some ways.

He explained:

"The judge was concerned that the confession was not given voluntarily by the criminal, but rather obtained by the police through special channels."

Billy Hawke understood now.

He glanced at Theodore, unable to imagine the scenes of Theodore using torture to extract confessions.

Bernie added:

"Sometimes criminals will recant their confessions."

"He confessed in the interrogation room, but denied it in court."

He and Theodore had attended one court hearing in Felton.

The defendant in the trial is Walter Jenkins, the mountain killer.

Felton's courts are inefficient, and cases typically take up to a year to go to trial.

The courts in DC seem to be very efficient; it should only take five months.

He remembered this and reminded Theodore:

"We'll have to go back to Felton frequently in the second half of the year."

Theodore checked the time and told the two of them to go home.

On his way home, Bernie was still resentful of Henry Thompson's ulterior motives.

In his view, there was only one possibility for this to happen: Henry Thompson recanted his confession and denied his actions in court.

The next day.

The four men set off to meet Henry Crawford.

Henry Crawford is 70 years old and a retired carpenter.

He suffers from severe joint nerve pain and usually moves around in a wheelchair.

According to Detective O'Malley, Alan Brennan frequently took care of Henry Crawford, pushing him outside in the sun, carrying him up and down stairs, and helping him buy necessities and medicine, among other things.

All of his clothes were taken home by Alan Brennan and washed by his wife.

He also really liked the Alan Brennan family and often secretly gave Alan Brennan's son, Tommy, money to buy Coke and snacks.

In the words of Henry Crawford in his testimony, Alan Brennan was like a father to him.

Henry Crawford always spent Christmas with Alan Brennan's family.

Alan Brennan's death was a huge blow to him.

According to Detective O'Malley, he would often burst into tears while talking.

He told Detective O'Malley that if he had died earlier, there would have been no one on the third floor, and Alan Brennan wouldn't have had to go into the fire and wouldn't have been killed.

When Theodore and his three companions met him, he was not in good condition.

He looked extremely haggard. As they opened the door to let them in, he kept coughing, his breathing sounding like a broken bellows, wheezing and panting.

Detective O'Malley treated Henry Crawford much better than the others.

He spoke first, inquiring about Henry Crawford's health.

Henry Crawford coughed and waved his hand, his voice hoarse:

"Ahem, haven't we caught the person who killed Allen yet?"

Detective O'Malley shook his head.

Henry Crawford coughed twice more, then sighed, his cloudy eyes brimming with tears.

He wiped his eyes and told them to ask whatever questions they had.

Bernie asked about his experience during the fire.

Henry Crawford paused for a moment, recalling what he had said:

“My water pipe broke, and I told Robert the day before that I would come and fix it for me.”

"Robert got off work very late that day, it was almost 11 o'clock before he came back."

"After he helped me change the water pipe, he sat for a while."

He looked at Theodore and the other three and explained:

“I have trouble sleeping and often can’t fall asleep at night, so I chatted with him for a while.”

"He was about to leave when he opened the door and found it was on fire."

After a few seconds of pause, he continued:
“Robert is not Allen; it took him a long time just to lift me into the wheelchair.”

"When we ran out, the outside was already full of thick smoke and flames."

"We ran up to the second floor and met the firefighters, who rescued us."

This is exactly the same as what Detective O'Malley described.

(End of this chapter)