Alexander James McLean
May 14, 2010 20:19

Jensen finishing notarising the interview on a cassette tape and dropped it in an old school recorder before hitting the record button.

“Ever heard of digital?” AJ asked with a nervous laugh, rubbing his sweaty palms on the legs of his jeans. He was stressed out and dying for a little rest but every time he closed his eyes he could see that girl lying in the alley covered in blood.

She cracked a small smile, recognizing the sign of someone who was on edge, "Digital is so unreliable. The first time I lost an interview was the last time I used digital. I find tape more consistent."

AJ crossed and uncrossed his legs, running a hand over his barely-there hairline, "Fair enough, that makes sense."

"Can you tell me why you're so nervous?" Jensen asked, taking a seat across from the man.
They had found a different dressing room to do their interviews in, wanting to keep everyone separate. They couldn't rule anything out without talking to them first and the fact that the only people who were anywhere near the scene of the crime was the boys and their crew was slightly incriminating.

Taking a deep breath AJ again wiped his hands on the legs of his jeans, shrugging, "I've... never seen a dead body like that before. I'm freaking out, honestly. Seeing a dead person at a funeral is one thing but that...that was really messed up."

Jensen nodded, writing a few notes down on the pad of paper in her hand. He seemed to be legitimate. The first officer on scene had told her that he was the one who called 911 that he had been coming back from dinner to get ready for the concert when he and his fiancée had stumbled upon the body in the alley but there were still a few unanswered questions she had.

"Why were you in the alley tonight?" she asked, pencil at the ready.

"My fiancée and I were coming back from dinner. A bunch of us had gotten a drive back to the buses after sound check and came back here a couple of hours later. This venue has a weird set up, they don't really have a private entrance and it's just not a good idea for me to go loiter around the front door trying to get in. They told me there was a staff entrance at the back of the building but didn't say which side so I picked one, and..."

"Did you see or hear anything when you went into the alley?"

AJ shook his head, "No, Rochelle and I were talking. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary but... come to think of it, there was this terrible smell. You know when you get really drunk and spend hours throwing up until there's nothing left in your stomach?"

Jensen blinked hard then shook her head, "I can't say I do."

Blushing, AJ continued, "I used to have an alcohol problem - sober now though. Anyway, that's what the smell reminded me of. When there's nothing left but you just keep heaving this bitter goo... just thinking about it makes me little nauseous. What is that stuff called? Is it stomach acid?"

Jensen was a little unnerved by what he was getting at considering that no one knew anything about the details of the case except for the police and the medical examiner. She stopped writing notes only briefly, looking up at him, "It's bile," she answered and he nodded in agreement, "Were your band mates with you when you came back from the buses?"

"No," AJ shook his head, "not all of them, Brian and Nick stayed here. Howie and I, the girls and the kids all went back together. Then we... well, Rochelle and I... got distracted, and missed the first ride back to the venue so I don't know when they got back here."

Before they'd come in to do interviews Jensen and Knox had a chance to talk with the crime scene investigators. They'd found the girl's purse near the body complete with all of her cash, credit cards and tickets to the show. They'd bagged everything including her wallet which they left open in the bag to show her identification.

"The girl we found in the alley," Jensen explained, "she had a sticker on the bottom of her shirt. It was red with your picture on it. Would you be able to tell me what that is?"

"Oh my god," AJ muttered as he realized that the girl in the alley must have been there for the show, "You get stickers with our picture on them when you register for VIP before sound check party. You have to have the sticker on you somewhere so the people organizing it know which level of VIP you have, they're colour coded."

Jensen picked up the evidence bag with the wallet, holding it up so AJ could see the driver's licence on the inside clearly, "Do you recognize this girl?"

He looked long and hard, but she was fairly average looking and wouldn't have stood out in the crowd. She was pretty he noted, sure to use the word was in his mental monologue. He caught a look at her birth date briefly, sighing when he realized it would have been her 21st birthday.
Looking back to the detective he shook his head, "I'm sorry, no. There were a lot of girls there today; she could have been any one of them."

Jensen nodded and put the wallet back down on her lap, "Thank you for your help."

~*~

Nickolas Gene Carter
May 14, 2010 21:32

At the same time AJ was being questioned Knox was using a different room to interview Rochelle. They both had identical stories about missing their ride, not being able to find the door and stumbling upon the body in the alley rather innocently.

Jensen was presently interviewing Brian Littrell and Knox had the joy of sitting in front of golden boy Nick Carter. He didn’t even know the guy but he already disliked him. He just had an air about him that screamed privilege. He was slouched back in his seat, legs spread, drumming his long fingers against his thigh. To Knox it seemed unusual for someone to be so casual when they were being interviewed about a suspicious death. It was usually an indication of one of two things; either this guy had something to hide or he was just a cocky asshole. Knox suspected the latter.

He’d just gotten an email from the medical examiner with a picture of the girl at the morgue so he and Jensen didn’t have to share. Not that Jensen would have had much use for an email, she would have had to go back to the station, kick her archaic computer ten times and perform a rain dance, before she could actually be lucky enough to get connected to the Internet. She was the least technological person he’d ever met but he was happy to hold the title of ‘computer guy’ in their partnership. So while he already had crime scene and morgue photos on his iPhone, Jensen was more than happy with the physical evidence.

“How’s it going?” Knox asked, starting off the conversation on a positive note.

Nick shrugged, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and Knox was pretty sure he caught a whiff of alcohol on the blond, “I’m supposed to be finishing up a show and heading to the next city by now not getting interviewed by the cops, so how do you think I am?”

He was a wily one, Knox noted, “Have you been drinking Mr. Carter?”

Nick scoffed, his brow furrowing with indignation, “Mr. Carter is my Dad you can call me Nick, and yes I had some wine with dinner. Is that illegal now?”

“Not at all, I was just wondering,” Knox said, marking in his notepad that Nick was slightly defensive but that his alcohol consumption could be leading to his attitude. Knox had a hard time believing him when he said he had wine with dinner unless he’d meant an entire bottle. It had been a few hours since they’d supposedly eaten, “Rochelle Karidis said that you and Mr. Littrell didn’t go back to your buses after dinner, and that you both stayed here. Why?”

Nick shrugged for a second time, wondering what the detective was writing down in his little notepad, “I didn’t have a reason to go back. I needed to be here and I was here so I stayed.”

“Your girlfriend went back though?” Knox asked and Nick nodded to the affirmative, “What did you do?”

“Played on my phone, talked to some of the guys on the crew, just wasted time,” the taller man answered, sliding back in the chair with a yawn.

“What about Mr. Littrell? What did he do?”

Nick laughed, putting both hands on the top of his head lazily, “I have no idea. I don’t keep tabs on him. Why don’t you ask him?”

“We will,” Knox said offhandedly before pulling up the morgue photo on his iPhone, “Have you ever seen this girl before?”

Nick leaned forward only slightly, shaking his head after a glance, “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

“What does a red VIP sticker mean?” the detective asked quickly and Nick’s hands dropped back to his lap.

“It means the person is paying for Platinum VIP. They get to come to sound check, get a photo, an autograph, a back stage tour...”

“Back stage tour?” Knox asked curiously, “Who does those?”

Nick cleared his throat, “It’s a rotation.”

“Who did it today?”

“I did.”

Knox mocked surprise, he had already known the answer to the question because Rochelle had told him as much earlier but he wanted to hear Carter say it, “So if I told you that this girl had one of those red VIP stickers and Miss Karidis confirmed that she saw her standing with you just before the backstage tour would you still say you’d never seen her before?”

A smirk spread across Nick’s face, the reaction surprising the detective, “I’d say she looks like half the girls who were there. I have a girlfriend; I’m not really looking, so she might have been there, I may have even looked at her, but that doesn’t mean I saw her.”

Knox was sure now that cocky asshole was definitely the way he would describe Nick Carter, but he wasn’t confident that he had anything to do with what had happened to the girl. His sneaking suspicion though, was that someone around there did.