Chapter 31

Friday, February 4th, 2022
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Brad was home and just sitting down to eat as I rang the bell.

He said, “Hey man, long time no see. Come on back into the kitchen. How is it going?”

As I sat across from him at the table, I said, “Really well. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be migrating to a new persona soon. This persona is going to fade into the background, and I’ll be the new guy pretty much full-time.”

He said, “Tell me about him.”

I replied, “John Walker Junior. Of the ‘Walker Furniture’ ads, you’ve no doubt seen on TV. He came very close to killing himself recently and ended up in a coma. I’m taking over his life while he is incapacitated. We’re not expecting any change in his condition going forward. His Dad is helping with the process.”

Brad said, “Cool. When can I meet him?”

I changed my head to John’s and said, “This is what I’ll look like, but give me a week or so to settle in before we try hooking up. I’ll probably just be getting out of a wheelchair by then. How are things going with Rhonda?”

He said, “She’s great. We’ve seen each other more days than not since you introduced us. I’ve been really enjoying hanging out with her. Thanks again for hooking us up.”

I said, “I’m happy it’s working out. Have you heard anything else from the cops about Tori since they interviewed you?”

“Nope, not personally. However, I’ve heard through Rhonda that the case was indeed taken over by the Feds, or at least they did get involved. One of them pulled her in for another interview. Rhonda told me it was all the same questions and the same answers she had already answered.”

I said, “I’m going to have to look into that again. They should have made some progress by now. I ought to be able to learn more if I talk to the right people.”

With that, I shifted back to Paul’s face. I sent John’s contact info to Brad and thanked him for everything again, then headed for the police station once more.

I walked into the station, and Carl ensured I got all the help I needed from the four different clerks and assistants that I needed to work through before I met with the Chief.

Chief Vince Niski had announced his retirement in mid-January and I guessed he would be a hard man to get to see without my powers. I’m sure he was busy wrapping things up. However, he was in the office today, and that was all I needed to make it happen.

I walked into his office, and Carl recruited him for me as soon as he looked up. I sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk and said, “Tell me about the investigation into the death of Tori Nichols.”

He replied, “Well, we barely started looking into it when the BAU got involved and basically took the case out of our hands, not that we had much to go on anyway, to be honest. They believe, and I agree, that it was a serial killer who abducted and killed her. I can get you in touch with the detective in charge of the case for more details if you like. Frankly, I don’t know much more than what I’ve already told you about the specifics.”

I asked, “Do you know why that information hasn’t been released to the public? Why haven’t we heard anything on the news about it?”

He said, “That was the BAU’s call. They believe this particular killer has a track record of moving on soon afterward. We’re keeping her death under wraps in the hopes of lulling him into sticking around until it makes a splash, or he makes a mistake wondering why he’s not hearing about it. Well, that’s their theory anyway. It’s really out of my hands.”

I said, “Brilliant, who’s the local Agent in Charge? Can you introduce me?”

He said, “Sure, Supervisory Special Agent Donaldson. I’ll ask him to step in when he has a chance. It shouldn’t take long. I’m sure he is in the building today.”

I said, “Thank you. Is there a place he and I can speak privately?”

The Chief stood up and said, “Yes, follow me.”

He led the way to a nearby small conference room and told me that he would bring the Agent to me when he arrived. While we were headed there, I exchanged phone numbers with him. When we stepped into the room, I said, “I may need to contact you for assistance in the future, and you can certainly expect me to reach out to you for an introduction to your replacement. You will always take my calls and help me out however you can.”

He nodded acceptance.

I continued by saying, “I’m sure the agent will be curious about who I am. Tell him my name is Paul Johnson and that you are convinced that I should be able to help him with his case. It will be worth a couple of minutes of his time.”

He told me he would do that and then left me alone in the room. There was a small round table that only had four chairs around it and a phone that sat on a side counter. Other than some artwork and blinds on the large glass windows on either side of the only door, the room was completely empty. I closed the blinds, but there was still a vertical, six-inch-wide, and about 4-foot tall window near the door handle in the door itself that couldn’t easily be covered. It wouldn’t be a problem, though.

Agent Donaldson entered the room alone about 15 minutes later. We shook hands and greeted each other. I introduced myself first.

He Said, “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Donaldson. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Johnson. I hear that you can help me with the case. How is that?”

Carl recruited him, and I said, “I can do a great many things, but the ones I thought might be the most helpful is that I can make a guilty subject tell you the truth. I can make them confess their crimes and give you all the details you should need to convict them. Hell, I can make them turn themselves in if I can identify them and get close enough.”

“Similarly, I could help with tracking down a suspect, as I could convince normally reluctant witnesses to be completely forthcoming. I would be happy to do those things for you in this case, if we can find a good way to either explain my abilities or to guarantee my anonymity.”

He said, “Well that is amazing, and oddly enough, I do believe you completely. However, I’m not sure how we could explain any of that off the top of my head.”

I said, “It may not be viable to be out in the open, and if not I would just need to stay out of sight while doing the work, but I was thinking perhaps one of my alternate personas could do one of two things. One is to be a hypnotist who is able to pull data from suspects or witnesses, but I’m not sure of the legality there.”

He said, “That might be worth pursuing. There are some cases where forensic hypnosis has successfully been used in criminal investigation, but one of the prerequisites is that the person would not need to testify later, and all discovered facts need to be verified or disproved with independent evidence.”

I replied, “Okay, we can keep that in mind for another time perhaps. Another idea is to pretend to be an instinctive lie detector. Portray it as just a freak natural ability that he can’t explain. If we could vet the ability, well enough to make it believable to a few skeptics, perhaps you could hire him as a special consultant or something like that.”

He asked, “Can you do that? I mean actually tell if someone is lying?”

I said, “Hmm, I might be able to, but if not I can certainly fake it.”

He asked, “How?”

I replied, “I could secretly force someone to do something obvious whenever they lie, like twirl their hair, make a fist, or close one eye. I could even have them not notice they were doing it and only do it for a period of time.”

“I’ll have to work on straight detection as it might be possible, however, I might need some time with a polygraph expert to bounce ideas off of and get it working. I should be able to secretly monitor the same kinds of readings as the machine does if nothing else. Not knowing you are effectively hooked up to a machine like that has got to make it easier for me to detect the lies.”

He replied, “The first method would probably work very well, so long as the interview was not being video recorded. But the second method has great potential too and should be explored. I can definitely get you some time with an expert. There might even be someone suitable here in the police station.”

I said, “Well before we go too far on that road, let’s just try the direct method first. If I can make it work in secret and at range, we might be best served by keeping my abilities completely off the radar. You don’t mind being a test subject for me, do you?”

He said, “No, I don’t mind. I’m happy to help.”

[Carl, let’s try adding two new gauges to the tap. I want one to measure honesty and the other to measure nervousness. I picture half-circle scales with a 0 in the center. For the honesty gauge, make the left side the truth and the right side for lies. For the nervousness, gauge do the same but call them calm and anxious. Put a green-to-red gradient band on the honesty scale and blue-to-red on the nervousness gauge to make it obvious at a glance.]

He sent, [Ready when you are.]

I said, “What’s your first name by the way?”

He said, “Martin.”

I said, “Okay Martin, how would you rate yourself on a scale of nervousness right now? Picture it as a gauge where neutral is a 0 in the middle. Being completely calm while meditating is one end of the scale and the needle would read -4. Having a panic attack is the other end of the scale at +4.”

He said, “More calm than nervous, so call it a -1 at the moment.”

Carl was sending me an image of Martin and I saw the gauge adjust to -1.

I said, “Okay, now I want you to just rattle off a stream of true things for a while, like; the sky is blue, the color of your shoes, your dog’s name, things like that. Then I want you to start switching it up and try to make me believe a few lies mixed in between truths. Things like the size of the last fish you caught. You will not realize that you are doing it, but for the rest of the day, you will unconsciously tap something with a finger on your left hand while you are telling a lie.”

I watched the gauges and his nervousness meter barely fluctuated at all, but the lies showed up on the honesty gauge loud and clear. The needle swings to the right coincided with times when his finger would start tapping every time.

[Holy Shit Carl, we have a lie detector that is undetectable, and works at range.]

He replied, [I can’t wait to give it a real test run.]

I said, “You can stop now, Martin. I got it working. If you can get me in range of a cooperative agent, and we can work out secure communications, I can walk them through an interview and separate the truth from the lies.”

He asked, “What range is that exactly?”

I said, “Approximately 20 yards.”

He said, “Incredible. I’m in town with just one other agent at the moment, the rest of my team is dealing with another case while we wrap up things here. I’ll pair you two up as I have a lot of liaison work and meetings on my plate today.”

I told him, “I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

He replied, “Actually, her name is Agent Cynthia Mason, let me call her in.”

I replied, “Okay when she gets here just tell her she’ll be working with me. I’ll do the rest. Oh and ask her to bring anything she needs to give a summary of the investigation with her.”

He made a call from his cell phone and a few minutes later she opened the door. Agent Mason was a very serious-looking woman in her early 30s. Dressed in a charcoal suit and with her dark blonde hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. She had a stern look on her face and I guessed in those first few seconds that she would have a no-nonsense personality.

Carl flashed me an image of her with Team Carl on it, recruiting her to our side.

Agent Donaldson said, “Agent Mason, this is Paul Johnson. I am going to detail you to assist this man in the Tori Nichols case. You will answer all of his questions and work with him to explore what the two of you can accomplish together.”

I said, “Agent Mason, as you should now be aware, I have some powerful skills that I am willing to use to assist you in the investigation. We need to spend some time working out how to best use them together. You don’t really understand the scope of possibilities yet, so we’ll have to do some experimenting. You will be completely on board with working with me as a partner. Is that understood?”

She nodded and said, “Understood.”

I continued, “I don’t know how we need to go about explaining my presence in your investigation, but you both need to keep in mind that I am currently impersonating a man who lives in rural Vermont. I do not want him to receive any unwanted attention due to my actions while impersonating him. With that in mind, both of you will keep me out of any reporting that you do and try to keep the level of my involvement hidden from law enforcement where possible.”

Agent Donaldson said, “Yes sir, we can do that.”

I said, “It would look very strange if people heard either of you being overly deferential to me. I’m just someone who has some skills you want to use to your advantage. We should treat each other like we are on the same team, but I am just a valuable resource. Now, how about you get me up to speed on the investigation, and why you are involved.”

Donaldson gestured to Mason to begin, and she pulled a crime scene picture of a body out of a folder and said, “On January 18th, 2018, the body of Maria Vasquez (age 32, single Hispanic female, olive skin, long dark hair, athletic figure) was found after being reported missing two nights before in Miami, Florida. The unsub had stripped her naked and gagged her with a sock in her mouth and it was held in place with a bunch of duct tape. He used three strips of the tape going pretty much ear to ear, covering the lower half of her face. Her left wrist was tied to her left ankle with about six inches of twisted tape making a rope between the wraps around the limbs. The right arm and ankle got the same treatment.”