Interviewing the Alleged Alegari (Part 2)

Posted on Wed 10th Apr, 2019 @ 6:43pm by Captain Andrus Grax & Lieutenant Commander Andrew Eberstark & Lieutenant Adam Keller & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

894 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Intelligence Department
Timeline: MD-2, 1000 hours

(Continued from Part 1.)

Damion asked a few more questions about her background and then continued. "Miss Alegari, what is your understanding of why you're here?"

"It's all a MIS-understanding, I'm sure. I've done nothing wrong, but you seem to think I have. I visited your starbase, it seemed like a friendly place, housing was available inexpensively," she shrugged, "so I stayed. Now you insist I've killed someone. I'm not a killer, Lieutenant. It isn't in my nature. Truthfully," she said as if she'd thought about it for sometime, "killing is inefficient, you know?"

Damion gave her an interested look. "Works well where I come from. Here, it causes too much paperwork. I have no evidence--yet--that you've killed anyone. So no, you are not here on suspicion of murder, despite that ring the doctors removed from your finger. You're here because of the transmitter we found in the storage compartment where you were living."

Zelda's face puckered in confusion. "Transmitter? In my quarters? Transmitter for what? I don't understand, Lieutenant. Why would I have such a thing, and what would I be doing with it?"

Was she having him on, Damion wondered, or was there more to this? If her confusion was feigned, she was faking it very well. He'd swear it felt real. "You had a small device in the room with you, on that little table. Andrew, could you hand me my PADD?" he said to Eberstark.

Pausing from taking his notes and preparing to track whatever story the woman was about to spin to them, Andrew grabbed one of the PADDs in front of him and passed it to Damion.

Zelda waited for the interrogators to get themselves in order. What kind of device were they talking about, and what did they think she'd done with it? She couldn't recall anything that they could mean. What's more, why was he referring to her quarters as a storage compartment?

Outside the room and behind the screen, Andrus Grax stood beside Adam Keller with his arms folded across his chest. He glanced down at the other man seated beside him. "I really can't get a read on her," he remarked, more out of curiosity than frustration. "You're part Betazoid too, right?" he asked rhetorically, already knowing the answer. "Are you getting anything?"

"She's telling the truth. She's completely confused about the transmitter." Adam sat forward. "She's hiding something, but..." He shook his head. "She's getting more and more confused."

"Perhaps that's it," Grax responded pragmatically, "I'm not struggling because I can't read her, I'm struggling because she's not feeling just one thing. But," he continued quietly, thinking out loud, "If she genuinely doesn't know about the transmitter, then why is she lying?"

Back in the interrogation room, Damion accepted his PADD from Eberstark. He tapped on it, slid a fingertip over the screen, and tapped it a couple more times. Then he showed Zelda the image of the home she'd made in the storage compartment. "Here you are."

He had perfected the art of observing a person without seeming to observe them on the streets of Edinburgh. Damion observed Zelda that way now, watching her eyes dart over the image as she looked first at one detail, then at another. He paid the most attention, though, to her expression between the times when she was looking. He could hear Adam and Grax talking softly through his earpiece.

"This isn't my quarters," Alegari said calmly, handing the PADD back. "I don't know what you are trying to pull, but my quarters have plants everywhere, plants I bought right here in the Promenade on your station. You can check, if you like. They came from a place called ..." she struggled to remember, and was partially successful, "Scentsy or something like that. Besides, that looks like some sailor's storage compartment, not the quarters I have.

"We can take a field trip, if you like," she smiled coyly at the man across from her, her voice husky. "I'll show you my quarters ... and you can show me yours." Her entire demeanor had changed, become subtly alluring. Within seconds, she became another woman entirely. "What do you say?"

"I say you're a bonny lass, and no mistake," Damion replied in a low voice, letting his gaze travel over her as if he were flirting with a girl from back home. "What's your name, beautiful?"

"Destiny ... and I could be yours," she answered in a smoky voice. "Let's get out of here and go someplace more ... comfortable."

Andrew's eyebrow raised, glancing only partially up from his PADD as he took note of the obvious change in tone this line of questioning took. Feeling slightly bothered by the ease at which the woman changed her persona, he could only speculate how the rest of this interrogation would go.

Adam sat back stunned. "Her entire demeanor just changed." He looked back at Grax. "She's umm...aroused, confident...no confusion at all." He grunted, "It's almost like there's a totally different person sitting there. I don't think she's doing this on purpose."

“I agree,” said Grax, “And I’m getting a read on her now alright.” He stared through the screen at the woman in the interview room, his next words little more than a whisper. “Who... or what... are you?l

 

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