"I understand."
Ravi clenched his hands on the steering wheels. He was wrong. He should not have said it like that. He should have phrased that better. That was stupid of him, he should have learned from his time as a Sentinel, learned from his time with Hunter that there was nothing to gain from making a superior dislike you. So why had he been so brutally honest?
He bit his inner cheeks and his fingers clenched even tighter as he drove down the road.
I understand.
What exactly did that mean? Arlen had not said any word since then, it was as if a wall was placed between the two of them even though they were sitting next to each other.
Ravi loved the quiet but the silence in the car seemed to sizzle in the car. A sense of relief filled his body when he finally parked in front of the apartment complex. Mrs Karen did not live in the poshest part of the town but Linoms Avenue was not bad.
It stood perfectly between the rich side of the city with its glazed-down roads and the poor sides filled with potholes and bumps. It was quiet but not too quiet, the kind of place anyone with a good salary would want to live and raise their children.
He got out of the car and leaned on the door, waiting for the next instructions. He half expected the Captain, Arlen to ask him to wait in the car but the other moved forward and looked back.
"What are you doing? Who is going to take their statements?"
Ravi froze but he reached into the car for the jotter and the recorder that was always at the side of the back seat and followed behind Arlen.
"Mrs Karen lives at No 40b. We would ask her more about her, just to get a feel of the situation." Arlen said, looking back at him.
Ravi looked up at him surprised. Even though he was not smiling at him, there was...no coldness. Just a noticeable distance.
The building was old with an outdated double security door. The two of them knocked on the door and a man opened the door.
He wore sideburns and a polka dot shirt, with peach-coloured snap buttons. His cheeks were sunken, polled with shadow. He leaned forward, brown eyes examined them, "Who the fuck are you?"
Arlen took a step forward and showed his police ID according to the procedure, "Hello! I am Arlen Sinclair from the Davenport Police Bureau. We are currently investigating a case and we hope you can cooperate without investigation."
The name police made the man shrink back a bit and he swallowed, the harsh hostility in his face fading a tad, "A case. Did anyone die?"
Arlen shook his head, "We would like to ask you about your neighbor, Mrs Karen Parker."
"That old witch! Is she dead? I told her Karma would come for her." After the words burst from his lips, he raised a hand to his lips, "Joking. I am just joking."
"An old witch? That is quite a peculiar term to use for a neighbor." Arlen muttered.
Ravi wrote down something seriously and the man got even more nervous, "I did not do anything to her, she is always reporting me for noise."
Ravi's writing got faster and so did the man's spiel, he did not have much to say about the woman. She had always reported him to the Building Management for noise pollution and she was very close to the Landlord so he had always avoided her. Her son was also a department head in a notable company in Alstria. But that was all they could get from him.
The man hurriedly shut the door when they were done with their questioning.
"Can I see your note?"
Ravi hesitated but still passed it to him. Initially, he had been drawing the man as a large round ball with polka dots and a small head before he started writing down the statement seriously in neat calligraphy.
Arlen's lips twitched but he did not say anything.
They went door to door, sometimes gaining a little thing or nothing at all. It was clear that Mrs Karen was a huge presence in the apartment building but she was quite liked.
This is not a murder case, fraud cases were mostly committed by strangers so Ravi honestly did not know why they were doing this.
"It is not that it is that bad. You know women like to shop."
They had finished with all the flats on the same floor as Mrs Karen and had made their way downstairs to another flat. The mother-in-law and the mistress of the house were the only ones around and they had gleefully invited them over.
"Not all women." The young woman said from inside the kitchen before carrying out a plate of milk cookies, "Officers, I baked them this morning."
Ravi declined politely but Arlen hurriedly helped himself to one, "So delicious. This should be the best milk cookie that I have taken all year. So, you said that she had a spending problem, what does she like buying in particular."
"Jewelry. Just last week, she bought a large gold piece and she wore it everywhere."
"I heard that her son has a good job in Alstria."
The older woman rolled her eyes, "Karen loves to boast, his job is not that big. She probably won the money in..."
At this moment she paused as if she realized who she had been gossiping with for the past ten minutes but Arlen was like a dog who had finally gotten a bone.
"Won the money where, A gambling center? Does Mrs Parker gamble?"
"It is not really gambling, just old people gathering to play cards." The woman tried to make it better.
"Where do they play these cards? You know if you help the police, they would implicate you but if you refuse to help us. Tsk. Tsk." He shook his head while munching on a cookie, "That would not be good for you."
He pried the information away from her in the end, along with several others.
Ravi was surprised when the two of them left the room, it turns out that Mrs Karen had never missed a night in the gambling center for more than ten years. If she had gambled away all her money, why would she come to the police station to report it when gambling was illegal in Davenport? Was she delirious or just crazy?
"The keys?"
Arlen's voice broke him out of his thoughts and the taller man stretched out his hand, "The keys."
"I can drive."
"It is 4 p.m. I would investigate a bit on my own and then clock out."