Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4) (7 page)

“Look, with all due respect
, S
ergeant,” I emphasized the last word. “I don’t have to answer you. You’
re the
security guard at a now empty auditorium. You’re not the police.
” I looked past him. “
I haven’t been read my rights,” I called to Manning.

“We’ll
get to that soon enough, douche bag
. Far as I can tell the
s
ergeant
here
is just doing his
job
. He
pursued and detained an abusive individual
, you. That same individual, you,
was involved in an assault on a young woman
earlier tonight
,
one
Felicity
Bard,
AKA Emma Babe.
”

“Come on, assa
ult? It was self—
defense, there were witnesses.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, there were witnesses. Seven, Sergeant
, is that correct
?”

“Seventeen,”
Sergeant
Wayne replied,
he continued to stare down at me
then rubbed his right fist into the palm of his left hand
and glared
some more
.

“And they were all witnesses
? T
o an assault
?”

“
You got it. They a
ll s
igned statements saying this jerk
attacked that little
English
girl down in the hallway outside the visiting women’s locker room.”

“Lurking outside a woman’s locker room, sounds predatory,” Manning smiled.

“I want my lawyer,” I said.

“Lawyer? You’re not even in our custody, yet,” Manning grinned. “You know Sergeant, there’s been a bit of a history with someone stalking these English gi
rls
ever
since they arrived in the
US
.”

“Really?”
Sergeant
Wayne sat up,
I could tell because his rolls of fat rearr
anged themselves
, stretching the buttons of his shirt to the breaking point
. H
e never took
his eyes off me
.

“Yeah,
seems
someone
has been
mailing them body parts
, following them around.”

“Body parts?”

“Yeah, to
those little English girls,
can
you
imagine?
What sort of limp wristed bastard would do that?
” Manning sai
d, then smiled
at me, eyes twinkling.

Wayne
nodded,
glared down at me
thinking he knew exactly the sort
of bastard
.
I could sense the wheels inside his thick skull slowly begin to turn.

“Knock this shit off
, Manning. Y
ou’re going to get Sergeant Schultz here all excited. They were fingers
Wayne
, fingers.”

Wayne
’s eyes grew large and
he
turned to Manning.

“There’s your confession, dete
ctive. Bastard just admitted it, didn’t take him too long.
”

“Wow, it sure sounded like it,
good job,
” Manning said
,
deadpan
.

“Manning, knock this shit off and get me out of here. You know I didn’t have anything to do with that shit. We talked about it on the phone yesterday.”

“See
Wayne
, it’s not uncommon for your serial killer
s, stalkers and the like to crave
publicity. They’re always trying to prove they’re smarter then the folks like you and me
actually
involved in law enforcement.”

“Get me the hell out of here, come on
,
Manning,” I pleaded.

“Okay,
since he’s confessed
I guess
we
’
ll take it
from here,” Manning said
after a long moment
.

Wayne
nodded, then yanked my arms up behind my back to unlock his handcuffs.

“Ouch, Jesus, will you watch it. What the hell’s wrong with you, Wayne?”

He pulled me close, hissed at me. From his breath I guessed he’d spent a good part of the night
protecting the Bratwurst stand.

“I better not see you
r worthless ass
in my auditorium, ever again
.”

“Your auditorium? G
od, g
et me out of here, Manning, come on, please.”

“Look Dev,
trust me
on this, as your
personal
legal advisor I’m telling you
it would be a really bad idea for me to get my fat ass down there tonight. I’ve had a couple of drinks.”

Louie Laufen, my attorney, was slurring his words. Even over the noise from the jukebox in whatever bar he was in
,
I could hear that much.

“Louie, can you call someone else to come down and get me out of here tonight? I don’t want to spend the night locked up in
a
jail
cell
.”

“No, no what’s the score…”
I guessed he was talking to whoever was seated next to him at
the bar.

“Louie!”

“Hello, who’s this…”

It was close to eleven the following morning before I was released.

“Look Dev, what are you pissed off at me for? I came as soon as you called?” Louie said.
We were standing on the sidewalk
outside of the
Ramsey County J
ail, cars
were
backed up
along
Kellogg Boulevard
in both directions due to
the road construction.

“You came a
s soon as I called? Louie, I called you last night.”

“You did? When?”

“After they broug
ht me in
, as soon as I could get to a phone.
”

“No shit, well why didn’t you leave a message?”

“A message? I talked with you, man, but you said you couldn’t come down.”

“Mmm-mmm, actually, that was probably a pretty good idea, me not coming down. No, I don’t thin
k I
would have helped last night.
Well, no real harm done,
”
he said and slapped me
on the shoulder.

“No real… I spent the night in jail
, Louie
.”

“
Not the first time, Dev, can I drop you somewhere?
”

“Yeah, as a matter of fa
ct, if it hasn’t been towed I
have to pick
up my car
at
the
Veteran’s Auditorium.”

“That’s n
ot exactly on my way, I was…”

“No real harm done,” I said, then
slapped him on the shoulder and
glared.

“
Okay, okay, come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

My car hadn’t been towed, but o
nly because they hadn’t gotten to it, yet. It was ticketed for a tow, parked in an overnight spot you weren’t supposed to park in overnight.

“Damn it,
a hundred-and-twenty-five bucks,
”
I said, tossing the ticket into my front seat.

“Count your blessings
, it would have been two-twenty-five
if they towed you over to the impound lot,” Louie
said, then waved and drove off,
Mister Positive.

I drove home to shower, change and
use a bathroom where I could close the door. I was getting undressed and pulled my phone out
of
my pocket to set it on the dresser. I had four messages and a-half-dozen texts. All had com
e through while I had been
in custody. T
he first text was from Jimmy
short and
to the point, ‘U’r fired’. The next five were from Justine
,
but I didn’t have the heart to read them. I deleted them
all
and moved onto the messages.

They were all from Justine,
too.
I was about to learn she could be a woman of few words.

“Dev, you okay?”

“Dev, call me.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Don’t call me.”

I called her, and had to leave a message.

“Hi Justine, Dev. Look there seems to be a slight misunderstanding about last night. I’d like to explain, please call. Thank you.”

I took a long, hot shower. I
hosed
off
the woman’s locker room, the assault, my interrogation, a night in the cell next to the drunk tank and the fifteen m
inute ride in Louie’s car
.
I
n
the shower I discovered a knot
on the top of my head where one of those reactionary
English
chicks
had
clubbed me with her helmet.

Justine didn’t return my call. I got dressed and drove to the office. I stuffed two quarters in the slot and grabbed a copy of the morning paper
from
the box on the co
rne
r, climbed the stairs and made some
coffee up
in my of
fice. I
poured what amounted to
barely
half a
cup then opened up the paper. There, in the b
ottom corner
of the
front page,
Local Man Assaults English Girl
, story page 3. Wonderful.

The article, written by a James Tarbox, was three paragraphs long.
I couldn’t recall talking with this hack.
It was accompanied by a photo of Felicity Bard
;
AKA Emma Babe. In the photo she was bending down,
resting
her hands on the shoulders of three cherub-like children at a
London
Heart
Hospital
.
In the photo
Emma looked like an innocent
fourteen-year—
old with
big boobs
. The article gave all the pertinent details, she weighed one-hundred-and-seven pounds, stood five—
feet-two-inches and was over here fundraising at her own expense so the hospital could purchase a
CT scanner for children.
She
’d
been hospitalized over
night for observation. Mercifully my name wasn’t mentioned.
I was
simply
described as “a local man
known to police”.

My phone rang, dragging me out of the daydream where I was shoving Emma in her roller skates off a ramp
and
into the
Grand Canyon
.

“Hello?”

“I’m returning your call.”

“Justine, thanks for calling.” I waited a very long moment for a response, there wasn’t one. “Hello?”

“I’m returning your call.”

“Thank you. L
ook
,
I just wanted to explain. I didn’t mean for things to get out of hand
last night. God, it seems like everyone has just jumped to a conclusion and…”

“Jumped to a conclusion? For your information there are about a million witnesses. We were all hauled in to talk to the head of security at the Veteran’s Auditorium…”

“That lard ass
Wayne
guy?”

“
I don’t know,
h
e’
s the s
ergeant in charge, to tell you the truth we were all just a little too shocked to get his name.
”

“He’s not some s
ergeant, that’s just the name of the security company that…”

“I don’t know that any of that is really important right now, we’re looking at a potential lawsuit here
. I’ve spent the better part of last night and all of this morning doing damage control with the media.
”

“A lawsuit?”

“We
were stupid enough to hire you and
put you in touch with the Hastings Hustlers. You said it wouldn’t be a problem, you’d just move us to the top of the list, thanks a bunch.
You failed to mention it would be your shit list.
I’ve been talking to lawyers all morning.”