Night Passenger

by David Stanley

  Thorne stuck his right leg out onto the asphalt and managed to balance against the door frame as he dragged his wounded left leg out. Cabot grabbed him roughly by his elbow and walked him quickly toward the building. The rain lashed against them as they covered the short distance to the entrance. Inside, the building was quiet. He could see a few lights and computer screens lit up, but only a couple of people. It was early morning, and word of his arrest had yet to draw other cops in. He supposed that some who were on duty were now involved in locking down the crime scene. Cabot led him to an interview room and pushed him into a chair. He removed the plastic bag then re-handcuffed him through a bar on the table in front of him. The position pulled painfully on his shoulder injury, but he said nothing and instead stared blankly up at the lieutenant.

  “All right, how about you tell me what happened?”

  “I’m not saying shit to you without a lawyer.”

  Cabot's nostrils flared.

  "That's not what innocent people say, Thorne. If you want me to believe you're not guilty, you're going to have to convince me. I got to tell you, this silent routine works fine for me. Saying nothing is like admitting you did it."

  It was true, he couldn't give them nothing. He needed to clear himself without giving them Blake. Obstruction only stood to lengthen his stay in custody and both Lauren and Kate were at risk. Cabot had seen him talking to Blake in the parking lot beforehand, as had many of the patrons. The lieutenant could hardly act surprised if he told them about another man being there, all the evidence would support it. Thorne hunched forward in his seat to take the pressure off his shoulder.

  "That other cop, the young guy. I'll talk to him."

  "Detective Barnes?"

  Thorne could tell he'd struck a nerve. There was friction of some kind between the two cops, perhaps envy. The detective was going places, the lieutenant was not.

  "Yeah."

  "A man’s dead. I have to tell his wife that her husband's not coming home and you're sitting there playing games. You need to wake up, Thorne. The time for bullshit has passed."

  Thorne said nothing.

  Cabot leaned over him, his jaw thrust forward like he was tonguing a piece of steak out of his front teeth. The lieutenant’s desire to inflict pain on him was obvious. Thorne knew he had to walk a fine line while they were alone together. People died in police custody all the time, and he had no plans to be one of them.

  After a beat, Cabot stepped back, over to the doorway.

  “Since you’ve been so co-operative, I’ve got a real treat in store for you. I’m going to make some calls and with a bit of luck you won’t have too long to wait. Might even be done before I get back. A sign of things to come.”

  Cabot winked at him in way he didn’t much care for, then pulled the door closed. Although he listened for it, he couldn’t hear if the door was locked or simply shut. In the heel of his right shoe was a thin piece of metal from an old watch strap. He’d used it on Night Passenger to escape from a pair of handcuffs back in season two and he’d gotten into the habit of carrying it around. It had become something of a party piece. He could get out the cuffs if he wanted to, but then what? Escape would certainly make him look guilty. He needed to relax, let Cabot make a fool of himself and get the man off his back for good.

  After a while, a heavyset man opened the door and stood before him. Though time moved slowly inside the room, he estimated no more than half an hour had passed outside it. The man was wearing a paper suit and latex gloves that extended up over his forearms. He carried an aluminum flight case in one hand and a roll of plastic in the other. Thorne suspected his day was about to take a bad turn. Cabot’s ‘special treat’ had arrived. The man set his equipment down on the floor and sat on the chair opposite.

  “I’m here to collect physical evidence regarding the death of James Ashcroft. Do you consent to this search?”

  “What happens if I don’t?”

  The man nodded. “Not much. I make a note of your objection, then get a couple of deputies to help me perform it anyway. I assume that was a hypothetical question?”

  Thorne sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “All right.” The man unsnapped his case and began to pull gear out. “Let’s get those handcuffs off. We don’t need those, do we?”

  After he’d removed the handcuffs, the tech photographed Thorne’s hands with a close up lens and a ring flash. His hands were pretty beat up, he realized, particularly his right from the time he’d driven it through Lauren’s dressing table mirror. This done, the technician set the camera aside, and opened a small plastic case. He peeled off a cover and pressed a disc into the webbing of Thorne’s right hand between thumb and forefinger. The disc was sticky and the man lifted it up and down across the area, spreading out across the back of his hand until the disc lost adhesion. He sealed the tester into a container, then began the process again on Thorne’s left hand.

  “You’re wasting your time, I didn’t fire the gun.”

  The man spoke without lifting his eyes.

  “I never waste my time, Mr Thorne. If you’re innocent and I can prove that, I will gladly do so. There’s no justice if the wrong person is convicted.”

  “Too bad Cabot doesn’t have that attitude. He damn near busted my head open before he arrested me. It probably needs stitched.”

  The man was sealing the second wand into its protective enclosure and his hands froze and his eyes flipped up to look at him.

  “Lieutenant Cabot assaulted you?”

  “With his gun.”

  “Tilt your head forward.”

  Thorne did so and felt the man’s gloved fingers moving through his hair. The pain in his scalp returned as the movement started a fresh bleed. The technician swore quietly to himself. He felt no guilt doing this to Cabot, as far as he was concerned it made them square. The cut on his head would’ve been discovered anyway and this allowed him to control its meaning, made it work for him.

  “I’m going to photograph your injury. When we’re done here, I’ll arrange to have someone come deal with it. You might, as you say, need stitches.”

  When the man was through he stood and unrolled the plastic sheeting across the floor next to the table. It was obvious to Thorne what was going to happen next, it had been clear to him from the moment he’d seen the plastic.

  “Stand here and remove all your clothes. Place your clothing into this bag, and your footwear into this bag.”

  Thorne clenched his teeth, then walked over to where the other man stood holding two bags. This was Blake’s fault. From a certain point of view, it was Adolf Hitler’s. Because of the Nazis and a painting, he was on the hook for a murder. He took off his shoes and dropped them into the first bag. There went his handcuff pick. To his surprise, he felt more vulnerable knowing the small piece of metal was gone. It might’ve been a futile gesture, but it was something they didn’t know about, something he could use to escape. The first bag was taken away and sealed. He stripped down mechanically, without thinking where he was and his circumstance. He had lost his fear about what other men thought of him naked when he was in boot camp and, like Kate, had appeared in various states of undress on national TV. If this was what Cabot had actioned against him he wasn’t going to see what he wanted on any video playback. Before too long, he’d removed everything. The cold floor sucked the heat out of his body straight through the plastic. He looked at the man in front of him who was staring at the marks on his chest and the bandages.

  “I’m not removing my bandages. If you need to see under them, you can have a medic remove them and replace them with new dressings when you’re done.”

  The tech considered this for a moment before nodding.

  “OK, we can come back to that if necessary.”

  The man fetched a second camera which he set up on a tripod in front of him.

  “Just a couple more pictures. Keep as still as possible.”

  Thorne said nothing. He’d seen pictures of famo
us killers as research for his show and every one of them looked like the killer they were. He made his face calm, with no trace of emotion. Anger was a natural reaction under the circumstances, but angry pictures didn’t go down well in court. The tech took multiple pictures using filters over the lens. UV/IR shots. Night Passenger had explored latent evidence recovery pretty extensively during its five year run. Different wavelengths of light revealed things not visible to the naked eye or normal lighting. He told himself to relax. They’d find nothing beyond Ashcroft’s blood on his hand and clothes that were the result of dragging him from his car.

  After photographing him from the waist up, the technician changed lenses and shot Thorne’s arms, face, and chest from no more than a foot away. When he was finished, the man stepped back, broke down his equipment and returned it to his flight case.

  “Unfortunately, Mr Thorne, we’re not quite through. There’s one more thing I’m required to do. The lieutenant was very clear on this, it’s not up to me.”

  The man was holding a tube of lubricant.

  FORTY-THREE

  Blake lay on the floor of their motel room staring at the ceiling. He’d sweated through his clothes on the ride back from the roadhouse and the pain was incredible. His leg looked bad. Down to the knee was fine, after that, not so much. The knee joint appeared to be twice normal size and barely fitted inside his jeans. Below the knee, his leg was pulled out and twisted around so that his foot pointed to three o’clock.

  Using the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, he twisted the top off a quart of vodka and leaned over sideways to take a couple of mouthfuls. The liquor surged out the bottle and made him cough. He lay back on the floor. The pain was exhausting. Sara leaned over him holding a knife, her face in some distant place.

  “You sure about this?”

  “I can get another pair of jeans, Jesus Christ.”

  She hummed to herself, as if to a crying baby.

  It was true that he hadn’t changed the jeans after Thorne had stabbed him. He’d leaked over a pint of blood into them and he’d simply washed them out and hung them up to dry. Good jeans were hard to find and often took months’ of wear to get right.

  She moved down his body and began cutting through the denim. The pressure immediately came off his skin, which had become hot and highly sensitive. He propped himself up on his elbow and watched his distorted leg appear through the fabric. Sara stopped after about twelve inches, which was about as much as she could do without cutting him. She put the knife down, then, using both hands, tore the material up and over the knee joint. She sat back on her heels and stared at his leg.

  “Fuck me, Aidan. That’s gross!”

  She wasn’t wrong. His leg had become inflated and his skin discolored as if by a huge bruise. The tibia and the fibula had rotated at the knee joint and the patella, or knee cap, had been pulled right off the center onto the side of the joint. He looked back at Sara who was pale and breathing rapidly through her mouth.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Just peachy.”

  “You know, it’s actually a lot better than I thought.”

  Sara laughed. “It is?”

  “I thought for sure a bone would be sticking out.”

  She said nothing. Blake picked up the bottle of vodka again and took another long pull. He’d never had his leg pop out before, so he had no idea what was in store when it got put back in. He figured it didn’t hurt to be prepared, though he guessed the vodka would make little difference. When he put the bottle down again he saw he was already half way through it, the most vodka he’d ever drunk in his life. He hated it.

  “What now?” she asked.

  He drew his left foot sideways back toward him as far as he could and with his knee as close to the floor as possible. It wasn’t a comfortable position and only served to accentuate the crazy angle of his other leg.

  “OK,” he said. “Brace your right foot against my knee, put your left against the bed frame. Then it’s simple. You pull my leg as hard as you can and twist it. Hopefully it snaps back into place.”

  She lined herself up on the floor, her legs on either side of his knee.

  “You want me to take off my boot?”

  As ever, she was wearing heavy motorcycle boots.

  “That would be fantastic,” he said.

  While he waited for her to get her boot off, he finished the vodka. He didn’t feel drunk, not even slightly. He’d hoped it would’ve been enough to dial the volume down, but if anything, it had the opposite effect. His senses appeared sharper, the pain, stronger.

  Sara was looking at him. “You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” he said.

  She licked her lips. “After three?”

  “Fuck that. Just do it.”

  She pulled hard on his leg and tried to twist it. He felt bones grating against each other. He yelled through gritted teeth.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  She released her grip and looked up.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You can’t turn it straight away, you got to pull it out first. You can drive a stick shift, right? You gotta push the clutch all the way in before you change gears. It’s like that. Pull the bones apart and they’ll slip past each other. Otherwise, you’re grinding them together.”

  She nodded and got back into position.

  “Wait,” he said. “I think you were right before. Do it after three. It will focus our energy and breathing.”

  They counted down together.

  “One.”

  “Two.”

  “Three.”

  She pulled hard on his leg, harder than before. He felt it move, it was working. He worked his hand down next to his knee, his fingers pressing the bone into position. Almost there. He tried to relax his muscles, willing the joint to open. His eyes flipped over to hers. She was maxed-out. She couldn’t keep it going much longer, and next time she’d be weaker. His voice cut through the air.

  “NOW!”

  She twisted his foot hard to the left and he felt the bones bounce across each other and thunk into place. It was both a feeling and a sound he could hear. His knee cap waited a moment on the side of his leg, then seemed to scurry into place under the skin, like a mouse moving under a carpet. Sara fell back onto her ass then hurriedly got to her feet and ran for the bathroom. He lay back on the carpet and listened to her vomit into the toilet.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Thorne awoke with his head pressed against the interview table, a fat finger tapping on the wood in front of his face. Tap, tap, tap. The fingernails were thick and yellow and were surprisingly loud to his sleepy ears. He straightened up and saw Cabot standing over him, a strange smile pulling at his lips.

  “They say only the guilty sleep, Thorne. And you, you were out like a light.”

  Thorne yawned and didn’t bother to cover his mouth.

  “I guess your little stunt isn’t working.”

  “My stunt?”

  “I’m not a school kid, Cabot. You left me here to make me sweat. It tells me you’ve got nothing, which I already knew because I didn’t do it. You arrested me over four hours ago and you’ve not asked me question one. The maximum you can hold me is twenty four hours, after that, you have to charge me or release me. So are you here to continue this charade, or are you here to release me?”

  “Oh, we’re going to continue this charade, don’t you worry.”

  The young detective bent down next to Cabot.

  “L-T, can I have a word?”

  Cabot sighed then went out into the corridor with Barnes. He heard the detective speak before the door closed.

  “You actually arrested him?”

  There was incredulity in Barnes’ voice, he couldn’t hold it back. It seemed to be genuine to Thorne, though he couldn’t discount the scene being staged for his benefit to set up a good cop, bad cop routine. By saying he’d speak to Barnes, he had opened himself up to such a cliched trick but he felt that the you
nger detective had actually listened to him before and he had few other options. The two deputies came back in, Cabot sat opposite him, while Barnes remained standing. This was not exactly what he’d had in mind. The lieutenant made a show of leafing through his notepad, a good twenty or thirty pages like he was trying to find something. Thorne knew he was meant to see this as the amount of evidence built up against him, but it was nothing but a cheap trick.

  “Cabot,” Thorne said, sharply. “Tick, tock.”

  The lieutenant put this notepad down and placed his hands flat on the table on either side. There was a tremor to his hands before they touched down. Anger.

  “OK, smart guy. Let’s hear your account of the night, from the top.”

  Cabot was getting him to nail down his story. If he changed anything later or missed something important out, it could be made to look bad for him at trial. He’d had plenty of time to think about it and he decided to tell it almost straight. He rolled it all out for them, omitting only the reason for the night time drive, the presence of the painting, and the identity of the man with the gun, who he described as a drunk from the roadhouse.

  When he finished the two cops looked less than convinced.

  “So you’re saying that someone else did it and ran away?”

  He looked up at Barnes, disappointed.

  “I guess I am.”

  Cabot continued in the same skeptical manner.

  “Leaving you covered in his blood, standing over his dead body.”

  “I carried him out of the car, then tried to stop the bleeding. Of course I had his blood on my hands and clothes. If I shot him myself, why would I have any of his blood on me?”

  Cabot leaned in, across the table.

  “Say we believe you, Thorne. Why did you just let this mystery man, this drunk as you tell it, escape. We’ve seen what you can do on that video tape. You’re an action hero. Why didn’t you catch him and bring him to justice?”

  Thorne sighed.

  “Because I was pulling a friend out of a burning vehicle at the time.”

  “Of course you were.”