American Lease (A Dylan Cold Novel Book 1)

by McAdams, K. D.

  For Dylan, the lies had typically been justification. “I was just…” fill in the blank. Holding this for someone, looking for who this belonged to, trying to put this back.

  He had lied to his coaches, his teammates, his roommate, little old ladies, and, on several occasions, the police. Every single time, he had spoken first.

  Today he had no lie and no tall tale to share. He had told the truth already and that’s all he had to say.

  “We know you killed officer Farley. Help me understand why and what you did with the gun.” The officer spoke first, with the lie.

  “I did not kill Officer Farley,” Dylan answered clearly.

  “I’m not going to lie, things look pretty bad for you right now. The only chance you have to make things better is to start telling the truth. Did he catch you in a drug deal and you panicked and shot him in the head?” The cop kept his voice strong but level.

  “I did not shoot officer Farley. I did not kill officer Farley. My dog found his body and then I was kidnapped at gunpoint.” Dylan did not have to think about his words; he was telling the truth.

  The officer leveled a piercing stare into Dylan’s tired eyes. “You know, if you took your dealer to a hospital we’re going to find him. If you left him somewhere to die, his body will be discovered and then you’re on the hook for two murders.”

  He knew they were trying to trip him up and make him more scared, acting like he had told them about a dealer and threatening him with two charges of murder. In his exhausted state, it was as intimidating as hell.

  “In fact, when we hang two murders on you and include interstate weapons violations, I think the DA has to go for the death penalty by law.” The officer nodded, confident in his own understanding of the law.

  Dylan was scared. Being handcuffed to a table and being questioned by the police was frightening, even for someone who knew they were innocent. He picked at the skin on his left palm, an old habit from his football days.

  “I don’t have a dealer. I was walking my dog in the woods, he ran out and found the officer on the ground, and then I was kidnapped at gunpoint,” Dylan said, his voice revealing his agitation.

  “Where did you get the car?” the officer asked. Next question; change of topic. The interrogator was trying to get him off balance. Even if he was confused, a direct answer to a simple question could get him in more trouble.

  “It’s the kidnapper’s car. He forced me, at gunpoint, to drive him to the Canadian border. Once I knew he was gone, I went to the first building I saw and called 9-1-1,” Dylan growled back.

  “Last chance for leniency. Why did you shoot officer Farley?” The cop spoke softly and Dylan had to make sure he heard the question right.

  “I did not shoot officer Farley,” Dylan answered firmly.

  Without another word, the officer rose from his chair and walked out the door.

  As soon as Dylan began to drift off to sleep, a new officer came in. New face, same old questions and accusations. How long were they going to keep at it before some rational person decided that he had to be telling the truth? It didn’t matter; his story would never change, and he suspected he could recite the answers in his sleep.

  Chapter 9

  By the time the nurse came in, Dylan was more sleep-deprived than he had ever been as a sober human. His head was pounding and his throat was dry.

  “I hope you get time-and-a-half on Sundays,” Dylan said. He knew there was no warmth or humor in his tone.

  “I do. Too bad for me it’s Monday morning,” the man answered as he pushed up Dylan’s sleeve and attached a blood pressure cuff.

  It took more than a few beats for Dylan to realize that he had been more or less awake for forty-eight hours. He also knew that later in the day they would be approaching the total length of time they could hold him without charging him with anything. This little check-up could be a trick to keep him in custody while they worked on their case.

  “You know they have not been letting me sleep. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture. I want to make sure that my lawyer gets a copy of these results,” Dylan said, even though he didn’t have a lawyer.

  “We’re not recording any results. It’s just standard procedure for the shift change from the weekend team to the weekday team. We want to make sure you’re as healthy for the incoming team as you were for the team that brought you in,” the nurse replied stoically.

  “Let me guess, you just need to establish a baseline,” Dylan said. “All the new guys coming on will want to ask me all the same old questions just so they can be sure they have all the right data.” Dylan expected a long day of more questions.

  “I try to stay out of the police work. You seem healthy to me, a little stressed, but that’s to be expected. Relax, the justice system works.” The nurse snickered as he collected his things and turned to leave.

  Before he got to the door it opened wide and a man in a black suit, white shirt, and a black tie walked in. The suited man’s face went from confident to startled and back to confident in the blink of an eye. Dylan assumed he was imagining things due to his exhaustion.

  “I didn’t think anyone was in here.” The newcomer had what could be a hint of an accent.

  “I was just leaving. He checks out medically, but I can’t promise he’ll stay awake,” the nurse said as he squeezed past and out into the hallway.

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” the suit said absentmindedly as he pulled the door shut.

  Dylan refused to speak first. At this point it had become a pride thing and one of his tricks for staying focused and consistent. He watched as the man pulled out a small notepad and a pen. The manila folder with all of Dylan’s history was conspicuously missing.

  “What’s your name, son?” the suit asked coolly.

  How the hell could this guy not know his name? Dylan wondered.

  “My name? Every other cop that’s come in here has a folder and knows more about me than I do. You wanna start with my fucking name?” Dylan said.

  “I’m no small town cop. I’m agent John Smith with the FBI, and you’re right, I don’t give a shit about your name. What were you doing in Monson and what did your supposed abductor tell you?” The agent looked down his nose at Dylan.

  Dylan listlessly recited the truth: “I was walking my dog in Monson and the guy told me to drive the car or he would put a hole in my chest.”

  The agent remained standing. “We know you know about the lease. Did he offer you cash to hold it for him?” he asked.

  This was a new line of questioning, and it didn’t make much sense to Dylan. Something felt familiar about the term “lease,” but he wasn’t sure what the guy was referring to. No one had offered him cash for anything, but his exhausted brain simply couldn’t deal with connections that felt like they made sense but didn’t.

  “That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Dylan answered honestly.

  The agent crossed the room in a flash, grabbed the back of Dylan’s head and slammed his face into the table. Pain and stars and adrenaline rushed through his body. Suddenly Dylan was not just awake but alert. He could feel the blood from his nose trickle onto his upper lip.

  “Where are his papers?” the man hissed, inches from Dylan’s ear.

  “In his car?” Dylan wasn’t sure what the papers had to do with the officer’s murder or why the FBI cared so much about them.

  “And the medallion?” now the agent was whispering.

  “Medallion? I honestly don’t know what that is. I didn’t take anything out of the car; hell, I didn’t even bring anything into the car. Whatever is in that car is yours; I won’t make a claim for anything.” Dylan thought that maybe the authorities were backtracking and looking for a way to keep themselves out of trouble once he was released.

  “The medallion is a piece of sterling stamped with an image. Where is his car?”

  “How the hell should I know where his car is? The last time I saw it, some Vermont statey was pressing my face against it wh
ile he was reading my rights.”

  “If I find out that you know anything about the lease and didn’t tell me, you’ll regret it. You interfere with me or even show your face in the wrong place, and you’re dead, do you understand that?” Agent Smith spoke so slowly and clearly he took a breath between each word.

  Dylan assumed it was a hallucination or a nightmare. This wasn’t the 1950s, the FBI can’t smash someone’s nose and threaten to kill them. Had the agent shown him ID or a badge of any sort? Did any of the men and women who came in to question him prove who they were?

  “I hope you find the lease or whatever it is you’re talking about, because you’re about to lose your job. When my lawyer gets here, you’re the first on my list of people who are going down,” Dylan snarled.

  Without responding or even acknowledging that he heard anything, the man was at the door and on his way out. Dylan’s broken nose was starting to throb but his mind was surprisingly clear. They were laying the foundation for something, but what?

  If the FBI really thought he had something they would charge him, not threaten him aggressively. It was starting to feel like a setup. The logic played out before him like a dream: If he was scared for his life, he would slip up and they could get the evidence they needed to convict him.

  They were going to let him go and follow him in the hopes of finding the drug dealer to solidify their case. Except there was no drug dealer; at least, not one that Dylan knew of.

  Chapter 10

  Dylan had been asking for a lawyer since Vermont. In his efforts to not speak first, it was usually a parting comment to an officer’s back. He was never given any indication that they heard him or that a lawyer was on the way. He was a victim; he shouldn’t need a lawyer, but he did.

  Shortly after Agent Smith left the interrogation room, a woman arrived. She walked in reading from a folder and carrying a briefcase overflowing with papers and cords.

  “I’m Elaine, your state-appointed attorney,” she said. “I have some paperwork here for you to sign before we get started.” The short, slightly unkempt woman slid a thin folder across the table to Dylan.

  “Did they do that to you?” Elaine wrinkled her nose and gestured toward Dylan’s face.

  “Yeah, the FBI guy who just left smashed my face on the table and screamed at me,” Dylan answered.

  Elaine jotted a note onto a legal pad and rose from her seat. She disappeared through the door. Less than a minute later she returned with a handful of paper towels and a plastic bottle of water.

  “We’ll figure this out next,” she said.

  Dylan awkwardly wet the paper towels and dabbed at the blood he could feel on his upper lip. He had no idea what it looked like or if he was making any progress.

  Once he was done cleaning himself, Elaine said: “Sign here, here, and here. Print your name here, and initial there, and there.”

  It was difficult to sign with the handcuffs securing his wrists to the table. He was careful to read each document before signing them. They were basic contracts explaining confidentiality and his need to share information with her. There was nothing significant, and most importantly, no false confession.

  “Thank you,” Elaine said, and then she got right down to business. “Here’s what’s going to happen. In about forty minutes, they will bring you to a courtroom and indict you for murder. How are you going to plead?”

  “Innocent, because I am. Don’t they need evidence to indict me?” Dylan asked.

  “They will present their evidence to the judge, who will decide if it is enough to hand down the indictment. You have a bit of a lucky draw today, the judge is older and has traditionally been a stickler for a strong case,” Elaine explained.

  “So my drug screens came back negative and the tests for gun powder were negative. I’m not using and I haven’t fired a gun recently, so what evidence do they have that I shot someone?” Dylan’s voice rose above a conversational level.

  “How do you know your blood tests came back negative?” The lawyer began reading documents in a second, thicker folder.

  Dylan suddenly found himself pleading with Elaine. “Because I haven’t done drugs in six years, four months, and twenty-five days. It’s been even longer than that since I fired a gun.”

  No one had listened to him since this whole ordeal began. He needed just one person to take a minute and look at things objectively. In theory, that was Elaine’s job, and hopefully she would do it well.

  “So what’s your theory on why they like you for the murder?” Elaine asked. She never looked up from the papers.

  “I assume they found my dog with the dead cop. They checked his tags and found my name. When they went to my address, I wasn’t there. After pulling my record and seeing that I had a history of drug use, minor theft and some time in jail, they assumed I did it and ran,” Dylan said. “I didn’t do it and I didn’t run. I was kidnapped.” He worked to keep the story short and his voice under control.

  “Kidnapped?” The lawyer looked up from the papers, clearly confused.

  “Yes. The guy who shot the cop was also shot but not that bad. He had a gun on me and threatened to kill me if I didn’t drive him away.” Dylan felt a glimmer of hope.

  “So you helped him,” she said, stating a fact.

  “No! He had just killed a cop; he would have killed me if I didn’t do what he said. Check the car! There is blood in the back seat. There must be fingerprints in the back that match the prints in the front. My prints are only around the driver’s seat.” He couldn’t believe he was losing her.

  Elaine shuffled papers and scanned a few of them.

  “They found your prints on the steering wheel, ignitions, driver’s door…” She trailed off.

  “Any other prints?” Dylan asked.

  Elaine continued to read. “Yeah, lots of them, but no other hits in the database. No prints at all in the back seat.”

  “So blood but no prints? He must have been wearing gloves,” he exclaimed, as if he solved a huge mystery.

  “Okay. The blood on your clothes matches the blood in the back seat. There was no blood from the officer found on any of your things. How did you get the shooter’s—err, kidnapper’s—blood on you?” Elaine asked.

  “I had to help him up. He was shot in the hip and I picked him up from the front, under the arms, while his gun poked me in the chest,” Dylan explained. Hope was fading.

  Elaine went back to the yellow legal pad where she had written her earlier note. She scribbled furiously and, even though it was upside down, Dylan considered the print unreadable. After consulting a few different pages in the folder, she wrote a long paragraph, read it, and then made some corrections.

  “So they have no way to tie me to the cop, no murder weapon, and no motive. How could they possibly indict me?” Dylan was worried that his hopes for justice would be dashed.

  “Fine. They don’t have anything to place you at the scene of the crime. Based on their evidence, your only crime is not being available to explain why your dog was found licking a dead officer’s face.” She made a few circles on the legal pad.

  “Plus I’ve been in custody for almost two days. They need to shit or get off the pot.” He was tired of being in limbo.

  Elaine rose to her feet and stepped toward the door. She paused, looked back, and asked: “What did the kidnapper look like?”

  “Completely average and unremarkable,” Dylan said, and relayed what little he knew about the killer. “Five-ten to six-two, between one-ninety and two-fifty, brownish blonde hair, and no visible marks or tattoos. The only weird thing I can think of is that he was wearing a suit, tie and everything, in the woods at six-thirty on a Saturday morning.”

  “Thanks. See you in a bit.” The door closed and Elaine was gone.

  The lawyer’s definition of “a bit” and Dylan’s were not the same. It had to have been an hour or more before she returned. She wore an awkward half-smile when she reentered the interrogation room.

  “
Good news, they’re letting you go,” Elaine said, sharing the reason behind her smile. “They still like you for killing the cop, or at least accessory to murder, but they don’t have enough evidence to be sure of an indictment.”

  “And they never will. Thank you. Now if you can get them to undo my cuffs, I need to get home to my dog.” Dylan was relieved.

  “Look,” Elaine said softly as she sat. “Since you are not being charged, I’m technically not your lawyer. I don’t know how you’re involved in this cop’s murder, but the circumstances and your history make it seem like you are. If you did it, I’m pretty sure you won’t get away with it. If you didn’t do it, then you might want to keep a low profile until it gets sorted out.”

  “Thanks for the advice. For the record, again, I didn’t have anything to do with it. I haven’t gotten so much as a speeding ticket since I moved to New Hampshire, so I’m not too worried about watching my step,” Dylan insisted. He just wanted the cuffs off and to head home.

  “Suspected cop killers don’t get a lot of leeway, and you have been under a lot of stress. If I may, go to a meeting, talk to someone about your cravings. If you slip and turn up in the system again soon, it will only add to your problems.” The lawyer’s face and tone conveyed her message clearly.

  Dylan was lost and confused. “I think I’ll be fine, but thank you for the suggestion.”

  Elaine shrugged her shoulders, stuffed the legal pad into her bag, and rose. At the door she stopped and turned to face Dylan.

  “Did you get any idea at all what the killer was doing in Monson?” she asked.

  “Based on the FBI guy’s questions and the papers I saw on the front seat, he was looking for a document called the ‘American Lease.’ By the way, how do I press charges against the FBI?” Dylan’s mind was jumping from the exhaustion and the euphoria of his pending freedom.

  “Did he find it?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so, but the FBI guy seemed to think it was possible he had it,” Dylan answered.