Damnable

by Hank Schwaeble

  “If I were you,” Maloney said. “I’d start cooperating.” He checked his watch, made a point of adjusting the face with those incongruently slender fingers he had. “You know, your brother’s funeral is in a couple of hours. If you just tell us the truth, we might be able to arrange for you to attend.”

  Hatcher said nothing. All he’d done was cooperate, from the moment he was apprehended until well into the morning, when it became clear Maloney was less interested in hearing what actually happened than he was in pushing his clumsy themes. It was around three a.m. when Hatcher realized nothing was going to get through, no matter how many times he repeated it. He simply stopped talking then. Six hours later, he was back for another round. He figured he had about as much of a chance of attending his brother’s funeral as Maloney did getting him to confess.

  “You ready to tell me what you were doing there?”

  Another cop, a young guy with strawberry hair and bad skin, coughed from the corner of the room. He sat there quietly, freckled forearms showing from under his rolled-up sleeves, pad on his knee, ready to take notes and looking just as uncomfortable this time around as he did the last. So that made two detectives, plus Wright, whom he hadn’t seen since the hospital. Hatcher wondered how many were on the other side of the mirror, how many came and went behind the glass just to get a look at him.

  The thought caused Hatcher to glance at his reflection. The question he’d asked himself a moment earlier suddenly seemed significant. Why were they going through this again? He’d sat sphinxlike for almost an hour the last time without saying a word. Why would they let him sleep, then try again? They couldn’t be that dense. He could only think of one reason.

  “I already told you,” Hatcher said, staring at the mirror. “A number of times.”

  “Ah, cat’s given you back your tongue. Good. Yeah, I remember what you said. But, come on, let’s cut the bullshit. What were you really doing there?”

  It was a matter of broken clocks being right twice a day, as far as Hatcher was concerned. So he hadn’t been completely forthcoming about his reasons. Maloney didn’t have a clue about that and probably wouldn’t even believe him if he explained all his thoughts in detail. Hatcher knew he was clueless because the man had dismissed every true thing Hatcher had told him in favor of strained theories that made absolutely no sense. From his fake hair to his fake manner, Maloney struck him as the type who wouldn’t know the truth if it reared back and kicked him in the crotch. At the heart of it, being a cop was still a government job, so Hatcher figured Maloney had earned his rank the old-fashioned way, by kissing ass and playing politics. It certainly wasn’t because of his skills as an interrogator, that was for sure. Maloney hadn’t shown any interest in verifying anything Hatcher had said, and he was about as subtle with his wording as a crack whore on a street corner. Good enough for petty criminals, probably. Cunning, perhaps. But not an expert. Not a tactician.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you were doing there?” Hatcher asked, shifting his gaze from the glass.

  Maloney sucked in his cheeks, like he had just tasted something sour. “I was investigating the death of your brother. Not that you’re in any position to ask questions.”

  Hatcher pretended to hold the man’s stare, barely seeing him. Thinking. He wasn’t certain what had prompted him to ask the question, but he supposed it had something to do with the way Maloney had looked back at the hospital, standing at the foot of the bed, the glimpse of expression Hatcher had caught beneath that artificial pompadour, half concerned, half anxious. Maloney’s reaction was amusing. Of course, no interrogator—no skilled one—really minded a subject asking questions. Questions revealed what the subject was worried about, conveyed information about what he or she didn’t know. But an experienced interrogator would rarely give a straight answer to one. You never actually answered a subject’s question unless it was one you baited—you turned it around instead, made it into another question. What do you think I was doing there? The ineptitude on display by New York’s Finest was disillusioning. Disappointing, even. Their interrogation procedures were so amateurish they were almost offensive, and several times he felt tempted to demand they get their act together and quit disgracing the badge. Sitting him at a table? Did they use TV shows as training videos?

  But presently Hatcher found himself ruminating less about that than about what Maloney had actually said, and how he had said it. I was investigating the death of your brother. Not, I was looking into your brother’s death, not even some fuck- you response to put Hatcher in his place. No, Maloney had given a calculated answer, one that was a bit too formal. Every word enunciated. No contractions. Like he wanted Hatcher or whomever was behind the glass to hear every word clearly.

  “My father,” Hatcher said. “He’s a patient. Look him up.”

  “I don’t mean at the hospital,” Maloney said, shaking his head. “I’m talking about her room. Why were you there in her room?”

  Hatcher ran his eyes over the mirror, caught his own gaze near the bottom. “I saw Lucas Sherman go in.”

  “And how did you manage that? Considering no one else remembers seeing him?”

  “He’d been hiding in the next room. He didn’t see me.”

  “Oh, right. And you just happened to be there to save the day by driving a broken piece of furniture through the back of someone else’s head. Makes perfect sense to me.”

  “What do you want from me, Lieutenant? A confession? There’s nothing to confess. I’ve already told you everything. Sherman attacked me; I used a leverage move to drive him into the wall. The other guy showed up a minute later.”

  “And that was the first time you saw him? The other guy?”

  “Yes,” Hatcher said. It was a lie, since he’d seen the man on the gurney, but surely Maloney knew that, had talked to the nurses. But he hadn’t mentioned it, so Hatcher wasn’t going to, either. “He came up behind Detective Wright, then went after the woman.”

  “So you say. But I’d like to know why you jumped through so many hoops to find her room in the first place. We have statements. A security guard saying you were acting suspicious. A woman manning the front desk who says you were in an agitated state, hostile and threatening.”

  Hatcher rolled his eyes, his gaze ending up toward the mirror again. “And I’m sure those were her own words, too. That’s not the way it was, and you damn well know it. I just wanted to see her. The woman my brother saved. That’s it.”

  Maloney leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table and clasping his hands. “But you see how this looks, don’t you? Like I said, I’m on your side here. Really, I am. It’s just getting a bit frustrating that you won’t let me help you. We talked to your CO; we know you’re not a bad guy.” He inched closer, lowering his voice a notch. “We know that whole military rap you got was a screw job. I’m just trying to figure out how this happened, so we can work on straightening it all out. That’s all you want, isn’t it? To help us straighten things out?”

  Hatcher bent his head down to his cuffs to scratch his nose. Did people actually fall for this crap?

  “You want to know what I think?” Maloney asked, pulling back. “I think you went to that room innocently enough. Just to get a look, like you said. When you got inside, you saw this beautiful woman, one your brother had died trying to rescue. She opened her eyes, maybe smiled. And you told her who you were. She tells you how grateful she is for what your brother did, and you move closer, maybe give her hug, a peck on the cheek. All innocent. Then this other guy, this patient, he walks in and accuses you of something nasty, tells you to get away from her. Was probably walking by and got the wrong impression. You tell him he’s got it all wrong, but he starts getting all in your face, telling you you’re a pervert, when you didn’t even do anything. Not really. So you tell him to step off, but he doesn’t and you get in a fight. I mean, it’s not like you started it even. Right?”

  “Do you have any idea how ridiculous this sounds?”

&
nbsp; Maloney patted the air with his palms. “Hear me out. Maybe the fight started some other way, but it wasn’t your fault. Things just got out of hand. All you meant to do was knock him out, you know, end the fight.”

  “Why do I think this has something to do with the difference between justifiable homicide and manslaughter?” Hatcher said.

  “So you try to hit him with the chair.” Maloney mimicked a guy swinging something, hands apart, gripping some imaginary piece of furniture. “But it ends up breaking, and you pick up a leg, try to ring his chimes, only he turns away, and you don’t realize it’s got that sharp end.”

  Hatcher swiveled his head until he was facing the mirror as directly as the chair would allow, fixing his eyes on a point in the middle, just above the center. When he spoke, it was to the person behind it. “He was trying to do something to the woman.”

  “Do what? What was he trying to do?”

  “He had a scalpel. He was determined to reach her with it.” Hatcher hitched a shoulder. “Do the math.”

  “You’re saying he was planning to kill her?”

  Hatcher dropped his head, tossing it from side to side. “I realize it’s a big leap, given that all I saw was a psycho with a weapon who took everything I could dish out. But yes. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Would you mind explaining why, then?”

  “You know, he stopped to tell me before he died, but in all this excitement I guess I forgot. That’s a stupid question, Lieutenant. You’d have to ask him.”

  “Well, thanks to you, we can’t do that now, can we?”

  Hatcher bounced his gaze off the mirror again. “What about Detective Wright?”

  “What about her?” Maloney settled back into his chair, interlocking his fingers and resting his hands across his stomach.

  “The guy threw her across the hall. She saw me in the room right before it happened. Me and Sherman. She can clear most of this up.”

  “Yeah, well, her memory about exactly what happened isn’t all that clear. You might say that knock on her head scrambled her recollection a bit. Maybe that’s what you were counting on. Her not being able to remember.”

  “This is absurd.”

  “Look, I don’t think you meant to hurt anyone, but once you saw what happened, what kind of trouble you might be in, you went to get out of there. But Detective Wright, she startled you. Then she started pulling a gun, and you’re like, Shit! A gun! And you realized she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. So you distracted her, pushed her out of the way. You didn’t mean to have her hit her head. It was an accident, right?”

  “You’re crazy. And you’re lying about what you believe. Lying badly, I might add.”

  The corner of Maloney’s lip twitched, flicking upward. “And what makes you say that?”

  “I could tell you, but that would take all the fun out of it.”

  “I don’t think you realize the gravity of the situation, sport.”

  Hatcher took in a breath, deep enough that the weight of his chest huffed it out as soon as he let it go. “And I don’t think you realize what a monumental waste of time this is. It’s just like I told you. I saw Lucas Sherman go into the room after you and Detective Wright left. I went in after him.”

  “Why didn’t you just come and tell us?”

  “Are you kidding me? Run down the hall, go through God-knows-how-many questions about what I was doing there, all while someone you guys like for killing prostitutes is in the room with her?”

  “What makes you think we like Sherman for killing prostitutes? Who told you that?”

  Hatcher watched Maloney’s eyes. They were a yellowish brown, with dark spots circling the iris. They were also narrowed, more interested in the answer to this question, he realized, than they had been to others. “I overheard two cops in the hallway talking about it when he was being released.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t kill Sherman. He wasn’t anywhere to be found. We’re talking about another guy you just happened to go wild on. He was a jeweler, by the way. Owned a little store over near Thirty-second.”

  “It wasn’t like I had a choice. I just couldn’t stop him. Nothing I tried hurt him. And I tried pretty much everything.”

  “So you just decided to kill him.”

  Yes, Hatcher thought, actually, I did. Regardless of how accurate it was, he knew it wouldn’t be a wise answer. Maybe because of how accurate it was. “If I really wanted to kill him, I could have run out into the hallway, grabbed Detective Wright’s Glock, and put some rounds into his brain. I just wanted to stop him.”

  “Look, Hatcher, you’re a soldier, I’m a cop; we’re both in it to fight the bad guys. I don’t think you’re one of the bad guys. But you’ve got to work with me.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I know that. That’s why I’m talking to you right now. Because I’m trying to figure out how something like this could happen. I’m trying to give you a chance to help me make sense of it, so I can get this whole matter resolved and help you out. Now, tell me, did you get in an argument with him? Kill him in anger? Or was it just an accident?”

  Hatcher paused, deciding he was sick of this. Fed up. “There are nine steps to the structured interrogation technique, Lieutenant.”

  “What?”

  “That is what you’re using, or trying to. The Reid Technique. Nine steps. Of course, you’ve had to modify it for this interrogation, because the fact I was involved in what happened was never in dispute. But still, that just means skipping some of them.”

  “And if that were true, what’s your point?”

  “My point is, there are nine steps, and you don’t seem to understand any of them. It’s really starting to piss me off. What you said after I told you I didn’t do anything wrong—do you realize that was the first time you turned an objection around on me? And you didn’t even do it correctly. You should have told me you believed me, not that you knew. If you already knew, you wouldn’t need the information. If you believed me, though, in that case you’d need my help to convince others.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “That’s a fact. And another thing. If you understood the first thing about what you were doing, I wouldn’t be sitting behind a table. A table is a psychological barrier. A shield. You never allow a subject to have the protection of something like that in front of him, blocking you, providing separation, distance, a way to conceal body language. And shackling me? It keeps the subject from fiddling, aids him in quieting his body language and muting the nonverbals.”

  “So you’re an expert on this now, are you?”

  “Compared to you, a kid in a playground trying to find out who stole his marbles would be an expert. I’ve given you verifiable facts that you ignore. When I started getting bored, I even threw out a few objections like that last one just to see if you knew how to use them against me, and you didn’t. And through it all, you don’t even seem the least bit curious as to how an overweight, middle-aged man with enough of a medical condition to be hospitalized could weather a rather intense physical altercation with someone twenty years younger, forcing me to have to use a weapon to stop him.”

  “Oh, I was curious, all right. It’s one of the reasons I don’t buy your story.”

  “You just don’t get it. The guy had to be on something strong. PCP, maybe. Something that’ll induce psychosis, increase the pain threshold. A lot. You should be trying to figure out what.”

  “Well, smart guy, that’s where you’re wrong.”

  Hatcher said nothing, watching the lieutenant’s face as it rearranged itself into a satisfied smirk.

  “Tox screens were negative. He had nothing in his bloodstream except some blood thinners.”

  “In that case, he must’ve escaped from the psych ward. Because he shouldn’t have been able to keep going the way he did.”

  “Then why were you so intent on tangling with him instead of going to get help?�
� Maloney asked, pulling an elbow over the back of his chair and slouching casually.

  “Because that woman was completely vulnerable. There was no way I was going to just let her be killed.”

  The detective gave a sidelong glance to the mirror. “Knock if you’ve heard enough.”

  Hatcher heard a rap on the glass. Maloney nodded, then gestured to the redheaded cop with the pad and gave his hand a flick toward Hatcher. “Uncuff him.”

  The younger detective with the apple-pie face and bad skin produced a set of keys and unlocked Hatcher’s handcuffs. The cuffs hadn’t been that tight, but Hatcher had to fight the impulse to flex his hands and rub his wrists anyway.

  “Mr. Hatcher, you’re being released from custody.”

  Hatcher said nothing.

  “Detective Reynolds here will walk you down to sign out, get you your belongings.”

  Hatcher mulled it over, knew there had to be a play in what was happening here somewhere. “Turning me over to the marshals?”

  “No.”

  “MPs?”

  “No. We’re cutting you loose.”

  “I’m guessing this isn’t because you suddenly realized the folly of your ways.”

  Maloney snorted a laugh. “You’d be right about that.”

  “Mind if I ask why, then?”

  “Because a person who would know finally started talking. She told us she saw the whole thing, and that it seemed the person you killed was trying to hurt her. And that you weren’t.”

  The person you killed. The emphasis on those words seemed intentional, like Maloney was trying to establish a fact in dispute. “I thought she was unconscious.”

  “She’d been sedated. But she said the commotion roused her, got her to open her eyes enough to tell what was going on.”

  Hatcher let his gaze drift, studied his reflection, focused on what was behind it. “So, I’m free to go. Just like that.”

  “Just like that.”

  “And this whole second go-round was because . . . ?”

  Maloney shrugged. “Just making double sure of a few things.”