‘Oh? Okay, you tell me what you have and I’ll tell you what I have.’
‘At the club, there’ll be witnesses to verify that the girl hit Little Dick Webster. He hit her back. That’s why I hit him. That’s why I took her out with me. You know that wouldn’t have ended well for her. Then,’ I continued quickly before he could whip out some smart remark, ‘there’s the cab driver.’
‘Cab driver?’
‘Yeah. You remember when you weren’t asking the right questions? That’s when I’d have mentioned it. We got a cab a few blocks from the club, back to my apartment. The driver saw us together. Saw she wasn’t under…what’s that big word…duress. In fact, he probably heard her asking me to invite her to my place.’
‘The victim asked to be taken to your apartment?’ I didn’t know if the tone was doubt or surprise. Didn’t matter. On its own, it didn’t prove anything.
‘At home we had sex. Maybe she is a little bruised, but that’s because she was rough. You didn’t find any traces inside her, did you? Why would I have bothered with protection if it was assault?’
Lawrence tried to cut in, but I was on a roll. If I let him stop me now, I might lose it.
‘Then in the morning, I left the apartment to get food. The old lady down the hall will be able to tell you. She notices everything else that happens within six blocks. She’d have heard the girl call to me as I walked out. Told me she wanted eggs.’
Lawrence smirked. I didn’t like that. I continued anyway.
‘Whatever you think of me, you know I’m not a complete moron. I wouldn’t have left the knife lying there. I’d have got rid of it. In fact that’s the only reason I’d have left the apartment if I’d done it.’
He just shrugged at that one.
‘The storekeeper can tell you what time I got there. He should know what time it was; he’d just been robbed, after all. And if not, just check what time he called it in. Inside, in a steady temperature, those techs will have pinpointed the time she died. Check it and you’ll know I couldn’t have been there.’
I scanned through the night again. I couldn’t think of anything else. It had seemed a lot more in my head. But there should be enough there to show I wasn’t guilty.
‘She hasn’t been sleeping so good lately.’
That kinda threw me. I didn’t know what he was talking about.
‘The old woman,’ he clarified. ‘She took some pills and slept like a corpse… Oops. Maybe that’s a poor choice of words. She didn’t hear you come in, didn’t hear you go out. Didn’t hear you redecorating your apartment in brain matter grey. Slept right up until our sirens woke her.’
I hesitated. The old lady had been my best bet at getting off. She noticed the slightest things. Had hearing like a bat with a directional microphone. I shouldn’t have been so sure of myself. But I got the pills for the old lady myself. She liked me. I thought she’d have helped me out. Left out the part about sleeping and just told them she heard nothing. Maybe I’d been a little overconfident when I said ‘prove’.
‘And the store clerk?’ he continued. ‘He must’ve been really shaken up, because he don’t remember you at all. And it isn’t far to the store. You could have run it easy enough.’
He looked pleased with himself. The clerk didn’t remember me. The robber had shaken him up so bad I could have been a naked supermodel and he wouldn’t have noticed. Couldn’t prove I was there. Couldn’t prove I wasn’t.
‘Now shall I tell you what I’ve got?’ Lawrence sat forward. This was going to be good. For him. Bad for me. ‘I’ve got you assaulting Richard Webster. I’ve got you assaulting a member of Webster’s security personnel. I’ve got you impersonating a police officer. I’ve got you hauling the victim out of the club by her arm. I’ve got bruises on her arm to back that up. I’ve got traces of your blood in her mouth and a bite mark on your lip that I know will match her teeth. I’ve got your skin under her nails. I’ve got her torn clothing, blood and mutilated corpse in your apartment. I’ve got a statement from the cab driver that you scared her into thinking she’d be in danger if she went home. This time, Jack, I’ve got you!’ He slammed his fist down on the table as he said it.
Well…shit.
FOUR | OLD MISTAKES
I didn’t know what to think, let alone what to say. All of this looked bad for me. More than bad. Saying it was bad was like saying getting fried in the electric chair was going to sting.
There were rumours in the criminal underworld that the cops in Harem still used the chair for special cases. It was illegal. But so were a lot of things the Harem PD did.
‘Wait,’ I said. I opened my mouth before I’d finished thinking. ‘Who called you?’
‘What?’
‘If I killed her in my apartment, then who tipped you off about it? My neighbour leaves for work before the sun’s up and you said yourself the old lady was asleep until you arrived. So who called it in?’
Lawrence just looked at me. He tried to hide it, but I could see the same question had been going round and round his square head.
‘You did.’ He tried to sound confident. He wasn’t. ‘You couldn’t think how to get rid of the body so you called it in. You thought you could outsmart me again. Talk your way out of it. Again. But not this time.’
It was weak and he knew it. He had no doubt I’d done it, of course. He just couldn’t make sense of the tip off. With all his evidence, it didn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter. But it bothered him.
‘So your theory is that I knocked out the son of the most powerful and dangerous man in the city and abducted a girl. Both in front of dozens of witnesses. Then took her to my own apartment and killed her. Left the murder weapon lying there. Then went out for a stroll and gave you a call. And brought myself right back into your welcoming arms. Yeah, that’s a flawless theory, Detective.’
‘Don’t worry about it. We’re not concerned with what happened before the murder. We won’t push premeditation. I think we’ll go with “crime of passion”. Makes more sense then, don’t it? She made you angry, you killed her and then thought you could get away with it with this ingenious story about going out for food.’
Again, I didn’t know what to think. Let alone what to say.
The scanner would detect the slowing of my heart. Strange. At a time like this, you’d think my heart would be hammering harder than ever. But I saw no way out. It looked like justice had finally caught up with me. I think some part of me had resigned to that already. Maybe longed for it, in a way.
Lawrence told the recording that he was concluding the interview. He pressed his thumb to a patch on the table. The timer froze. Flashed a few times before the entire display disappeared. Fifty-seven minutes and six seconds. He’d taken his time. Savoured it. Felt like five minutes.
‘We’ve got you dead to rights, Jack.’
He’d said the same little pun the last time I sat here. This time he was right. This time they had a body. The evidence against me was both mountainous and solid. This time I’d burn.
He leaned slowly back. The chair creaked. He stared at me with a satisfied smile on his prematurely creased face. He looked like a hunter sitting back to cast a proud eye over the newly-mounted head on the wall.
‘Our cells are full at the moment, so you’re gonna have to just sit here for a while. Can I get you anything to make your stay more comfortable? No? Well you just come and knock on the door if you need anything, Jack.’
Lawrence gathered the evidence back into the box. Put the datapad on top and shoved the whole thing under one arm. He screeched the chair out from the table. Smiled at me one last time and left the room.
I finished running through the night again for about the hundredth time. I hadn’t missed anything out. There were no other witnesses to help me. Nothing I’d seen myself that could help. I couldn’t see a way out of this one.
Whoever cut her up must have gone in right after I left. I wasn’t gone for long, and the cops had to get there too. Must have been
no more than a minute after I walked out. Had they waited until I was gone? Or was it just a twist of fate? The girl was a barmaid. Who’d want her dead? The most likely scenario was that they were there for me and found the girl. There weren’t many people who wanted me dead. At the moment, Little Dick was at the top of my list.
Little Dick! I remembered seeing him on the way to the precinct. He was standing outside the club like he was waiting for me to pass. He hadn’t looked surprised. Hadn’t looked curious. He looked like he’d expected me. Bastard. He’d probably had someone follow us to my apartment. Wanted to teach us both a lesson.
But I didn’t know why they’d waited so long to come in. That made no sense. I was sure Little Dick was to blame for all of this though. I might have considered that it was his plan to have me take the fall. To be put down for the killing of the girl I’d saved from him. Some kind of poetry I guessed. But he wasn’t that smart.
Another thing I couldn’t explain was that in the short time I’d been with the girl, I’d become convinced she knew more about the Websters and their dealings than I’d first assumed. Had they wanted to shut her up, in case she told me something?
I guessed it didn’t really matter now. Whatever had happened, I was sitting here waiting to be dragged out to Anshan. ‘Ans-han’, not that anyone pronounced it right. I’d never known what the name meant or where it came from. Sounded alien to me. All I knew was that it was practically on the other side of the world, in the middle of an ice desert a half-dozen million square kilometres. That was where some of the worst humanity had to offer were sent. That’s where I’d be sent.
I didn’t want to think about that place. I gazed around the room, trying to focus on the present again. There was a camera in the far corner. On it, a red light blinked lazily. Like the pattering rain earlier, the calm, relaxed blinking only made me more nervous.
My eyes returned to the table. Lawrence had left the cream folder. I guessed what was in it. He wasn’t allowed to talk to me about our first run in. He’d left the folder to remind me. To let me know he hadn’t forgotten. That he’d come at me for that as well as this morning. To tell me that I might only be charged for this morning’s murder, but I was being put to death for them both.
The folder wasn’t far from my hands, but Lawrence had left them restrained. My finger came within a centimetre. I carefully stood as much as I could, wondering if I was going to be shocked for leaving the chair. Nothing happened, so I bent down and used my face to push the folder to my hand.
I sat again and pulled the thick paper open. There she was. Lucy. On the left-hand page, she stared at me with beautiful blue eyes. In my mind, there was too much blood to see her eyes.
On the other pages were transcripts of interrogations with the prime suspect. Me. Lawrence wasn’t completely unprofessional. He’d made sure to remove the transcripts for the other suspects. Not that there were many. Removed anything pertaining to them, or to family and friends. He just wanted me to remember. To relive it.
On the second-to-last page was me. I stared up at me with distant brown eyes on either side of a familiar, slightly crooked nose. My dark hair was all over the place where I’d been pulling at it most of the way through the unofficial interrogation in the car. My face was a little fuller then. The jaw seemed squarer. Probably wasn’t. Beside the picture were all my details. 5’10” and 165lb. I was pretty sure I was still five-ten, but the weight had probably gone up a bit. Muscle though, not fat. I didn’t have the money to get fat.
At the back was a handwritten note:
Without so much as a body, we can’t prove there was even a murder, let alone that Jack Mason is the killer. All the evidence we have is inadmissible because Mason was the victim’s lover, giving him suitable excuses for fingerprints, late night phone calls and visits, etc. If this case is ever reopened, let it be known that every instinct I’ve developed over 25 years of police work tells me that Mason IS the killer. DO NOT let him slip out of your hands like I did.
Lucy. In the picture, she was happy. In a static image, she lacked the sparkle in her eyes and the little twitch of her nose. In the picture, the most perfect creature in the universe smiled up at me for the first time in ten years. In my mind, she lay dead in a pool of blood.
The door clicked open behind me. It couldn’t be time for Anshan yet. Besides, the door opened too quietly. This was someone who didn’t want to be noticed coming in. Was it time for my pre-punishment punishment?
There was some kind of quick out-breath. Like the opposite of a sniff. I was willing to bet it accompanied a smirk. Now I knew who it was, I knew what was coming.
Knowing didn’t quite prepare me for the stabbing all over my body. The sudden muscle spasms that made me throw myself backwards and nearly dislocate my elbows. If I weren’t strapped to the table, I’d have hit the wall and probably split my skull. I tasted metal. My teeth felt like they were wriggling out of my gums.
Holt smirked. He pressed his thumb on the green circle and the restraints slid off my wrists and back into the table. I tried to stand, but my legs had ideas of their own. I fell back down. Hit the chair awkwardly and bounced off onto the floor. My arms decided not to help me out. My face hit the floor and I felt something gritty stick to my cheek and lips. I didn’t know if the shudder was from that, or from the shock stick.
Holt stood beside the table. Waited for the spasms to wear off. I was glad I hadn’t been given anything to drink all morning.
Finally, I was able to climb back to my feet. I’d warned Holt about shocking me again. Tried to, anyway. It’s the thought that counts. I wiped the grit off my face and turned to Holt. He looked nervous. Probably because he was alone in a room with a deranged killer. He clearly liked the exhilaration. The danger. I’d have taken him for a complete coward. Someone who’d leave me cuffed to the table while he beat me. That would have been the wise thing to do.
His mistake to make, I supposed.
It didn’t take long for Holt to lose patience. I could wait all day. He had to get back out of the room before Lawrence or his partner came back. He held the shock stick at his side. Most people might have held it out in front of them as though it would fight for them. Most people would have it pulled out of their hands in seconds. Holt would wait until the last moment and then shock me again. I had no way of telling where he’d aim for.
He may have thought I wouldn’t fight back, since he was a cop. I was going to be put to death. Assault on an officer wouldn’t make much difference to me. Besides, I felt obliged. He may not have heard my earlier warning, but I couldn’t allow it to be an empty threat. That would be untrue to myself.
I smiled at that. It made Holt hesitate. I took the opportunity.
I threw the handcuffs at his face. I was strapped to the table, so Lawrence hadn’t taken the cuffs with him. Holt hadn’t noticed that my grounded fish act knocked them off the chair with me. Hadn’t noticed me lift them when I stood.
He was in mid step when he tried to dodge. That resulted in him stumbling towards the wall. I took a couple of quick steps forward. He raised his arm to stop himself and hit the wall side on. To reduce the risk of getting shocked again, I used my feet. I kicked his wrist. Caught between my shoe and the wall, he dropped the shock stick.
Holt had barely finished his yelp of pain when he swung the other fist at me. I was too far away. The fist breezed past my face without about five inches to spare. As soon as it was passed, I grabbed it with one hand. Punched him in the kidney with the other.
The pain caused him to nearly double over and bring his arm back in to his side. I used that to push it up behind his back. Then I twirled him around to the table and cracked his head on the top.
Crack was an exaggeration. I banged his forehead a little bit. Didn’t even knock him out or break his nose. Just dazed him.
I pulled the power cell out of the shock stick. Threw both parts into opposite corners of the room. Then I stood back, behind my chair. Put my hands on my head and prepared
to be bashed about and probably shocked again. But not by Holt.
No one came through the door.
I waited nearly a minute. No one came. There weren’t even any sounds outside beyond the usual noise of an office. I glanced up at the camera in the corner. Someone must have seen what happened.
The light was off. Of course. Holt had turned off the camera so his fun wouldn’t be recorded.
He finally climbed to his feet. Looked for the shock stick but couldn’t see it. I think I knew before he did what he’d go for next. It was stupid of me not to take his gun too. I was too far away to stop him now. If he went for it, there was a good chance he’d have the self-control to not shoot me. If I struggled with him for it, there was a good chance I’d get shot.
As his hand reached for the gun, the door burst open. Two guys with shard guns rushed in. They weren’t cops.
They wore baggy clothes and carried backpacks. Probably weighted. Helmets hid their heads and faces. Gloves and scarves meant their skin colour was unknowable. The soles of their boots were too thick. The boots were probably too big for them as well. They’d come prepared. There was no way any details about them could be discerned. Body shape, gender, colour, species, height, shoe size, weight. No chance of them being identified. Their own mothers wouldn’t know them.
One went straight for Holt, who hadn’t even unholstered his gun yet. He thrust the shard gun into Holt’s chest and the cop collapsed to the floor, flailing around like…well, like I had been half the morning. I saw then that the hood had a shock stick attached to the gun’s barrel.
The second hood had hesitated after the initial rush into the room. He had a round device in his hand, which he put away as he headed for me. I guessed it was to short the table’s computer and unlock the restraints. They were here for me.
‘Wait!’ I told him. I didn’t know what he should wait for. I just didn’t want to get shocked yet again.
Acts of Violence Page 3