Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4) (32 page)

“I. Don’
t. Want t
o.
” She said,
and
then kicked her feet and thrashed about before she slap
ped my hand away
, pulling
the covers
back
over her head.

“We have to go down to the police station, come on,
” I said a bit more forcefully.

“Why me?” she groaned
from under the covers.

“Because, that woman with the gun
, the one that
kidnapped
us, t
he woman who slapped you
on the ass
. The woman you punched and knocked
out. The polic
e arrested her. They’re
going
to charge her
and
they
need our statements.
”

“What?” she said
,
and slowly pulled
the covers down from over her head.

I gave her the three
minute synopsis, dwelling on
her Lionel Richie rant
for a moment or two
.

“I
can’t
go down there like this,
God, I slept in this out
fit
.
I need a shower, and I feel like shit.
Do we have to?
W
hy do you do these things?”

“What did I do? You’re the hero here, or the heroine,
and
don’t yell at me
, Miss
‘
She’s so Damn Hot
’
.”

“What?”

I phoned Manning’s office
,
but didn’t have to talk with him. M
ercifully
,
I was able to leave a message that we were running an hour late and
we’d
be
down
there at ten-thirty.

It was now ten-forty and I called to Heidi from behind the newspaper as I sat on her living room couch.

“Heidi, come on
,
we were supposed to be there ten minutes ago.”

“You want me to
go there looking like shit?” she yelled from her bedroom.

“No, you’re supposed to go there on time
and sign a statement. The individual
they’re going to charge
,
your hot little friend
,
Emma
,
has some rights
,
too, and one of them is you have to be there on time.
Besides, they don’t really care what you look like.
”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said walking
into the living room and looking
decidedly better than the woman I’d seen with her head in the toilet bowl two hours ago.

“Wow, amazing what a shower and
a couple of
aspirin can do for you, you look great.”

“
I f
eel like shit, butthead
.
Did you kick me last night, you creep? I’ve got this enormous purple bruise on my ass. What the hell did you do? Oh, do m
y eye
s
look okay, I used some drops?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“You didn’t even look, Dev. God,
here,
help me on with these
, will you?
I can’t
do it
my hand is killing me,
no thanks to you,
” she said
,
then handed me a string of pearls and turned round with her back to me.

“
What do you mean, n
o thanks to me? Y
eah,
that’s right,
like I sat on you
, pinned you to the ground
with a funnel
and poured a fifth of vodka into
you last night.”

At the mention of vodka s
he shuddered visibly,
and
then stepped away as soon as I’d clasped her pearls.

“Okay, let me get a water
,
then let
’
s get this over with so I can go back to bed.
”

Our drive down to the station was, with the exception of the radio, very quiet. We were ushered into a conference room on the fourth floor. Manning was in there, along with
wild and crazy
Detective Schumacher, a stack of files and lots of reports.

“Glad you two are
finally here, have a seat,” he said, not glancing up. He arranged stacks o
f papers, stapled various sheets
together
creating more stacks
and said something unintelligible to Schumacher who responded in kind. Then he looked up.

“How we feeling
,
Miss Bauer?”

“Great,” Heidi said flashing
a fake smile.

He stared at her for a moment like he didn’t believe her, then shrugged and shuffled some papers.

“We’re going to take a statement from you, in the interview room. It’s procedure,
nothing to worry about. Just answer the questions to the best of your ability.
Detective Schumacher here will take your statement.”

Schumacher nodded slightly, indicating she was
at least
partially
alive.

“We’ll have
two other officers in there with you,
basically
to serve as witnesses and
possibly
ask some questions. You have done nothing wrong here, so I don’t want you to worry. We’ll be recording this just as a safety measure to make sure we don’t misquote you and to make sure you
’
r
e
protected. Okay?”

Heidi nodded yes, but I knew her well enough to see she was more than a little nervous
, or maybe it was just her hang
over.

“You’re probably going to be done a lot sooner than me, take my keys,
you can
drive back home and rest up,
” I said to Heidi, sliding my keys across the table
.

“Okay, ladies,” Manning said
, then looked at
Detective Schumacher.

“It’s going to be a while,” Manning
said
, once they’d left
. “Do you want to grab
som
ething down in the cafeteria?
I can send someone for you when it’s your turn.”

“
Aren’t you worried I could get food poisoning or something?”

“Food poisoning is
probably
the least of y
our problems down there.
”

“
I don’t know, like I said la
st night, she was passed out during
most of it, she...”

“Well, we still need to have her statement and
you’d be amazed how much people can remember once you get things going, Schumacher’s pretty damn good.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll get some coffee.”

A
ctually
, I
got a Coke, a Panini sandwich, a piece of c
herry pie and an ice cream bar.
I had just
sat down, pushed my tray back and was about to take a sip of Coke
when
a
woman approached.

“Excuse me, are you Devlin Haskell?”

“Yes I am
can I help you?” I said,
racking my brain, trying to
remember if I’d met her before.
I was drawing a
complete
blank.

“Detective Manning say
s they’re ready for you up in i
nterview room three.”

“Really, that fast, gee, go figure. Okay, I’ll just finish this stuff and be right up.”

“They’re kind of like
,
ready, right now,” she said, c
learly uncomfortable with my response.

“Okay, I’m there,
”
I said,
then
wolfed down
the
cherry
pie, picked up
my sandwich
, ice cream bar,
Coke and followed he
r
out.

I answered
Manning’s
first
question
correctly
, my name.
I went on to tell my version of events, leaving out my trip down to the Hustler’s locker room and shooting
a Taser into
old Sergeant Wayne
’s fat ass
.

Judging from the questions he asked, Manning seemed to be satisfied with my version of events although he did come back a half dozen different times with something like, “
So at no time did you leave your
private box.”

“
I left
one t
ime to use
the rest room, other than that,
I re
mained in the box with Miss Bauer
.
”

“Yeah, she seems unable to verify that fact.”

“What kind of guy would leave a woman in that condition?” I said,
and
then quickly continued. “
Following the
derby
bout we received an escort to a handicapped exit out the rear door. As soon as we left the building we were
approached and
held at gunpoint by Felicity Bard.
”

Manning went on to ask details of our journey to the hotel, Heidi passed out
and
strapped to the two wheeled dolly, Emma waving her pistol around. I mentioned the guy with the top hat at the front door of the hotel as well as the woman working the front desk
.
Detective Schumacher made some notes. I made sure they got the
part where Emma said she hid
the finger in my garage, “amongst my bits and pieces and paint cans
”
. I
went on to explain how Emma was probably going to kill us. How she slapped Heidi across her ass and Heidi c
ame alive for four seconds, knocked
Emma
out
,
and
then went back to being passed out
.

“Yeah, we’ve photo
graphed Miss Bauer’s hand and her bruise,
”
Manning s
aid
, straight faced
.

If Schumacher took Heidi’s statement in twenty minutes, it took Manning about three hours and twenty minutes t
o take mine. At the end of his questions
he said, “Mister Haskell, if there is nothing else you would care to add I appreciate your cooperation. I trust you’ll remain available, should we need anything else?”

“I’ve nothing further to add,
at this time,
” I said.

“State for the record
this
interview is concluded, at fifteen
-
hundred—
hours-eighteen—
minutes
,” Manning said giving the twenty-four hour time and turning off
the camera and recorder.

“Off the record, I want to thank you for your help, Haskell. Forty-eight hours from now this woman would have been on a plane heading overseas and we probably wouldn’t have closed the thing.”

“What set her off? All she had to do was sit quiet.”

“There was some sort of incident in the locker room. Your friend from the Veteran’s Auditorium came across something.”

“My friend?”

“The
head of
their
security.”

“Jimmy McNaughton?”

“No, your pal with the auditorium security.”

“
That fat guy, Sergeant Wayne
?” I only had to half feign
surprise.

Manning nodded, ge
t
ting
up from hi
s
chair.

“What could that guy have found?”

“Another finger, as it turns out. The Hustlers returned to their locker room after the bout and Wayne
had discovered another
finger in a purse, turns out it was her’s, Felicity Bard’s
, the purse that is,
” Manning said, tucking a stack of files under his arm
. He gave me a look for a moment then walked
toward the door.

I stood at the table, envisioning
Wayne
down on all fours, hand cuffed to the locker. His
trousers
still
smoking from the
high voltage
Taser
in his fat ass
as I dumped
out the contents of that
purse
all
over him.