Taking the Fall

I was surfing the web for long-term health care options, here in Seattle. A dishonorable discharge from hitting a glory-hungry National Guard officer in Afghanistan replaced my combat tour with a prison sentence and a dishonorable discharge. Twenty years later, cancer chowed down on my liver as if it were a pate.

The door of my Private Investigator’s office swung open, interrupting my computer search. A late-fifties woman entered, hired me to find her daughter, deposited a retainer, and left. Which is how I now sat in the local precinct’s interrogation room without windows.

Naturally, the cops turned up the heat, already operating at baking levels, to make me sweat. An unnecessary waste of energy given my time in Afghanistan and my cancer companion. The room had a metal table and chair bolted to the floor. My fingers drummed the tabletop as I mentally rehearsed answers.

The shuttered window in the door opened. “Want some water?” a cop asked.

“Bottled?” I said.

“Out of the faucet.”

I licked the sweat off my upper lip. “I’ll pass.” Shouldn’t consume a drink potentially spiked with truth serum.

Detective Burns settled into the chair across from me. He pressed a button which blinked red, indicating that we were being recorded. He read me my rights, and I spewed out my particulars: Charles Bird Dog Hayes, age 50, address being my office in the seedy side of town and acknowledged my rights. “Helluva situation, Bird Dog. Wanna tell me about it?”

I shrugged. “Your folks found me, gun in hand, standing over the body.”

Burns, a stout man with a large brow and bushy eyebrows, nodded. “Is that a confession?”

I weighed my answer. Being flippant wouldn’t help my cause. “Will it get me out of here?”

He chuckled. “Guaranteed one-way ticket to death row. How’s that suit you?”

“Three squares, a bed, medical, library privileges, and meet some new friends. Hmm. Beats the streets.”

“The Private Dick business shitty these days?” he asked, a slight smile on his thick lips.

I ran my hand through my thin hair, feeling the wetness. “You tell me. My most recent client wanted me to video his cheating wife in the act. Then post it online. I turned him down. We have to draw the line somewhere, right? This ol’ goat still has a few principles. Plus, my computer and flip phone ain’t the best quality.”

Burns agreed. “Computer viruses tend to be the enemy these days. Have had a few episodes myself.”

“You know who you knocked off?” Burns asked.

I nodded. “Screwdriver Willie, a loan shark known for his techniques of collecting bad debts.”

“You in hock with him?”

“Like I said, I got principles.” I raised my arms. “These scars are from my Afghan days.”

“What made you go see him?”

I shrugged. “It was a case. The client had come on hard times, asked me to renegotiate the loan. I tried to talk to him. He blows me off. I wouldn’t leave, so he pulled out a screwdriver.”

“And?”

“Someone called 911. Guess they heard the shot and your men showed up before I could dash out.”

Burns leaned back in his chair, tapped his pen on the table, mulled over my story.

I tightened my lips to keep a stoic face and locked my gaze on him.

He stopped tapping his pen.

Silence smothered the room.

Sweat soaked my shirt.

We’d entered the game of chicken stage in the interrogation. Who would break first?

“Sounds like you want to go to prison?” he asked.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. “Not particularly. But I don’t run away from my actions.”

Breaking off his gaze, Burns leaned back in his chair, so it rested on two legs. “You know there’s a video of the crime.”

My mind raced. The man died in his office. There was nothing to show a camera … the mirror. “I’m not surprised, given his business.” In fact, I depended on it, but that would be TMI for Burns.

He shook his head. “Strange thing. Though the person’s back is all that’s seen, it’s shorter than yours. Any idea why that could be?”

My tailbone hurt, my innards hurt, my brain hurt. I shifted in the metal chair. It didn’t help. “Camera distortion.”

Burns leaned forward. “More like someone else. Where’d the gun come from? It’s not registered.”

“Really, Detective, you expect me to…”

“Cut the shit, Bird dog. I want straight answers.”

“Then ask questions you know I can answer without violating confidentially issues. I ain’t giving up my sources nor my clients. It’s one of my sacred principles.” I paused, watched his reaction. He sat stone faced, a man able to subdue his facial emotions, but his thumbs and two forefingers rubbed together like they were starting a campfire with two sticks.

“We found some prints on the Glock’s magazine,” he said, letting it sink in.

My mind raced. I walked through the steps of wiping it down. What had I missed? I was certain I cleaned the magazine.

He must have seen my whirling thoughts. He smiled and said, “But that’s not the kicker.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Actually, it wasn’t the magazine, but the bullets.”

Damn. I’d run out of time when the cops had busted through the Screwdriver’s door.

“And they don’t match yours. Care to explain?”

I answered the first thing that came to mind. “I bought it already loaded.”

For the next twenty minutes, as sweat stains broadened beneath his shirt’s underarms, he machine-gunned questions. He kept circling back to the video, the prints on the bullets, and the name of the person who sold me the gun. Often licking the sweat from my upper lip and wiping my brow, I hemmed and hawed my way through his challenges.

Burns said, “Who are you covering for?”

A chuckle escaped my lips. “You’ve got my confession, your guys found me with the gun standing over Screwdriver, and you won’t accept I did it. Pray tell, why not?”

Burns stood. “Like you, I’ve principles. One is against vigilante justice.”

He walked out and I mulled over the interview, feeling comfortable I’d made my case.

Minutes later, a police officer hauled me off to the county jail. After three hours of bureaucracy, I’d been booked, property confiscated and secured, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with slippers, and given an isolation cell. As the door shut, my stomach growled. “How about some lunch?”

The correction officer laughed. “Room service starts at 6.” He strolled away, my stomach still yearning, a flashback of my day in the stockade.

Most people incarcerated for the first time go stir crazy. As a practiced pro, I watched an imaginary movie.

“You got a visitor,” the jailer said, unlocking the door. Cuffed, he led me to a visiting room booth. A Plexiglass window with tiny holes separated me from my female visitor, dressed in a black.

“Laura,” I said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I had to come. She’s safe now.”

I nodded. We chatted a couple of minutes and I signaled the guard. As I rose, Laura said, “You don’t …”

Now standing, I said, “Write me sometime.” Then strolled away.

That night, on my bunk, hands behind my head, the liver pain flaring up, I weighed my decision. Had I made the right choice? In not giving up my client, and the reason for my visit to Screwdriver—yes. Knowing my remaining time would be spent in prison-yes. Having the gun–no. True justice would have been using a screwdriver to maul up the asshole’s corpse. Which would have been better: flat or cross tip? I fell asleep knowing I’d satisfied my client in protecting her daughter’s name from scandal. Even after she’d been buried.

Two days later, I was hauled into a jail interrogation room. Burns stood there and pointed to a chair.

“Funny thing,” he said. “Seems the video of someone standing over Willie’s body is corrupted.”

“How?”

“Our tech guy blames an imbedded virus in the video file. And the fingerprints on the bullets matched those of a woman recently buried. He gulped and cleared his throat. “The mortuary said her body was…I think you know.” His flat, monotone tone hinted at that soft emotion cops try to stifle when dealing with the public.

“Your point?” I asked.

“Without evidence, the prosecutor’s not taking this to court.”

I jumped up. “What?”

“You’re being released,” he said, stopping at the door.

“But…but…what about the gun? That’s a crime.”

“Not one the prosecutor is going to waste time and money on,” he said and walked out.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur of my mind racing about what to do next. I returned to the office, slumped into my chair, took meds for my liver pain, and turned on the computer. Before I could launch my web browser, the office door opened. This client, a man, thinks his wife is having an affair. And he wants proof, video proof.