Had he just referred to Kiki as Misses Barkwell? I didn’t have time to ponder that, but was led naked out the back door where my jeans were thrown at me.
“I’m fucking hand cuffed here, how am I supposed to get the things on?”
“Figure it out, you’re lucky you’re not dead, asshole. Tough guy, beating up a woman, raping her. You’re damn lucky there are witnesses around right now.”
“Rape?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I’m accused of rape? You’re telling me that psychotic bitch is accusing me of rape?” I asked.
“I’m afraid that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Aaron said, shaking his head.
We were sitting in an interrogation room on the fifth floor of the police station. I knew we were on the fifth floor because I’d been interrogated up here before, although never on a rape charge. Lieutenant Aaron LaZelle headed up the vice unit. He and Detective Norris Manning from homicide were conducting the interrogation. Neither man looked to be enjoying the task at hand.
I sure as hell wasn’t.
The room was either dingy white or light grey, I wasn’t sure which. The place smelled of sweat mixed in with a healthy dose of fear, or maybe that was just me.
Leaning against one of the cinder block walls was Detective Sergeant Dixon Heller, homicide. I recognized him as the thin, bald guy in the ill fitting brown polyester suit from Kiki’s. I guessed he may have been the officer in charge of the investigation, although he clearly wasn’t conducting my interrogation.
“Rape? Honest to God, you guys know me. I didn’t rape her. I’m not some damn rapist, for Christ sake.”
“Look, Dev, I’m going to ask you again, do you want a lawyer present? This is really serious,” Aaron said, looking very uncomfortable.
“Serious? You’re telling me. Look the woman is nuts. She went after me with a knife the other day, threatened to cut me up into little pieces. Then…”
“Do you have a witness that could…”
“Well, no, but she did. Look guys, she was, no, she is crazy.”
“So you went back there. After she threatened to cut you up? Is that right?” Manning asked.
“Well yeah, but not exactly. See, I brought this guy over to paint her wall, Gary Hobson.”
“When was this?” Manning asked.
“Couple of days ago.”
“To paint her wall?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah, in her bedroom.”
“Just a wall or the entire room,” Manning fired back.
“Well, just a wall.”
“Just one wall?” Aaron asked.
“Yes.”
“What was wrong with it?”
“Some marks or something on it.”
“You know she’ll tell us if it was more than that,” Manning said, writing a note on a sheet of paper from the open file in front of him.
“There might have been a little spray paint on the wall.”
“A little spray paint, define little.”
“Maybe a few letters,” it didn’t sound good, even to me.
“Did these letter say anything?” Manning asked, almost sweetly.
“Come on, Dev, what was it?” Aaron said, clearly frustrated.
“It said, KRAZ sucks.”
“Did you spray paint that?” Manning asked, looking up from his file.
I nodded.
“I’m sorry, could you speak up.”
“Yes, apparently.”
“Apparently?” Manning asked.
“That’s what she told me, but I really don’t remember doing it. I just woke up and it was there, on the wall.”
“Large letters?”
“Sort of.”
“Care to define sort of?”
“Okay, okay, yeah, about four feet high, all capitals. So that’s why I had Gary Hobson over, to paint the wall and get things perfect for her, you know? Anyway, Gary couldn’t do the job so I ended up painting her bedroom wall. She offered to make me dinner and then talked me into staying. The next thing I know, I wake up tied to her bed. Then you guys break in and tasered me while I was standing in the bathroom.”
Manning tapped his pen on the file in front of him. Aaron stared at the grey Formica table top.
“So, what seems to be increasingly difficult for me to figure out is how you woke up tied to the bed?” Manning said.
“Yeah, right, exactly.” I nodded in agreement.
“So what happened? She unties you, and you tie her up and then rape her? That it?”
“No look, I didn’t rape her. I’ve never raped anyone. I’ve done a lot of things, but never rape.”
“But you tied her to the bed?”
“No, I didn’t do that.”
“I wonder who did? See, when the officers got to Misses Barkwell’s home they had to break in, break through the door. You were taking a shower. And she, Misses Barkwell, is tied to the bed. I’m having trouble here, do you think she tied herself to the bed?”
“Yes.”
“So she tied herself to the bed. That must mean she gave herself that black eye? Beat herself up and raped herself using you as an unwitting accomplice. Right?” Manning asked.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Something like that?” Manning said.
“Look. I think I must have blacked out for the night, okay. I have no memory of anything after my first drink there. All I know is, in the morning everything is fine. She untied me, wanted to make me breakfast and sent me to the shower. She even told me to stay in there for thirty minutes, said it would make me feel better.”
“Thirty minutes, she said that?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah.”
“And then she ties herself up and calls 911? Gee, all of a sudden it seems so cut and dried,” Manning said, then stared at me.
“I think that’s what happened,” I said.
“You think. Interesting. What about the images we found on your phone. She take those? She looks pretty frightened.”
“Images? On my phone?”
“Yeah almost a dozen of them, taken over the course of the night, she’s restrained in everyone of them. Looks like a long night for her. What? You wanted some souvenirs of what you did to the poor woman?”
“I don’t know anything about that. My phone takes pictures?”
“Apparently. It seems obvious to me after she gave herself the black eye and tied herself up, somehow she managed to take pictures of herself being raped over the course of five or six hours.”
“Look, I know this looks bad, but I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything.”
“To tell you the truth Mister Haskell, it doesn’t look bad, it looks airtight.”
Aaron stared down at the table shaking his head ever so slightly.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I spent the night in jail. Not the worst cell I’d ever been in, but not a luxury hotel suite, either. The pad I was supposed to sleep on was about a half inch thick. Not that it mattered since I couldn’t sleep. I stared into the dark for most of the night trying to make sense of everything. I never did make any sense of things.
The next morning, I still had a pounding headache, no recollection of anything that happened and a court appointed Yale educated attorney by the name of Daphne Cochrane. She‘d been given a file, a fairly thick file, and was reviewing my case with me in another dingy, smelly room. At the moment she was giving me the cheery news, explaining what she saw as my best option.
“Look, Mister Haskell…”
“Please, under the circumstances, call me Dev.”
“Quite honestly, I think under the circumstances, I would prefer to call you Mister Haskell.” She had a way of talking with her teeth clenched, mouth set in sort of a grimace speaking in an Ivy League accent even though she’d been St. Paul born and raised. She was clearly unhappy to be saddled with my case.
“As I was saying, it would seem the best we can hope for is a plea of insanity due to chemical excess. That might help mitigate the kidnapping charge, since you claim you were invited over, at least initially. Thank God she hadn’t had a restraining order served on you, yet.”
“Restraining order?”
“Well, I’m sure after the spray paint incident she must have been thinking of it. That’s not a concern just now, she never got the chance before you raped her. But, I’d better check, just to be sure,” she said jotting down a note on the margin of a page in the file.