I watched for a moment, then hurried to catch up in the event he needed help crossing the street.
“Maybe you should find out, then let me know, rather than bringing me in there and…”
“Let’s just go in there and let them know you’ve got nothing to hide. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for whatever it is they found.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“For the thousandth time I’m telling you I have no idea how in the hell that thing got in my garage. I sure as hell didn’t put it there.”
I was moving up in the world, this time we were in Interview Room Number One. Its decor remarkably similar to the previous interview room, charmless grey cinder block walls with a video camera hanging in one corner. The green light was on, indicating I was being filmed. The back wall had two-way mirrors mounted the entire length, I gathered we were playing to an audience. There was a scent in the room mixed with the damp air conditioning and most likely emanating from me. Fear, desperation, panic?
Detectives Manning and Franco were in the room with us, sitting across from Louie and me, at a grey Formica table whose only feature was a couple of cigarette burns snaking their way toward the chipped edge.
There were a dozen different photos strewn across the table in front of us. Each one a slightly different image of a finger they’d found while searching my garage. It was a severed middle finger, with the finger tip hacked off.
The thing had been wrapped in a plastic bag and placed in a small refrigerator that stood in the back of my garage. Based on the photos I guessed the thing was decomposed. Substantially decomposed.
“Dev, do you mean you forgot you left that finger in your garage?” Franco asked. He’d been the good cop for the past hour, or was it two hours.
“No. I’m saying I’ve never seen that thing before. I never put it in my garage.”
“Why did you keep the finger in that refrigerator?” Manning asked.
“So I could give you one, the finger that is.”
“Dev,” Louie cautioned.
“Look, I don’t know how the thing got there, okay. If I was storing a bunch of fingers would I put them in a refrigerator that hasn’t worked in over two years? If you guys bothered to check you would have noticed the thing was unplugged. It’s been unplugged for a couple of years. Someone is setting me up here.”
“So you admit you were storing a number of fingers. Was this the last one?”
“I don’t admit anything of the sort. I just told you, the refrigerator didn’t work. It’s been broken for a couple of years. If it did work I would have had beer in it.”
“Lets go back to the night you fire bombed the hotel room,” Manning said.
“I didn’t fire bomb anything.”
Manning was walking back and forth across the room, playing to the audience behind the mirrors. As he walked he absently stretched and twisted the rubber band that had held the photos of the fingers.
“So you go to the hotel and…”
“I didn’t fire bomb any hotel room.”
“You stated you were intoxicated that night.”
“No, as a matter of fact, I said I was very intoxicated that night. So much so that I parked on the street, because I didn’t want to attempt driving down my narrow driveway and into my garage.”
“And you left The Spot bar sometime after two that morning.”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“So you drove to the hotel, fire bombed the hotel room of Felicity Bard and Fiona Simmons, then drove home and decided to park on the street?”
“No, I left The Spot. I drove home. I parked on the street and then went to bed.”
“To sleep?”
“Okay, have it your way, I decided to read for a few hours. No, like I’ve been telling you, I more or less passed out. And, I did not fire bomb any hotel room.”
“You phoned a number of different departments impersonating a police officer from Saint Paul, didn’t you Mister Haskell?”
“No. I phoned a number of different police departments. When they asked me if you were as big an asshole as you seemed I said, yes. If that makes it sound like I’m a member of the Saint Paul department there really isn’t much I can do about that.”
Manning had walked to the far end of the room and snapped the rubber band he’d been stretching, turned and looked at me.
“You did call a number of different departments, did you not?”
“I did, four to be exact, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City. At no time did I tell anyone I was a member of the Saint Paul Police Department. If the individuals I spoke with arrived at that conclusion it was on their own.”
“Why did you call?”
“I’ve told you, Jimmy McNaughton had hired me to help with security. I was attempting to learn anything we could about the fingers that had been sent to the Hastings Hustlers.”
“He didn’t feel the police could give adequate protection so he thought he better go right to the top, meaning you. That right?”
“More like he had you as his point of contact with the department, Manning. I’m sure after your standard confidence-building speech regarding budget cuts he figured even I didn’t sound half bad.”
“What was it like doing the security for that English team? Did I hear right, you were in their locker room?” Franco playing good cop.
“Yeah, you know, it was just a job, comes with the territory, twenty or so gorgeous naked women all of them trying to get my attention, it was just an average day’s work.”
Manning flushed close to purple.
“That why you attacked the Bard woman? What is she about five-one, hundred pounds?”
“I didn’t attack anyone.”
“We’ve sworn statements.”
“Actually no you don’t, Detective. I believe all, but one of those statements have been withdrawn. The one remaining statement is from Miss Bard herself, hardly credible in the face of sixteen statements being withdrawn,” Louie said.
“You scare off all those little English girls, Haskell?”
“Don’t answer that, Dev,” Louie said. “I wonder if I might have a moment with my client, Detective?”
Manning and Franco nodded almost in unison. Franco got up from his chair.
“Ten minutes enough time?” Manning asked, suddenly the voice of reason.
“Ten minutes will be perfect,” Louie said, then watched the two of them depart the interview room.
Louie turned to me, then moved his eyes to indicate the mirrored wall, reminding me we were not entirely alone.
After ten or twenty thousand hours of questioning I felt completely drained. I was definitely in need of a serious shower. Louie on the other hand had arrived in that state, as a matter of fact, but right now he seemed to look better than me, a lot better. I couldn’t recall what, exactly, we had been discussing and suddenly came back to reality.
“…seems to be finally going our way,” Louie said.
“Hunh? Going our way, you’re delusional, you gotta be kidding?”
“In my opinion, you’ve been set up. God knows why.”
There was a knock on the door, Manning poked his head in.
“Ready to continue? Need a coffee or anything?” again sounding the voice of reason.
Louie waved him in, “Let’s just get this finished up as quickly as possible.”
Manning went over the same ground all over again, and again, and again.
Finally I couldn’t stand any more.
“You know what you should do Manning, check my place out for DNA related to the fingers that were mailed to those other cities. I’d haul that refrigerator of mine from my garage into your lab, see if you can find anything. Maybe check the post mark on those envelopes. Run the things for a DNA comparison with me. Something’s bound to come together for you guys.”
“We’re already doing that,” he smiled.
“You’re catching on,” I said.
“Detective, is there any new ground you wanted to cover?” Louie asked. “Because if there isn’t, I really think Mister Haskell has been more than cooperative, wouldn’t you agree?”