I was coming down the stairs maybe three minutes later. I heard the heavy clomp of shoes on the front porch floor and hoped it might be the luscious Officer Trang returning to put me in handcuffs.
I had one of those nanosecond thoughts; the police would ring the doorbell, I’d answer, “Hi guys, be with you in a minute let me just turn off the television and the kitchen lights. Anyone want a Dr. Pepper?”
That wasn’t exactly how it went down. I was on the staircase, thought I heard shoes clomping, although in retrospect they were wearing combat boots, not uniform shoes. As I descended the stairs I could see trousers, Kevlar vests, shirt sleeves, protective plastic strapped over elbows and knees, all black. That should have been my first clue; St. Paul’s finest wears blue uniforms. Clue number two would have been the locked door suddenly flying open and the six guys storming in with weapons drawn. Two guys flew into prone positions on my entry way rug and leveled automatic weapons at me. I don’t know what kind they were, AK’s, maybe M-16’s. All I saw was the end of a barrel about a foot wide and pointed at me.
“Hands up, hands up!” someone screamed on the floor.
“Don’t move, hands up!” another guy yelled from the doorway.
“Hey, watch the woodwork, damn it.” I said and hurried down the steps carrying my Dr. Pepper can to inspect my damaged doorframe.
“Don’t move, hands up, get ‘em up, get ‘em up.”
“Gun!” someone screamed.
I had about four steps left to descend figuring I’d just calm everyone down when suddenly a very large arm grabbed my shirt, flung me over the railing and slammed me onto the oak floor.
“Ughhh,” was about all I got out as the wind was knocked out of me. Knees and feet pinned me to the floor, someone seemed to be standing on my head.
“Freeze asshole, don’t move,” someone yelled.
Move? That was the least of my problems. I couldn’t breathe, I was struggling for air, panicking. Some guy was sitting on my chest and it felt like it was collapsing. I couldn’t move, couldn’t get the weight off. I couldn’t breathe, more panic.
“Hold still, damn it,” someone screamed as a pair of hands reached on either side of the boot standing on my skull and twisted my head, slamming my face into the floor. My nose gave an audible snap when it met the quarter sawn oak floor, cutting off my air intake. I panicked even more and began to frantically struggle for air.
“Hold still, damn it,” someone slammed a boot or a fist a couple of times into my ribs just as my arms were twisted up behind my back, almost pulling them out of the sockets.
I vomited burrito and Dr. Pepper from the blows, coughed and then gasped for more air.
“Oh shit,” a guy yelled and the upper pressure on my right arm was relaxed.
From somewhere behind me on the stairs another guy laughed.
I was too busy passing out to find anything funny.
When I regained consciousness I was on my knees, vaguely aware my hands were cuffed behind my back. My head was held down, but not too forcefully. I could feel something cold moving back and forth across the back of my head.
“Just stay still, take some deep breaths, relax.”
Yeah, I thought, that’s what I’ll do, relax. Footsteps were pounding up and down the staircase behind me. There were two or three pairs of black boots moving in and out of my peripheral vision. On the floor in front of me blood continued to drop from my nose forming a small pool. The nose wasn’t working at the moment and I had to breathe through my mouth. The left sides of my upper and lower lip were swollen and torn and my lower jaw was not quite lining up.
“Three pistols so far,” a voice said. I heard the weapons bounce off one another along with some rattling or crinkling. I guessed each weapon had been placed in a plastic evidence bag and was being handed to someone.
I attempted to say ‘I’m licensed to carry,’ but it came out as unintelligible garble.
“No one’s talking to you, piece of shit. He good enough to travel?” A voice from somewhere above me thundered.
There must have been some sort of response indicated.
“Good, then get him out of my sight. Nesbitt’s out front with the brass doing the PR gig, stuff him in a squad and take him downtown, they’re waiting for him.”
I was helped to my feet, sort of, pulled up by the shoulders by the two large cops dressed in black on either side of me. Lifting me up must have seemed like nothing more than throwing a beach ball around to the two of them. The guy on my left squeezed a blue gel pack in his hand. I half caught his eye as I stood.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
He looked at me with cold eyes, dropped the pack on the floor, “Shut the fuck up, asshole.”
“Just a minute,” a very large cop with a thick mustache and some sort of sinister looking automatic weapon over his shoulder held his hand up. I think he was the one who had asked if I could travel, he held the evidence bags with my pistols. For the first time I saw SWAT in white letters across someone’s back.
“Devlin Haskell, you have the right to remain silent…”
Eventually I was led out the door toward a squad car waiting in my driveway with the lights flashing. There were two uniformed officers standing on the city sidewalk talking to three different camera crews. My guess was it was the guy named Nesbitt and some higher up puke that fascist with the mustache had mentioned.
The news crews rushed past him as soon as they saw me on the porch. A couple of uniforms made a half-hearted attempt to hold them back.
“Why did you kill Fiona Simmons?” a woman said into her microphone then thrust the thing in my direction. The microphone was fuzzy, gray and looked like a Muppet on a stick. She looked familiar, the woman, but I couldn’t place her.
“Where did you get the fingers?” some guy shouted, his toupee went slightly askew when he tried to duck under the arm of a police officer and he quickly took a step back, indicating with a wave of his arm that the cameraman should focus on me being placed in the back of the squad car.
“Why were you stalking the English woman, Fiona Simmons?” another guy asked.
Cameras and news people clustered alongside the squad car as the two officers took their sweet time climbing in. We sat in my driveway for a good couple of minutes so everyone could get their shots of me arrested, handcuffed and bloodied being taken downtown. Many more camera flashes and I was going to have post traumatic stress.
As we backed out of the driveway the woman with the fuzzy gray microphone was back on the sidewalk, pushing her microphone into the face of the fat woman with the dog. Fatty raised her hand holding the bag of dog shit and pointed at me as we drove away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
We took a different, less direct route than the one Officer Trang drove to the police station yesterday. But then, this entire experience had been a world of difference from my encounter with the beautiful Officer Trang.
“God, really sorry about that,” the officer in the passenger seat said. He nodded in the direction of my head, I still couldn’t breathe through my nose and I was aware of the blood running over my lips dripping onto my shirt. My left cheek bone felt like someone had taken a belt sander to it.
I half coughed and spit a mouthful of blood and mucus into the corner of the car floor in an attempt to clear my throat. The cop in the passenger seat turned round and glared at me for a second then half smiled, looking friendly.
“Sometimes those SWAT guys get carried away, you know, things just get out of hand even when it’s a nice guy like you,” the driver said. He looked at me in the rear view mirror, grey eyes lifeless. I preferred the sparkles in Officer Trang’s dark brown eyes from yesterday.