I got down. But I did not kiss the ground.
The deputy with the assault rifle covered me as his partner holstered his pistol, kneed me in the small of my back, and yanked my left wrist back to handcuff me.
“Don’t move.”
“My thumb’s broken.”
“Shut up.”
He hooked me up, smelling faintly of Old Spice, and hauled me brusquely to my feet. His partner read me my Miranda rights.
“Do you understand these rights I have just read to you?”
I said I did. He keyed a coiled radio mic clipped to the left epaulet of his uniform shirt.
“Eighty-four Robert, suspect in custody.”
“You’re under arrest,” Deputy Old Spice said as he led me back to the patrol car.
“Can I ask what for?”
“Does the name, ‘Raymond Sheen,’ ring a bell?”
“You mean the same individual who tried to kill me?”
“He said you tried to kill him.”
I was too beat to laugh.
Twenty-one
My left thumb was fractured. Fortunately, an X-ray showed the break didn’t require surgery. After my hands were swabbed for gunshot residue, medical staff at the downtown San Diego Central Jail cleaned out my cuts and slapped on a cast that went midway up my left forearm. They gave me a thorough neurological exam to assess the severity of my concussion and an MRI for my leg, concluding it was merely sprained.
Then they tossed me in the slammer.
Aside from being in jail, I was convinced that I had hit upon a brilliant solution to affordable national health care: get busted for a crime you didn’t commit.
I had hoped I might be put in a cell with Bunny the Human Doberman and his cousin, Li’l Sinister. Granted, they were perverse and prone to violence, but they were entertaining, and I’ll take entertaining over dangerous anytime. Unfortunately for me, my cell mate turned out to be the very definition of dull. He was a husky African-American chap in his early thirties with some sort of tribal tattoo on the right side of his face, who sat on the concrete floor with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring catatonically into space. The steel door locked behind me as I entered. He pretended not to notice.
“Welcome to the Rock,” I said in my best Sean Connery, which is much worse that my best Humphrey Bogart, which some who’ve heard it have suggested should be banned as a crime against humanity.
Bad celebrity imitations aside, Chatty Cathy wouldn’t even look up at me. Nor did he respond when lunch arrived a few minutes later — two peanut butter sandwiches on white bread and a disposable paper cup of cherry Kool-Aid. Not having eaten anything since the day before, I wolfed down both sandwiches in short order, then asked if he was planning to eat his.
“You touch my food,” Chatty Cathy said, still refusing to look at me, “and I’ll gut you.”
I had considered asking him to sign my cast, but that offer was definitely off the table.
A jowly, sad-eyed deputy who reminded me a little of Huckleberry Hound escorted me into an interview room where Detective Alicia Rosario sat behind a gray steel metal desk, text messaging on her cell phone. The room was Modern Inquisition. Soundproof cork tiles lined the walls and ceilings. Two large eye screws were bolted to the floor beneath an unpadded metal chair opposite the desk. Deputy Hound directed me to sit, then strung my ankle chains through the eye screws while Rosario waited for him to finish locking me down. He gave my chains a good tug to make sure they were secure, then left, pulling the door closed behind him.
“Long night?” Rosario said.
“You have no idea.”
She yawned. “I’ve been up since two this morning, no thanks to you.”
“What are friends for?”
Behind her, facing me, was a large mirror. I knew it was one-way glass, and that there was probably a video camera recording us on the other side.
“For the record, you’ve been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. You’ve already been advised by the arresting deputies of your legal right to counsel and you’ve waived those rights. Is that correct?”
“Yup.”
“I need you to say it a little more formally.”
“Yes, I’ve been advised of my rights to legal counsel and I waive those rights.”
Rosario sat forward in her chair, her ballpoint pen poised over a legal pad. “OK, how about we take it from the top?”
“From the top, and for the record, I didn’t try to kill Ray Sheen. He tried to kill me.”
I laid it all out for her. How Sheen’s company was designing weaponized, hummingbird-size drones for the government. How I’d gone to Castle Robotics looking for the mysterious C.W. Lazarus, whose truck had been spotted near my airplane, how the plane’s engine had been tampered with, and how I’d wound up in a self-storage unit with Sheen and Frank Jervis, before Jervis keeled over with The Big One.
“Hold up a minute.” Rosario looked up at me from her notes with her eyes narrowed. “The engine on your airplane? What’re you talking about?”
I told her about the FAA’s preliminary findings, and about the pickup truck registered to Lazarus that had been spotted suspiciously close to the Ruptured Duck the night before I’d crashed. I told her that a man wearing a baseball cap and coveralls was seen from a distance climbing out of that truck, opening up the engine compartment, and doing evil things to the Duck.
“Why didn’t you tell me about all this before?”
“I was sort of busy.”
She gave me a knowing look and asked if I had a witness.
“His name’s Al Demaerschalk.”
“Spell it.”
I spelled it.
“What’s Mr. Demaerschalk do?”
“He used to be a pilot. He had a stroke. He’s in the hospital. They don’t think he’s gonna make it.”
Rosario tossed down her pen and glared at me. “And you were going to tell me all this when?”
“I’d hoped to track down Lazarus myself.”
“To do what? Have a friendly little chat with him?”
I shrugged.
“This isn’t the Old West, Logan. We have laws. And you just broke one: willfully withholding evidence in a felony investigation.”
“If you were a pilot, you’d understand.”
“Understand what? Wanting to tee up some guy because he jacked up your ugly old airplane?”
“Hey, let’s not get personal here.”
She folded her arms and sat back. “Look, if somebody did sabotage your plane with the intent of committing great bodily injury, that’s a crime. I’m a sworn peace officer, Logan. I get paid to investigate crimes. You don’t.”
“You can get mad at me all you want, Alicia. I’m just trying to help you out here.”
“Help me out? How is this helping me out? Tell me, please. I’d really like to know.”
I told her how Ray Sheen had taken a paternity test posing as Greg Castle so that Castle could deny having impregnated Ruth Walker.
“How does that help me?” Rosario said.
“Dorian Munz was right about Greg Castle fathering Ruth Walker’s baby. If he was right about that, could be he was right that Castle was upset because Ruth wouldn’t get an abortion. Could be he was also right about Ruth having dirt on Castle’s company. Either way, it would’ve given Castle the motive to murder her.”
“Sheen told you he took a paternity test for Castle?”
“Basically.”
“You told the arresting deputies you hit him and that’s why you crashed.”
I nodded.
“And that’s when he started shooting at you?”
Another nod.
“Any idea what he was shooting at you with?”