“I’m going to have to call a lawyer,” I said. “I’m not answering any more questions.”
“You got something to hide?” asked Hansen. He tried to smile, but it was an unpleasant thing, like a crack in old marble. “Why you getting all lawyered up now? Relax. We’re just talking here.”
“Really, is that what we’re doing? If it’s all the same to you, I don’t care much for your conversation.”
I looked at Conlough. He shrugged.
“Lawyer it is, then,” he said.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Hansen. “But we can take that road, if you want to. So: arrest, or conversation?”
He gave me a cop stare, filled with false amusement and the certainty that he was in control.
“I don’t think we’ve met before,” I said. “I’m sure I would have remembered, just to make sure that I didn’t have the pleasure again.”
Conlough coughed into his hand, and turned his face to the wall. Hansen’s expression didn’t change.
“I’m a new arrival,” said Hansen. “I’ve been around some, though, done my time in the big cities-just like you, I guess, so your reputation doesn’t mean shit to me. Maybe up here, with your war stories and the blood on your hands, you seem like a big shot, but I don’t care much for men who take the law into their own hands. They represent a failure in the system, a flaw in the works. In your case, I intend to repair that flaw. This is the first step.”
“It’s not polite to disrespect a man in his own home,” I said.
“That’s why we’re all going to leave now, so that I can continue disrespecting you someplace else.”
He waved his fingers, indicating that I should stand. Everything about his attitude toward me spoke of utter contempt, and there was nothing that I could do but take it, for the present. If I reacted further, I would lose my temper, and I didn’t want to give Hansen the satisfaction of putting the cuffs on me.
I shook my head and stood, then put on an old pair of sneakers that I always kept by the kitchen door.
“Let’s go, then,” I said.
“You want to lean against the wall there first?” said Hansen.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I replied.
“Yeah, I’m a regular joker,” said Hansen. “You and me both. You know what to do.”
I stood with my legs spread and my hands flat against the wall while Hansen patted me down. When he was happy that I wasn’t concealing assorted weaponry, he stepped back, and I followed him from the house, Conlough and Frederickson behind me. Outside, Ben Ronson already had the back door of the cruiser open for me. I heard a dog barking. Walter was racing across the field dividing my property from the Johnsons’. Bob Johnson was some ways behind Walter, but I could see the expression of concern on his face. As the dog drew nearer, I felt the cops tense around me. Ronson’s hand went to his gun again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s friendly.”
Walter sensed that the men in the yard had no love for him. He paused at a gap in the trees overlooking the front yard and barked uncertainly, then slowly walked toward me, his tail wagging gently but his ears flat against his head. I looked at Conlough, and he nodded his okay. I went to Walter and rubbed his head.
“You have to stay with Bob and Shirley for a while, puppy,” I said. He pressed his head against my chest and closed his eyes. Bob was now standing where Walter had been minutes before. He knew better than to ask if everything was okay. I grabbed Walter by the collar and took him over to Bob, Hansen watching me all the way.
“Will you take care of him for a few hours?” I asked.
“It’s no trouble,” he replied. He was a small, spry man, his eyes alert behind his spectacles. I looked down at the dog, and while I patted him one more time I quietly asked Bob to call the Black Point Inn. I gave him the number of the room in which Angel and Louis were staying, and told him to inform them that a man named Merrick had paid me a visit.
“Sure. Anything else I can do for you?”
I looked around at the four cops.
“You know, Bob, I really don’t think so.”
With that, I got in the back of the black-and-white, and Ronson drove me to the Scarborough P.D.
Chapter XXV
They kept me in the interrogation room at Scarborough P.D. headquarters while we waited for Aimee Price to arrive, and once again I felt myself following in Merrick’s footsteps. Hansen had wanted to take me to Gray, but Wallace MacArthur, who had come in when he heard that I was being questioned, lobbied on my behalf. I could hear him through the door vouching for me, urging Hansen to hold off the big dogs for a while. I was inexpressibly grateful to him, not so much for saving me an unpleasant trip to Gray with Hansen, but for being willing to step up to the plate when he must have had his own doubts.
Nothing had changed in the room since Merrick had occupied this seat. Even the childish doodles on the whiteboard were the same. I wasn’t cuffed, and Conlough had given me a cup of coffee and a stale doughnut. My head still hurt, but I was gradually waking up to the fact that I had probably said too much back in the house. I still didn’t know what Merrick had done, but I was pretty certain that someone was dead because of it. In the meantime, I realized that I had effectively admitted my gun had been used in the commission of a crime. If Hansen decided to play hardball and charge me, I could find myself behind bars with little hope of making bail. At the very least, he could hold me for days, leaving Merrick to wreak havoc with the Smith 10.
After an hour alone with my thoughts, the door of the interrogation room opened, and Aimee Price was admitted. She was wearing a black skirt and jacket, and a white blouse. Her briefcase was shiny and made of expensive leather. She looked all business. I, by contrast, looked terrible, and she told me so.
“Do you have any idea what’s happening?” I asked.
“All I know is that they’re investigating a shooting. One fatality. Male. Clearly, they think you may be able to help them with some details.”
“Like how I shot him.”
“Bet you’re glad you held on to my card now,” she said.
“I think it brought me bad luck.”
“You want to tell me how much?”
I went through everything with her, from Merrick ’s arrival at the house to Ronson putting me in the back of the cruiser. I left nothing out, apart from the voices. Aimee didn’t need to hear about that.
“How dumb are you?” she said when I was done. “Children know better than to answer a cop’s questions without a lawyer being present.”
“I was tired. My head was hurting.” I realized how pathetic I sounded.
“Dummy. Don’t say another word, not unless you get the nod from me.”
She went back to the door and knocked to indicate that the cops could enter. Conlough came in, followed by Hansen. They took seats across from us. I wondered how many people were crowded around the computer monitor outside, listening to the questions and answers being relayed from the room, watching four figures dance around one another without moving.
Aimee held up a hand.
“You need to tell us what this is about first,” she said.
Conlough looked to Hansen.
“A man named Ricky Demarcian died last night. He was shot in the head over at a trailer park named Tranquility Pines. We have a witness who says that a Mustang matching the one owned by your client was seen driving away from the scene. He even gave us the tag number.”
I could imagine what was happening at Tranquility Pines as we spoke. The state CID’s crime scene unit would be there, along with the white truck of Scarborough ’s own evidence technician, its rear doors personalized with blowups of his thumbprints. He was regarded as one of the best evidence techs in the state, a painfully meticulous man, and it was unlikely that the state guys would discourage him from working alongside their own people. The red-and-white mobile command center, used in conjunction with the fire department, would also be present. There would be bystanders, rubberneckers, potential witnesses being interviewed, trucks from the various local network affiliates, a whole circus converging on one little trailer in one sorry trailer park. They would take casts at the scene, hoping to match the treads to the tires on my Mustang. They wouldn’t find any matches, but it wouldn’t matter. They could argue that the car might have been parked on the road, away from the dirt. Absence of a link to my car wouldn’t prove my innocence. Meanwhile, Hansen had probably set in motion the processes necessary to secure a warrant to search my home, including my garage, if he didn’t already have one. He would want the car, and the gun. In the absence of the latter, he would settle for the box of Cor-Bon ammunition.