Mike Faricy: Bombshell

“Enlightening,” Manning said, then looked up at me and smiled, genuinely.

“I’m still going to need a statement from you, and Miss Bauer, possibly a photograph from her as well.”

“Photograph?”

“Of her bruise,” Manning smiled. “You can cover her up now, by the way, thank you,” he said.

I pulled the bed covers back over Heidi.

“Alright, it’s late, after two,” Manning said, checking his watch. “Why don’t you plan on showing up at nine-thirty tomorrow morning with Miss Bauer. We’ll take your statements at that time. I’d better get down there and begin processing Miss Bard. For the record, Haskell, I appreciate your help. Nice digs,” he said looking around the suite.

“Glad I was able to help, detective,” I said, and extended my hand. He took it and gave me a firm shake, then thanked Aaron for the earlier call and left with Detective Schumacher in tow.

“She ever do anything like smile or suggest she was alive and breathing,” I said, once they left.

“Who, Schuey? She’s okay, she can be a lot of fun.”

“Yeah, sure she can.”

“Alright, let me echo what Manning said, thanks for the call. Looks like this might well get a headache or two off everyone’s plate.”

I attempted to gently wake Heidi by shaking her ankle around eight-thirty the following morning.

“Ughhh, don’t touch me,” she groaned.

“Come on, I’ve got vodka and orange juice all set up for your breakfast screwdriver,” I said.

It was like waiting for a fuse delay on an explosive charge. She laid there, twitched her nose once or twice then seemed to levitate and fly into the bathroom all in one fluid motion. I pulled the door closed as she began to retch into the toilet bowl. It was a good fifteen minutes before she exited the bathroom and started to crawl back into bed, to tell the truth she wasn’t looking all that hot.

“Feeling better? Heidi, come on, don’t go back to bed, we’ve got a nine-thirty appointment.”

“You know what you can do with your nine-thirty appointment,” she said, crawling across the bed.

“I’ve already done that, thank you. Come on, I’m not kidding, we have to be down at the police station at nine-thirty.”

“The police, now what did you do? And why do I have to go? Forget it, you’re on your own,” she was in the process of pulling the covers over her head. I came alongside and began to pull the covers back down.

“Get away from me and let me go back to sleep. I think I’ve got food poisoning or something, I feel like shit, my heads killing me and I hurt my hand, somehow. God, what did you do to me?”

“Yeah, that’s right Heidi, I did something to you. Oh wait, I forgot, its food poisoning. Must have been the five-star-meal room service brought up last night. Come on, get up, you have to get dressed so we can go down there and make a statement, both of us.”

“I. Don’t. Want to.” She said, and then kicked her feet and thrashed about before she slapped my hand away, pulling the covers back over her head.

“We have to go down to the police station, come on,” I said a bit more forcefully.

“Why me?” she groaned from under the covers.

“Because, that woman with the gun, the one that kidnapped us, the woman who slapped you on the ass. The woman you punched and knocked out. The police arrested her. They’re going to charge her and they need our statements.”

“What?” she said, and slowly pulled the covers down from over her head.

I gave her the three minute synopsis, dwelling on her Lionel Richie rant for a moment or two.

“I can’t go down there like this, God, I slept in this outfit. I need a shower, and I feel like shit. Do we have to? Why do you do these things?”

“What did I do? You’re the hero here, or the heroine, and don’t yell at me, Miss ‘ She’s so Damn Hot ’.”

“What?”

I phoned Manning’s office, but didn’t have to talk with him. Mercifully, I was able to leave a message that we were running an hour late and we’d be down there at ten-thirty.

It was now ten-forty and I called to Heidi from behind the newspaper as I sat on her living room couch.

“Heidi, come on, we were supposed to be there ten minutes ago.”

“You want me to go there looking like shit?” she yelled from her bedroom.

“No, you’re supposed to go there on time and sign a statement. The individual they’re going to charge, your hot little friend, Emma, has some rights, too, and one of them is you have to be there on time. Besides, they don’t really care what you look like.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said walking into the living room and looking decidedly better than the woman I’d seen with her head in the toilet bowl two hours ago.

“Wow, amazing what a shower and a couple of aspirin can do for you, you look great.”

“I feel like shit, butthead. Did you kick me last night, you creep? I’ve got this enormous purple bruise on my ass. What the hell did you do? Oh, do my eyes look okay, I used some drops?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“You didn’t even look, Dev. God, here, help me on with these, will you? I can’t do it my hand is killing me, no thanks to you,” she said, then handed me a string of pearls and turned round with her back to me.

“What do you mean, no thanks to me? Yeah, that’s right, like I sat on you, pinned you to the ground with a funnel and poured a fifth of vodka into you last night.”

At the mention of vodka she shuddered visibly, and then stepped away as soon as I’d clasped her pearls.

“Okay, let me get a water, then let’s get this over with so I can go back to bed.”

Our drive down to the station was, with the exception of the radio, very quiet. We were ushered into a conference room on the fourth floor. Manning was in there, along with wild and crazy Detective Schumacher, a stack of files and lots of reports.

“Glad you two are finally here, have a seat,” he said, not glancing up. He arranged stacks of papers, stapled various sheets together creating more stacks and said something unintelligible to Schumacher who responded in kind. Then he looked up.

“How we feeling, Miss Bauer?”

“Great,” Heidi said flashing a fake smile.

He stared at her for a moment like he didn’t believe her, then shrugged and shuffled some papers.

“We’re going to take a statement from you, in the interview room. It’s procedure, nothing to worry about. Just answer the questions to the best of your ability. Detective Schumacher here will take your statement.”

Schumacher nodded slightly, indicating she was at least partially alive.

“We’ll have two other officers in there with you, basically to serve as witnesses and possibly ask some questions. You have done nothing wrong here, so I don’t want you to worry. We’ll be recording this just as a safety measure to make sure we don’t misquote you and to make sure you’re protected. Okay?”

Heidi nodded yes, but I knew her well enough to see she was more than a little nervous, or maybe it was just her hangover.

“You’re probably going to be done a lot sooner than me, take my keys, you can drive back home and rest up,” I said to Heidi, sliding my keys across the table.

“Okay, ladies,” Manning said, then looked at Detective Schumacher.

“It’s going to be a while,” Manning said, once they’d left. “Do you want to grab something down in the cafeteria? I can send someone for you when it’s your turn.”

“Aren’t you worried I could get food poisoning or something?”

“Food poisoning is probably the least of your problems down there.”

“I don’t know, like I said last night, she was passed out during most of it, she…”