Mike Faricy: Bombshell

“Well, we still need to have her statement and you’d be amazed how much people can remember once you get things going, Schumacher’s pretty damn good.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll get some coffee.”

Actually, I got a Coke, a Panini sandwich, a piece of cherry pie and an ice cream bar. I had just sat down, pushed my tray back and was about to take a sip of Coke when a woman approached.

“Excuse me, are you Devlin Haskell?”

“Yes I am can I help you?” I said, racking my brain, trying to remember if I’d met her before. I was drawing a complete blank.

“Detective Manning says they’re ready for you up in interview room three.”

“Really, that fast, gee, go figure. Okay, I’ll just finish this stuff and be right up.”

“They’re kind of like, ready, right now,” she said, clearly uncomfortable with my response.

“Okay, I’m there,” I said, then wolfed down the cherry pie, picked up my sandwich, ice cream bar, Coke and followed her out.

I answered Manning’s first question correctly, my name. I went on to tell my version of events, leaving out my trip down to the Hustler’s locker room and shooting a Taser into old Sergeant Wayne’s fat ass.

Judging from the questions he asked, Manning seemed to be satisfied with my version of events although he did come back a half dozen different times with something like, “So at no time did you leave your private box.”

“I left one time to use the rest room, other than that, I remained in the box with Miss Bauer.”

“Yeah, she seems unable to verify that fact.”

“What kind of guy would leave a woman in that condition?” I said, and then quickly continued. “Following the derby bout we received an escort to a handicapped exit out the rear door. As soon as we left the building we were approached and held at gunpoint by Felicity Bard.”

Manning went on to ask details of our journey to the hotel, Heidi passed out and strapped to the two wheeled dolly, Emma waving her pistol around. I mentioned the guy with the top hat at the front door of the hotel as well as the woman working the front desk. Detective Schumacher made some notes. I made sure they got the part where Emma said she hid the finger in my garage, “amongst my bits and pieces and paint cans”. I went on to explain how Emma was probably going to kill us. How she slapped Heidi across her ass and Heidi came alive for four seconds, knocked Emma out, and then went back to being passed out.

“Yeah, we’ve photographed Miss Bauer’s hand and her bruise,” Manning said, straight faced.

If Schumacher took Heidi’s statement in twenty minutes, it took Manning about three hours and twenty minutes to take mine. At the end of his questions he said, “Mister Haskell, if there is nothing else you would care to add I appreciate your cooperation. I trust you’ll remain available, should we need anything else?”

“I’ve nothing further to add, at this time,” I said.

“State for the record this interview is concluded, at fifteen-hundred-hours-eighteen-minutes,” Manning said giving the twenty-four hour time and turning off the camera and recorder.

“Off the record, I want to thank you for your help, Haskell. Forty-eight hours from now this woman would have been on a plane heading overseas and we probably wouldn’t have closed the thing.”

“What set her off? All she had to do was sit quiet.”

“There was some sort of incident in the locker room. Your friend from the Veteran’s Auditorium came across something.”

“My friend?”

“The head of their security.”

“Jimmy McNaughton?”

“No, your pal with the auditorium security.”

“That fat guy, Sergeant Wayne?” I only had to half feign surprise.

Manning nodded, getting up from his chair.

“What could that guy have found?”

“Another finger, as it turns out. The Hustlers returned to their locker room after the bout and Wayne had discovered another finger in a purse, turns out it was her’s, Felicity Bard’s, the purse that is,” Manning said, tucking a stack of files under his arm. He gave me a look for a moment then walked toward the door.

I stood at the table, envisioning Wayne down on all fours, hand cuffed to the locker. His trousers still smoking from the high voltage Taser in his fat ass as I dumped out the contents of that purse all over him.

“Coming, Mister Haskell, or have you grown fond of our interview rooms?” Manning smiled.

“Wait, she had all these fingers, I mean, why? How? Fat Wayne found it?”

Manning nodded. “Turns out she had them shipped to her, some wigged out boyfriend packed ‘em in dry ice, overnighted the things to her.”

“From England?”

“Yeah, its why they didn’t match our database, well one of the reasons, they weren’t from here.”

“But still how? Why?”

“He’s some surgical intern, or was, London Metro has him right now. Why? Money, I guess everyone was pretty much a volunteer, except for the main fundraiser, that Simmons woman, Harlotte Davidson. She got a percentage based on her contract. Nothing wrong or illegal, the arrangement just made the Bard woman jealous and apparently she thought she could scare the Simmons gal off and do it herself. When that didn’t work things escalated to this point,” he said shrugging his shoulders.

“I was just thinking,” I said walking toward the door, “if perhaps Officer Trang was around she could give me a ride home. I gave Heidi Bauer my keys,” I said.

Manning nodded, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Officer Linh Trang opened the rear passenger door of the squad car and waited for me to step out.

“I don’t know if that would be the smartest career move,” she said.

“What can possibly happen? We’re just meeting for a drink, in a very public place. We’re arriving in separate vehicles, from separate locations. If it makes you feel any better you can say we just ran into one another. You don’t have to admit we were on a date. It really isn’t a date, as a matter of fact.”

“You’re sort of known around the department,” she said, smiling, maybe.

“In a good way?”

“Depends.”

On what?”

“On who you talk to. From what I hear and saw the last woman to go out with you was strapped to a two wheeled dolly and got her ass slapped.”

“Well, yeah but that… Wait, from what you saw?”

She smiled wide. “Now I suppose if I don’t go out with you, you’re going to threaten to expose me for being one of about fifty officers laughing at the evidence photos. A certain bruise after your lady friend was slapped across her very nice ass. ”

“You mean if I threaten to tell on you, you’ll meet me for a drink?”

“Okay where?” she laughed.

I decided to sound trendy. “You know the Dew Drop?”

She nodded.

“How about eight tonight?”

“I can do that,” she said.

I hadn’t been in the place since the night Carol left with that French guy Nicholas and I met Justine. It seemed like a century ago. What passed for music here didn’t start blaring until nine and I hoped we could pound down a couple of drinks and then decide on someplace better, maybe like The Spot, or better yet my penthouse suite before it got too noisy here.

“Funny finding you at the bar,” a voice said.

I turned and saw Linh, looking delicious in a short little off white outfit. I stared, running my eyes up and down her figure.

“Linh, you look fantastic, not that you wouldn’t anyway, but wow, you really look great.”

“Thanks,” she said, then examined what I was wearing, jeans and a green golf shirt with an embroidered Jameson logo, she didn’t comment but I think she made a mental note.