Brian Freemantle - Dead End

They’d known about the damage before they’d even begun to question him, Parnell thought.

They arrested him there and handcuffed him and as they led him towards their Metro police marked car, Parnell saw there were people lined up at Dubette’s windows. Dwight Newton, walking with them, told Parnell he’d talk to the company’s legal department. Johnson said something Parnell didn’t hear. He didn’t hear a remark from Helen Montgomery, either, but didn’t ask her to repeat it, withdrawing into himself, forcing himself to think logically, coherently. He needed a lawyer, obviously: not the one who’d negotiated his contracts, a lawyer accustomed to courts. America was a law-orientated country. It would be a formality, one he’d enjoy, humiliating the two assholes in front of him into a demanded – and necessary – apology. Science would be the answer, as it was to so much. He didn’t know how long it would take, an unwelcome day, two at the most, forensically to establish that the crash-paint residue on Rebecca’s car didn’t match that of his Toyota. Which was hardly the problem, merely an inconvenience. Who had made her crash? Who had forced Rebecca to drive at sixty-five miles an hour, inevitably to crash. Why? An attack. That’s what it had to be. She’d been running, fleeing, to escape from an attacker. Someone who had attacked her. Smashed into her car and forced her over the edge of a canyon or ravine or whatever they called it. Without a seat belt. That didn’t make sense, Parnell decided, his mind back to Showcross’s office and the knowing questioning from the two in front of him in the car. Rebecca never, ever, drove without a seat belt. Never drove off without buckling up, nagging him to do the same. So, hers would have been fastened outside the apartment at Washington Circle, long before she got to Rock Creek Park. What panic, aberration, had made her unfasten it? To jump out of the car – to escape? Not at sixty-five miles an hour. Why then? So many questions. Too many questions. Would – could – the two officers relaxing ahead of him ever answer them? He would, Parnell determined. When his own release had been secured – with apologies – he’d demand a proper investigation, not one already decided before it began. Which prompted another question. Had they known about the earlier damage to his Toyota? How? He hadn’t reported the car-park accident to security: hadn’t told anyone except Rebecca. So why had the two police officers behaved as aggressively, as disbelievingly, as they had in Showcross’s office. And smirked and nodded when he’d shown them the damage to the Toyota? He was guessing, Parnell reminded himself. Shouldn’t guess, like they’d guessed. If he was going to get this right – make them get this right and find the man or woman who’d caused Rebecca’s death – he had to get everything right. Not guess. Be sure. He’d do it, Parnell promised himself. He’d make enough fuss, do whatever it took, to ensure there was a proper investigation. That the bastard was caught and tried and jailed. That would surely be the sentence on someone who’d chased a terrified woman through a forest, driven her to her death. That was murder. How terrified Rebecca must have been! All alone, fleeing an unknown pursuer, lights blazing in her mirror, knowing… knowing what? That she was going to be raped. Not a woman then. Had to be a man. A man depraved enough – insane enough – to kill her, if he couldn’t have her sexually. The imagery, the horror, physically welled up inside Parnell and he choked and coughed against it, doubling up.

‘No good crying, English boy,’ said Bellamy from the passenger seat. ‘We got you, fair and square. You’re going to have all the time in the world for tears and regret.’

‘You think…?’ started Parnell but stopped, intentionally, deciding it was pointless arguing with either of them. Instead he said: ‘Don’t call me boy. You’re going to be made to look very stupid. Don’t make it worse for yourselves, when I bring a case for wrongful arrest and blatant dereliction of duty and we discuss all this in a court with you in a dock.’

There was a long, unsettled silence. Then Helen Montgomery said: ‘You quite sure we got those charges here on the statute book…’ Bellamy filled the silence with an anticipatory snigger. ‘… English boy?’ the woman finished, even exaggerating a southern accent.

‘I hope not,’ said Parnell, recovered and totally in control. ‘I hope my lawyers can find something far worse than that. You’re giving more time for a killer to get away, by being stupid. That’s what I’m going to hang around both your necks, a label saying Stupid. ’

‘You ever wonder what it feels like, getting a Billy club around your neck, English boy?’ threatened Bellamy.

He’d picked the wrong fight at the wrong time, Parnell realized. There were a dozen witnesses to his docile detention but there would be two against one testimony to his later attempting to resist arrest.

‘You lost your tongue, English boy?’ said the woman, when Parnell didn’t speak.

‘There’s a good English boy, learning respect,’ mocked Bellamy, after a further silence. ‘You’re going to have to learn that well, proper respect, in an American jail. You could even be a prize. Now, wouldn’t that be something, a big hunky English boy like you being a prison prize! You know what a prison prize is, English boy?’

‘I don’t think I want to,’ said Parnell, forcing the humility.

‘You bet your very sweet ass you don’t want to,’ guffawed Bellamy, a clearly rehearsed joke. ‘But I got money that says you’re going to find out in a very big way.’ He and Helen Montgomery were still laughing when they pulled up in front of the police headquarters

Parnell had difficulty getting out of the car with his hands locked behind him, but managed it without coming into awkward contact with the two officers, who stood too close to the rear door. The manacles were only released inside the building. There they went through the property handover formality, bagging his belongings. In the interview room, all the recording apparatus on, Parnell was formally read his right against self-incrimination before being charged with causing death by dangerous driving, leaving the scene of an accident, failing to report an accident and driving in such a way as to endanger life.

‘Those are holding charges,’ finished Bellamy. ‘Just the start.’

‘Now you want to tell us what really happened?’ demanded Helen Montgomery.

‘I have a right to a lawyer, don’t I?’

She sighed. Sticking to the necessary, recorded formality, she said: ‘You have such a right.’

‘I want to exercise it.’

‘It’s being done for you,’ reminded Bellamy. ‘Dwight Newton said he was talking to Dubette’s legal people.’

‘Then we’ll wait until they arrive,’ said Parnell. Seeing the immediate expression on Bellamy’s face, Parnell decided he was lucky not to have arrived at the station without being beaten for supposedly resisted arrest. Perhaps – although only just perhaps – there was an advantage in being an English boy after all.

Both escorted Parnell to the detention cell, a narrow, tiled room equipped with a single bed and a lidless toilet bowl.

The woman said: ‘I want your trouser belt and shoelaces. Your handkerchief, too. Had a bastard choke himself on his handkerchief once. Don’t want you cheating yourself out of what’s yours.’

‘Or cheating a lot of other guys out of their pleasure,’ added Bellamy.

Without a watch, it was difficult for Parnell to judge time, but there was still daylight through the barred window when the door opened again. The detention officer said: ‘The canteen’s got pot roast. You want pot roast?’