Page 4 of Fade Out
“The package is ready.”
It was hardly a secret that I was the package and I don’t think I was being called that so I wouldn’t know what was going on. He was deliberately telling me I wasn’t human. That I was just a thing to be passed around the station. My humanity had been checked at the door.
Patton came back and led me out of that area and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Now I was in familiar territory. There were two interview rooms in the back of the floor. I’d been in each of them at least once.
Windowless. A metal table. A couple of metal chairs. Patton pushed me in and said, “Make yourself comfortable.” As though that were even a possibility.
Then I waited.
Chapter Two
A little more thanan hour later, Hamish Gardner came into the airless room. He was in his mid-forties and looked like he could use a couple years of sleep. He held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a manila folder already thick with paper in the other. He looked at the room and said, “Stuffy in here, isn’t it?”
“Open a window,” I suggested.
He smiled. “You want a sandwich? It’s kind of gross. Bologna.”
I shook my head.
“Well let’s see if we can get you out of here quickly.”
Sitting down across from me, he opened the folder and pretended to read the top sheet. “In your own words tell me why you killed Rita Lindquist.”
I didn’t have any words that were even remotely related to Rita’s death so I didn’t say anything.
“Fuck. I almost forgot.” He flipped through the folder and pulled out a sheet. “You’ve been read your rights. If you want to waive them you need to sign here.”
I stared at the paper.
“You can have a lawyer if you want, but we both know he’s not going to let you talk to me.”
That was the smart thing to do. Keep my mouth shut. And honestly, I didn’t have a whole lot to say. But I wanted to know what Gardner had to say. It was Wednesday, or maybe it was Thursday. I wasn’t even sure. Either way, they could hold me about seventy-two hours, which took us to at least Saturday. There was no court on Saturday, so I was clearly not getting to bond court until Monday morning. I didn’t much like the idea of not knowing anything about why I was being accused of murder until Monday morning.
I signed the sheet of paper.
“Good boy,” Hamish said, wearing the kind of smile you usually see on a used car salesman right after he’d sold you a car with a cracked engine block.
“All right then, let’s get started. Rita Lindquist shot you, didn’t she? Back in December?”
“Yes. That’s true.”
“Fucking bitch.” That was Hamish establishing rapport. Didn’t work.
“I didn’t take it personally.”
“A woman shot me, I’d hate the cunt. I’d want to get back at her.”
“Well, that’s you, isn’t it? I think Rita hated me a lot more than I hated her.” The last part was a hundred percent true.
“Yeah, the problem with that is she’s dead and you’re not.”
“When was Rita killed?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” he suggested. “I bet you’ve got a better idea.”
“You don’t know when she was killed?”
“We’re narrowing it down. Right now it’s sometime between eleven Saturday night and eleven Sunday morning. Where were you during those hours?”
