Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4) by Nick Pirog (best ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗

lips began to curl. He clenched and unclenched his fists. “Run me through what happened.”

“I brought lunch.”

“You brought lunch?”

He acted like he’d never heard of lunch before.

“Yeah, I brought lunch.”

“What did you bring?”

“Club sandwiches from Dina’s.”

“Where are they?”

“Sitting on that chair.” We were a couple steps off the back porch, and I pointed to the bag in the chair, which only held one club sandwich now. I ate mine. My blood sugar was getting low, and I knew the next two hours of my life were going to be spent answering questions, though if Miller kept repeating himself, I might not get another meal for three days.

“What time did you leave Dina’s?” he asked.

“Maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“I’m gonna call and verify.”

“You would be a shitty cop if you didn’t.”

He ignored this and said, “Did you knock on the front door?”

“I did.”

“And no one answered?”

“No.”

It wasn’t a terribly stupid question, but I wanted to scream, “No, you nitwit, the occupant was dead!” I didn’t.

“Okay, so no one answered the door. Then what?”

“I walked around to the back. That’s where he was last time I came.”

“The last time you came?” His eyebrows rose under his ball cap. “When was this?”

“Saturday.”

“This past Saturday?”

“Yes, the only Saturday that I’ve been here.”

“Okay.”

I could see all the questions rolling around in his head: How did you know Mike? What did you and Mike do last Saturday? What did you talk about? Why did you come here? Was it about the Save-More murders?

He would have plenty of time to ask me these questions later. In a room. Maybe even a locked room.

“You go around back,” he said. “Then what?”

“I expected him to be working on his car, but he wasn’t. I knocked on the back door. No one answered, if you’re curious. Then I looked through the window. I saw him on the ground. Then I busted through the door.”

“The door was locked?”

“Why would I bust down an unlocked door?”

He didn’t answer. He had, without my noticing, crept a step closer to me, and the bill of his hat once again hovered uncomfortably close to my chin.

“Can you, like, get out of my face?”

He took a half step back, and I encouraged him with my eyes to take another one.

He did.

There was a screech of tires on the opposite side of the house. Then two more. Miller had thirty more seconds before he was going to have to start sharing me.

“What did you do when you got inside?” he spat quickly.

“I checked his pulse, more out of habit than anything else, then I didn’t do shit. Didn’t want to compromise the scene more than I already had.”

Three men appeared from around the house. One of them was Chief Eccleston. He walked with purpose, his gut and jowls bouncing in near unison. He came abreast of us and asked Miller, “You been inside yet?”

“Just for a minute.” He cocked his head at me and said, “I’ve been interviewing him.”

Eccleston glanced at me.

I waved at him.

Heyyyyy.

He jutted his chin out just slightly. Literally the least he could possibly do to acknowledge my presence.

“Was anything taken?” he asked Miller.

“Not sure yet. The place is ransacked though.”

He was right, everything in the house had been overturned. Everything in the kitchen tossed on the floor. Every drawer pulled out and dumped. There was one thing for certain: whoever killed Mike was looking for something.

As a professional conspiracy theorist, my first inclination was that perhaps they were looking for whatever Mike intended to show me. Whatever had taken him three days to obtain.

These ruminations started the moment I saw him through the window. They had only grown in the last twenty minutes. And the look on the Chief’s face when he asked if anything was taken, well, that only solidified my theory. Something about the Save-More murder investigation was tainted. And Mike Zernan had proof.

Two more officers came into view.

“Well, I’m gonna get out of your guys’ way,” I said.

I took two steps in the direction of the back porch.

“Whoa!” shouted Miller. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I pointed at the paper bag. “My lunch.”

He glanced at the Chief.

Eccleston shook his head. “That’s evidence. Leave it.”

“My club sandwich is evidence?” I strode toward the chair, grabbed the bag, and walked back to the small group, which now included the two other officers.

I was opening the bag to take out the second sandwich when it was snatched from my hands by Miller.

He smirked and said, “Like the Chief said, it’s evidence.”

I was tempted to say something about the two engagement rings Wheeler gave back to him, but that was a low blow, even for me. So I said, “Like how the two engagement rings Wheeler gave back to you are evidence that you must really suck in bed.”

Miller’s face twisted. The Chief and the two other cops gasped in horror.

Point, Prescott.

I turned on my heel and walked away. When I’d gone a dozen steps, a hand wrapped around my arm. This is literally my least favorite thing in the world, and I stopped and stared at the tiny little paw squishing the bat wing of my triceps.

“We need you to come down to the station,” Miller barked. “To give a statement.”

I wondered if this had anything to do with me emasculating him in front of his friends.

I peeled his hand off my arm and said, “Sure thing, I’ll meet you there.”

“Why don’t I drive you.”

“Why don’t I meet you there.”

He pulled some handcuffs off his belt. “Why don’t I drive you.”

I ignored him and headed for my car.

He grabbed my arm again, this time three clicks harder than before.

I turned and shoved him in the shoulder.

He took two steps back. Blinked twice. Looked like he probably did when the doctor told him he was in the negative thirtieth percentile for height.

He was a college wrestler, and I wasn’t surprised when his hands shot up in front of him, his knees bent, his feet shoulder-width apart. But college wrestler or not, I had him by