by N. M. Brown
“I’d heard, yes. I thought you might fill me in? This investigation needs us to both -,”
“Do not tell me what this investigation needs boy.” Hale growled low making McQueen blink hard with his mouth agape. “You are on a knifes edge and I am still swaying over what to do with you.” Hale seemed to take a breath and straightened. Despite his dark skin thedarker circles under his eyes made Hale looked at tired as McQueen felt. This was a cagy, disgruntled man, always mad at the world. He’d made it clear he didn’t like McQueen and didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. McQueen wanted to shout about the unfairness of it all but couldn’t. His mother had raised him better.
Hale had reined in his temper and continued. “I will interrogate the hit man who was interpreting Mr Maddock. For now, we can only charge Ms. Headly with her association in the crime. The hit man is mostly likely our killer, so we’ll have to link the two of them. I will speak with him later and get a confession.” McQueen didn’t bother to speak his doubts, Hale didn’t want to listen to him, so why waste his breath. It would seem, for now, he still had a long way to prove himself. “You can do some paperwork. File things, hell, buy yourself a new pen pot. Just stay out of the way.” Hale said stiffly before walking away.
McQueen gritted his teeth at the thought of falling back into being a pen pusher for the rest of this case. Hell, Hale would probably have him pushing paper around for the rest of his career. McQueen wondered for a second if maybe Hale’s previous partner had quit, rather than falling ill like McQueen had been told.
Slumping in his seat, it took every ounce of strength McQueen had in his neck to not allow his head to fall to the desk top. No. He wouldn’t be weak now. Frowning at the massive pile of paper work in front of him, McQueen made a choice. Reaching for his adequate pen-pot, McQueen got to work. When he was done here, Hale wouldn’t know what had hit him. Yet, even as McQueen knuckled down to blitz what reports that were waiting, he couldn’t help that his eyes flickered over to the closed interrogation door five times too many.
Five times he twitched to stand. Five times he distracted himself with jotting down obvious notes. The sixth time he wasn’t so dedicated.
XVIII
Echo felt nothing. She was bored out of her mind to the point she couldn’t even muster the strength to be angry anymore. She couldn’t even be bothered to taunt the Officer who gave her a cup of water to drink. No, she was very much done with this place.
Hale had been in and out of her interrogation room like a jackrabbit all morning to check every little detail she had given. No doubt her colleges had been called a number of times to verify she’d been there and graduated. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised if even her private boarding school in the Alps had been called. Run by Nuns, it had been some of her more exhilarating years. By the time she was nine, she enjoyed keeping tally of the number of Nuns she could make faint. Now, there was a place that could tell a few tales which would not help her on the witness stand. If these moron Detectives could ever get this case to a court room, of course.
After hours of waiting, Hale had finally been called away by another suspect threatening to call his lawyer which cops never liked. Hale was a straight as an iron pipe with the temper to match. Storming out, he’d told Echo she would be escorted to a cell promptly. That had been about twenty minutes ago, so she was presently surprised when the door creaked open. Still chained to the desk, she’d had little movement which did little to help her lounge about. She was also starving. She didn’t want five-star catering or anything, just something stale so she could spit crumbs at Hale. Whoever said Gluttony was all about eating the food? Wasting it was so much more fun. Yet as the figure slipped in the door, Echo smiled to see McQueen baring down on her.
His fists were clamped in rage and he was looking at her like she’d killed his grandma. Angry suited him. “Well hello their Queenie. Is that a granola bar I see in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” She smiled, leaning back on her chair. She was almost tempted to push a bit further, but like the saint McQueen was, it really was a granola bar in his pocket and right now, she wanted that more than anything.
He didn’t speak as he sat opposite her, tossing her the bar. While she scoffed it down, it seemed to take him some forethought before his hands relaxed and he could place them passively on the table. He still sat upright in his chair however, his body vibrating with tension. The poor lamb couldn’t hide much. “What did you do?” he asked.
“Do? Me?” Echo feigned ignorance, pointing at herself while checking the rest of the room. “I’ve done a lot of things Queenie. You’re going to have to be a little more specific.” She took another bite of her granola bar as she raised an eyebrow at him.
“Did you really drug the victims?” He hissed quickly through his teeth like the words left a bad taste in his mouth. “Salvia Divinorum? Arum Maculatum? Opium for holy heavens- sake? You feed this to people, to the victims?” McQueen elevated his voice with each breath and Echo watched as the disbelief and disgust grew in his eyes. She guessed they’d found the trace amount they wanted in the victim’s blood streams. Not that she ever denied giving them anything.
“Did I place specially dried and processed herbs into drinks ordered by members of the club? Members of the club who signed a contract on entering their membership, signing away any and all liability? Did I give them what they asked for?” Wide eyed, Echo shrugged at McQueen, pouting her lips. “What can I say? They did ask for it.”
“You’re sick.” He spat, eyes cold and tremors running up his arms. “That's as close to rape as you can get. Those people didn’t ask you to make them vulnerable. They didn’t ask you to hinder their defences. You served them up on a silver platter. They are dead because of you.”Echo felt the fire race through her veins, but she dampened it quickly. She wouldn’t be rattled. Couldn’t be, not by a knee bender.
“Rape?” She questioned in a flat, chilling voice. “You think I rape these people.” Echo leaned forward mirroring his hands flat on the table, only the handcuffs rattling through the silent room. “You don’t understand rape then McQueen because it is nothing close to what I do. Rape is malice intent. Rape is shredding dignity away and impaling yourself into someone's mind for the rest of their life. Rape is taking what does not belong to you. I do not rape anyone. I give them what they ask for, what they need.”
“That’s a coward’s defence.” McQueen snarled getting up in her face too. “You think they asked for it, deserved to have their choice stripped away from them. You made them incapable of fighting back. I’ve seen what those drugs- sorry, those ‘herbs’ did to their bodies. It made them easy targets. It made them pray. It made them victims.”
Echo laughed. “Everyone’s prey sweetie. You just have to wait for the bigger predator to come along.”
“And what are you? What are you in all this? The predator? The pray? What the hell are you?” McQueen had just about lost it. He was slamming his fists on the top of table, almost nose to nose with her.
“Oh darling.” Echo bared her teeth. “I’m only human. I’m as vial and as wicked as every other ape that walks this earth. I’m just more honest about it.” Echo felt a cool, calm front drape over her skin like a blanket. He was just another stupid man in a stupid world, turning and looking for the shadows to blame when they really clung to his back. “I do not rape anyone. I do not hurt the living to result in their death. I find no pleasure in it.” Leaning back on her chair, Echo folded her arms in challenge. Let McQueen try to deny her words. Deny that she was right. “I give them what they ask for; a drink. I give them a drink that had a sweet high that they’d been wishing for. I give them that shallow calm to sooth broken nerves, get their junk up or libidos high. They wanted a drink, I gave it to them. They are in control of what they intake, not me. They are in control of getting themselves somewhere safe, not me. They are in control of their messed up, twisted lives. Not. Me.”
McQueen didn’t speak, just watched her. He look
ed at her like she was dead. Then let her be dead to him, she thought, feeling the last sharp barb slip from her tongue. “And you know what Queenie? They thank me. And they don’t complain or hate me for it. If I remember rightly, neither did you.”
McQueen went very pale, very fast. “You drugged me?” He whispered.
Echo looked directly into his cold grey eyes and shrugged with one shoulder. It was such a passive, uncaring shrug she knew it would make his mind only spin more. “Maybe I did. Maybe I’m the evil bitch you want me to be. Maybe I’m the monstrous excuse you need me to be. But maybe Queenie,” Echo lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Just maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just gave you alcohol, allowing the sweet nectar to rush around your veins and produce its own high. Maybe everything you did, was because you wanted to do it. Every… little … action…”
A silence hung in the air for a heartbeat. Both of them looked at each other and Echo could have laughed. A demon and an angel, growling across a table that might as well have been an abyss.
As the last words rang true in the empty room, the door, long forgotten by the two of them was flung open and a towering Hale seethed in the doorway. McQueen didn’t look up to Hale, nor did he stir from his laps in reality. He simply stood and walked out, his heavy aura of fear and anger floating behind him. Following his partner out, Hale slammed the door closed and Echo was left alone. Well, alone enough; the video camera had been going the whole time, the little red eye blinking; judging, but Echo didn’t care. The world needed a hard dose of reality.
XIX
McQueen didn’t apologise to Hale as he followed him to their desks. Echo’s words were running so fast around his head, quite frankly, the real killer could have walked up and socked him in the face and he wouldn’t have noticed. Questions tumbled through his thoughts, the main one: How could she be so blind to her actions? It made him sick. She drugged the victims. She’d helped the killer, consciously or not, and yet she defended herself. She fought her corner with explanations and technicalities… it was appalling.
Sitting down hard at his desk, McQueen bounced a pencil between his fingers, the lead tip snapping off instantly as it smashed against the hard top, while the rubber end bounced with renewed force each time. His breaths came out heavy and harsh. The chatter of the people became a distant buzz as his mind focused on the fake wood under his fingertips. Running his fingers around in circles he felt every grain, every bump and ridge, focusing on only that.
He was-… He was angry. Yes, angry for obvious reasons; the injustice of her actions. But he was also-… something. He couldn’t concentrate on any paperwork. The toxicology report still lay in front of him, the herb names blurring behind unfocused eyes. She didn’t think she’d done wrong. If you told any sane person they had contributed to the events leading to someone’s murder, they’d be horrified. But Echo, she just… laughed… she’d laughed and said, ‘so what’. And then-, then she’d dragged him screaming back to that night. His mind had literally filled with a hot buzz as everything they’d done, said and felt had come rushing back to him. The pencil snapped beneath his fist.
“McQueen?” Hale asked but McQueen couldn’t look at him. He mumbled a quick, ‘sorry boss’, before turning to look at his computer screen, not registering anything that he saw.
Dizziness. Yes, he’d been overwhelmingly dizzy. That was… his eyes scanned the blurry page he’d just been looking at-, Henbane or Devils Eyes. It had been in the victim’s system. Had it been in his that night. Had she laced his drink? He looked at the rest of the list. Yes, he’d felt dry mouth, his throat had been parched… but that could have been the alcohol too, his mind whispered. Restlessness; Yes, he’d been up and walking a lot. He’d felt restless in the Summer Annex… but what good Catholic wouldn’t in that den of sex and lust. McQueen hung his head in his hands.
Like a breath on a breeze, McQueen remembered a quote his mother had only ever said to him once. He remembered it because it led him to where he was today. ‘For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up.’ Echo was alone, she wanted to be, and she didn’t need a hand to stand up. She could do that all on her own. McQueen almost laughed hanging his head in his hands. He pitied Echo, that was what made his head run in circles. How could he pity the damned? How could he pity such a-… a criminal?
“Can’t be because I fucked her, because I didn’t.” He muttered under his breath.
“What’d you say?” Hale barked across the table.
“Nothing.” McQueen answered, clearing his throat. Head still in a wheel spin, his fingers hovered over the keyboard. Work came first: over sin, over abstinence, over conflict-, the dead came first.
✽ ✽ ✽
Hale had tried to break fake Maddock. McQueen hadn’t been invited along, thus leading to his side quest from the photo copier to the break-room, too … her. Either way, he made the choice to visit her and his punishment was more blank looks and cold shoulders from Hale. Going back to attack the hit man, Hale yet again didn’t invite McQueen. Twenty minutes later and despite being the solo, wild man Hale was known to be, McQueen could see as he exited the room, the interrogation hadn’t gone well. Steam poured from his ears. Having watched from the recording TV monitor outside the room – a place Hale couldn’t ban him from - McQueen had to give it to Maddock, he really was good.
The cockney low life had gone and now in his place was a multilingual criminal who repeated ‘I want my lawyer’ in every language under the sun. They wouldn’t be getting a confession any time soon. The tech team were working on all evidence from the apartment, but DNA took time and so far, there weren’t any fibres to match to anything anyway. Soon Maddock would get his lawyer. So instead of making leaps forward, Hale and McQueen were stuck at their desks waiting for a break to come. McQueen tried to ignore it all and look through the wife’s financials again, but really it was pointless. They knew Mrs. Farrows paid to have her husband killed. It was a dead angle.
Instead he found his eyes darting to the closed interrogation room door, words still bouncing around his skull. Had he thanked her? God above he prayed to the Lord to forgive him. He didn’t remember. He was drunk and maybe not just on alcohol, his memories were a blur. He didn’t want to admit it and wouldn’t, couldn’t out loud, but he had the sense that maybe-… just maybe for a few moments while up late in her apartment, he’d felt free.
Did she spike him, did she not?
“McQueen!” Snapping up, McQueen saw Hale still sat across from him flicking through useless files, just as he had been trying to do.
“What?” He asked, shoving down all previous thoughts. They weren’t true. He was better than that. He was free, now and always had been.
“Your fucking phone is ringing! Answer it!” Hale snapped, pulling open another folder.
Looking to the corner of the desk, the little black box with the curly coiled wire was shrieking. Gripping the handle McQueen tried to rain in some semblance of professionalism. “Detective McQueen speaking?”
“Hi-… um, sorry, I was- was looking for Detective Hale or Detective McQueen.”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Oh- oh… right sorry. I’m Nurse Willow from The Finvarra Peoples Hospital. We were given this number to contact when the victim, Miss Elizabeth Michaels woke up.” The soft voice said down the phone, the background noises of a hospital crackling in the background.
McQueen looked at Hale where his excitement and hope must have shown on his face. Hale perked up and grabbed at his own phone connecting the two lines. “She woke up? When?”
“About an hour ago.” The nurse answered. A sharp scream wailed down the line causing McQueen to wince. “We had her on sedation, but it’s not quite-… erm, working.”
“An hour?” Hale piped up though the other phone. “Why weren’t we called earlier?”
“The doctor ordered us not to. We wanted to leave her under supervision, give her some
time to recover, but-…” There was a crackle of the phone line, beeping and some yelling could be heard, but muffled, like the receiver had been placed to her chest.
“Nurse Willow? Nurse Willow?” McQueen repeated trying to catch to nurse attention.
“Yes, Yes. The doctors say you should hurry.” Like that the line went dead. McQueen wasn’t even sure he’d put his phone back into the cradle before he was out of his seat, Hale not a second behind him as they twisted towards the exit doors.
✽ ✽ ✽
After flashing their badges at the front desk for a second time the slow doddering old women started to move, and they were directed to the fourth floor, east wing; follow the red line. Easy enough. Yet the further they moved into the hospital, the fewer patients they saw, then fewer nurses, and then the halls became silent. At first there were machines beeping in every room, people mulling the halls, loved ones crying or chatting and it was busy. But now they passed empty room, silent nurses’ stations and even found a locked door or two that was unexpected. Suddenly the hospital was less hospitable.
