She scanned him quickly, already building a mental profile for her report. He was a heavier-set man, thick aroundthe middle. His hair was brown, thinning at the crown. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes—one was swollen shut, and the other was bloodshot from bruising. His bulbous nose was clearly broken, though it already carried the wear of long-term alcoholism, now bent at an awkward angle.
“Bruce, I’m Sergeant Taylor.” She stood and offered her hand, then gestured to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat. Let’s talk about what happened.”
Bruce dropped into the chair, which gave a muffled squeak under his weight. He wore oil-stained Levi’s and a ragged brown T-shirt with a chest pocket. Small holes dotted the sleeves and armpits—barely suitable for public wear, though it suggested a manual labor job. Sergeant Taylor didn’t recognize him, but she didn’t have the advantage of knowing everyone in town like some of the others at the station. She and her husband had moved to Tennessee on a whim after she lost her job in Chicago nearly four years ago, though the way time had passed, it felt closer to ten.
“I was assaulted last night,” Bruce began. His hand rested on the desk, palm down, meaty fingers splayed. His knuckles were unmarked—evidence he hadn’t fought back. “Behind the bar. Near the dumpster. I don’t remember much, so I think I was drugged, too. And he took my wallet.”
“You go out drinking on a Monday night?” Sergeant Taylor asked—not out of judgment, but curiosity. A Friday or Saturday would’ve made more sense for this kind of incident.
“I got off work and went to blow off steam,” Bruce said, his words catching slightly, a bit of spittle landing on the desk. “I’m a mechanic. Long days, long weeks. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to stop in for a bit before heading home.”
“Fair enough.” Sergeant Taylor made a note, deliberately ignoring the saliva near her paperclip holder. “Can you describe your attacker?”
Bruce tensed in his seat as he tried to recall details, drawing her attention. His one good eye darted between her notepad, her pen, and her face—like a pinball bouncing between bumpers.
“Tall. If I’m five-eight, he had to be around six feet. His face is a blur, but he had lighter brown hair… maybe dark blonde. Hard to tell in the dark…”
Sergeant Taylor jotted down the thin description on her yellow notepad.
“Obviously you didn’t know the man,” she predicted, prompting him to continue. “Any signs he wasn’t from the area?”
“Well, he didn’t say much when he grabbed me by my shirt and punched my face.” Bruce’s tone turned more hostile toward Sergeant Taylor as she glanced up from her writing, raising both eyebrows. “But he definitely didn’t have a Southern accent. I’ve never seen him at the bar before, and I go there at least every other weekend.”
Sergeant Taylor knew “every other weekend” was code for “every other night,” but she tried not to let her bias take over. She didn’t need to lose another law enforcement job and beg for a position in a small town all over again. A worse hell than the one she was currently in would be an even smaller town with even less action.
“What were you doing behind the bar?”
Bruce shifted in his seat, squinting in pain as his eyebrows furrowed. “Why does that matter? I was obviously attacked. Look at my face.” He threw his hand up and waved at it, as if Sergeant Taylor had somehow missed the fact that he could pass for Barney the purple dinosaur.
Sergeant Taylor’s thin lips pressed into a tight line, taking offense to his noncompliance. “I’m just trying to put the pieces together, sir. Paint me a picture of your night, and I’ll have a better idea of who this guy was.”
Bruce let out an aggravated sigh, turning his palm upward as he shrugged, his shirt shifting with the movement. The holes in the fabric revealed flashes of pale skin beneath. “I was talking to a girl. About to give her ten dollars for the bus so she could get north. She said she wanted to be an actress.”
Sergeant Taylor paused mid-note, barely glancing up as she studied him through her lashes. This man was about to make her drink on a work night too. “Out of kindness or as payment?”
“Kindness, obviously.” Bruce choked, feigning innocence at her blunt question. “As I took out my wallet, I was attacked. The girl said something to this man, and they ran off.”
“Interesting,” Sergeant Taylor said shortly. “Do you think they were working together?”
“Now that you say it, yes.” Bruce threw his arms up in exasperation—an animated speaker. “They took off together. It must have been some elaborate ploy to mug me.”
Sergeant Taylor opened her mouth to ask what the girl looked like, but Bruce anticipated the question.
“She had dark hair. A lot of makeup, but pale as a ghost. Light green eyes. I would’ve thought she was harmless—fragile, even. She wore a man’s flannel jacket over a red dress, and I questioned it at first. Should’ve questioned more. Something about it didn’t sit right.” His good eye gleamed as he continued, piecing things together as he spoke.
“Why not? If she were traveling through Tennessee on a late summer night, I’d imagine she’d get cold on foot.” Sergeant Taylor tapped her pen against the desk.
“She was off, ma’am,” Bruce continued. “I was drinking, so I didn’t catch it at first. But when we went outside so I could send her off, she was skittish. Like she was hearing voices—seeing things in the shadows. And when she finally took that jacket off, she had bruises all over her arms.”
Sergeant Taylor wrote “Off?” on her notepad next to the woman’s description. She clicked her pen closed and set it down.
“I think that’s enough for now. I’ll make some calls to the bar, see if I can get names from that night. In the meantime, I recommend you get some rest and ice that face of yours.”
“That’s it?” Bruce asked, incredulous. “I get beaten to a pulp and you make some calls?”
“Sir, I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. I’ll call if I need anything else. What’s your phone number?”
Sergeant Taylor already suspected he was an unreliable witness. The story about paying a strange girl at a bar on a Monday night didn’t sit right, and she’d bet there was more to it than he was admitting. But she wasn’t about to push that angle—not yet. Even bruised and bloodied, people rarely confessed their sins to a small-town cop like it was a church confession.
