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Ash
They separated us on the scene and had to practically pry her out of my arms so they could take us to the station in two different police cruisers.
Then they parked me in a windowless room, containing just a plasticky table and four uncomfortable chairs and forgot about me for hours. Then when they did remember me, they wanted to know all about last night over and over again. My mother called three times, Eagle five, and I also got a couple of number withheld calls. I answered none of them. All I did was text Eagle that I can’t make our 11 o’clock meeting with Cross. Hope the man understands, but I can’t say I care one way or another. Everything else can wait. I’ve never seen anyone—male or female—as freaked out as Bea was after she ran out of her apartment. The best I can compare it to is the fear I saw in the eyes and faces of civilians in war zones we liberated. But it was worse than that.
Now, I can normally sit still doing nothing for a long time, it’s one of those unsung qualities that combat life gives you, but they’ve given me no reason as to why they won’t release us, and the hours are piling on.
“So you’ve had no contact with Beatrice for about ten years prior to running into her tonight?” an over-weight detective asks. His labored breathing is echoing in the room and making his bushy brown moustache dance.
“Like I already told your colleague, I wouldn’t exactly say we knew each other ten years ago. She was the daughter of my mother’s neighbors and if she hadn’t mentioned remembering me, I wouldn’t have remembered her,” I say. “Why are we still here? Shouldn’t you be out looking for the freak that broke into her place?”
The flash in his dark brown eyes tells me a lot. And what it seems to tell me is that they’ve already found him. But that’s so out there, I can’t even begin to make sense of it.
“There has been a development,” he says and reaches into a black folder in front of him and pulls out a photo of a young man in a suit and red tie, his straw blond hair neatly cut and gelled, his face series and his eyes kind of vacant. “Do you recognize this man?”
I shake my head. “Never seen him before in my life.”
“This is Beatrice’s ex-boyfriend,” the detective says. “And he was found murdered near her apartment this morning.”
“But we’ve been here all morning,” I say, reacting more to what I think he’s accusing me of than what he’s actually saying.
“He was killed sometime between eleven and four AM last night,” he says. “And his blood type matches the blood found in Beatrice’s apartment.”
What the fuck is he getting at?
He leans in closer, the plastic chair he’s sitting in groaning and his loud breathing nearly deafening now that it’s so close to my face. “Did she get you to do it?”
“Do what?” I ask, a split second before it dawns on me.
“Kill this guy for her,” he says. “Maybe she told you he was stalking her and making her life miserable. And I get it, a guy like you, a war hero, a protector, and a pretty girl like her. You’d want to save her.”
“Nothing like that happened,” I say and lean back in my chair, fully aware I’m not making a good job of denying this, but in makes no fucking sense to me.
“The way we see it, Ashton, it’s either that, or she did it, and set you up the fall guy,” he says. “She’s possibly done it before to a guy in San Diego.”
“That’s impossible, not Bea,” I say, breathlessly, again not choosing my words right.
I’ve only know her for a couple of hours, she could be this crazy woman he’s presenting, but I don’t believe it for a second.
“Look, you didn’t see her run out of that bedroom,” I say. “That was pure terror in her face. I know that kind of terror. She couldn’t have been acting. She was scared for her life.”
“She could be one good actress,” the detective says.
“Not that good, no one’s that good,” I say.
“Trust me, I’ve seen a few things,” he says, finally stuffing the photo of the blond guy back into his folder.
“Are we done here?”
“Your father was a member of that Devil’s Nightmare gang wasn’t he?” he asks. “Are you with them too? They’d call a murder like this an afternoon’s work, as far as I know.”
We’re sailing into dangerous waters now, and it’d be better to keep quiet from now on.
“My friends where, in Afghanistan? We fought and died there so you can ask me questions like this here?”
The look on his face changes from smug superiority to confused shame. Good. He should be ashamed. He takes a breath to say something, but I beat him to it.
“Are you charging me or can I go?” I ask, already scraping my chair back from the table.
