Walker
I flinched when the darkness was obliterated by a sudden blast of light that made my eyes water in desperation and pain. “Jesus, how many times are you guys going to pull this trick? You know it doesn’t work, right?”
The door to the room swung open and, for the third day in a row, Agent Smith entered and sat down across from me. “Sorry, our lighting hasn’t been updated in years. They can take a minute to turn on.”
“Right, and I’m sure having the brightest bulb possible without it counting as a spotlight is completely necessary,” I said dryly as I shifted in the hard metal chair that was probably just a coincidence.
Kind of like how when I was in my cell, they had me positioned where I was nearest the loudest generator in existence, and a cell neighbor who was prone to randomly screaming.
It wasn’t quite torture, and their deniability would be plausible when their lawyers came forward, but I wasn’t an idiot.
“Honestly, I have to admire how stubborn you’re being.
We’re on day three, and every time you demand answers, I sit here and stare at you.
Sometimes I say something funny that you refuse to acknowledge, and I remind you I’m supposed to have a lawyer present.
You keep trying, and we go around and around for hours before you get fed up and leave. Hmm, do you have a crush on me?”
His nostrils flared. “You could save everyone a great deal of trouble if you answered the questions.”
“Ah ah, correction, I would save you a great deal of trouble. Which is the first problem, because I have no desire to answer the questions of a self-important jackass who still gets confused by the arm and head holes in his shirts in the morning,” I told him.
“The other problem is that I know answering your questions without a lawyer is a real good way to find myself in trouble. Well, in more trouble than I apparently already am.”
“I’ve tried to tell you, if you can clear this up, you wouldn’t have to sit around,” he said, once again avoiding all mention of my demand for a lawyer.
I wasn’t really surprised. I knew the tactic well.
As a matter of fact, one of my published missives had been on how important it was not to fall for law enforcement tactics.
Technically, I was violating my own advice by saying anything to the agent, since my advice was to hunker down, refuse to talk save for repeated demands for legal right to representation.
I had explained that there was always a chance a request could be ‘delayed’, usually through ‘miscommunication’ or ‘lost messages’.
I was sure my request would be delayed a few days more, which was fine by me, I was stuck here either way so I might as well enjoy tweaking the idiot in a suit across from me, because he was clearly stuck with me as much as I was stuck with him.
“No, you want me to give you a reason to come after me even more,” I said with a raised brow.
“So you can get home to your…well, there’s no ring on your finger, so you’re not married, big shock there.
Which means your personality really is that bad, Agent Smith, because on looks alone, you’re actually kind of cute.
No one’s going to beat down doors to get into your bed, but if I woke up to you after a fun night, I wouldn’t throw you out. ”
He stared at me, and I could practically feel his desire to shoot me.
Probably not in the head because that wouldn’t get him what he wanted, but the leg might motivate me to stop being a pain in his ass.
Except that wouldn’t work out all that great.
Even if he got away with it, I wasn’t afraid of being shot.
I’d gone through it before, after all. It was like their plausibly deniable way of denying me sleep wasn’t really a hassle.
I hadn’t been getting proper sleep for years; I was fortified against suffering sleep deprivation.
“Let’s go over the evidence, shall we?” he asked instead in that stiff voice that sounded like he was going to crack at any moment.
I held up my wrists, bound by cuffs which were in turn cuffed to a ring on the table. “Aww, but agent, how am I supposed to do that with these pretty bracelets you brought in for me? Maybe if you uncuffed me—”
“Not happening,” he snapped, and when he hesitated, I smirked, because yes, Agent Smith, I saw you don’t have control of the conversation, and that I’m getting under your skin.
“Then I guess you’ll have to read it for me again,” I said with a heavy sigh. “You should stop by my cell and do that, by the way. A bit of bedtime reading.”
“This is a joke to you, still?”
“This? No. You? Absolutely.”
I thought he was about to take a swing at me when the door swung open again and another agent walked in. “We’re going to cut this off.”
“On whose orders?” Smith demanded, looking up in outrage.
“That would be mine,” another man said, appearing in the doorway, dressed in a suit that probably cost a fortune.
“His lawyer,” the second agent said, and I could see how much that information hurt Smith right in his black, shriveled soul.
“Did you check…” Smith began.
“Yes, top to bottom,” the other agent said in a tired voice. “He’s cleared, and he’s not taking no for an answer.”
They exchanged a look while my lawyer, who most definitely looked way too expensive to be a public defender, listened in comfortable silence.
He was clearly willing to let the two agents go through their conversation while he said very little.
If anything, his silence seemed to unnerve Smith even further, who slammed the file in front of him shut and stood up.
“Cuffs, please,” my lawyer said, tilting his head.
Smith really didn’t like the man, which meant I really liked him, and I wasn’t the biggest fan of lawyers.
My cuffs were undone, though, including the ones around my ankles before Smith snatched up the folder, but the lawyer simply reached out to take it from him.
His expression never changed as he set the folder down, as Smith stood stock-still, clearly in shock that someone would be so bold.
With a flare of his nostrils, he spun and marched out of the room.
“Well then,” I began, but stopped when the lawyer held up a hand and looked up at the camera in the corner. Its red light glared at the two of us for a few seconds as we stared back, and then it went out, and only then did he sit down.
“Mr. Rhodes—”
“With an entrance like that, please, call me Walker,” I said, leaning back and looking him over as I rubbed my wrists.
He was about as average as you could get.
Brown hair kept neat, he looked to be in his late forties to early fifties, but who could tell these days?
It didn’t look like he’d had any work done, which would match his attitude so far and the fact that although his suit was expensive, it wasn’t flashy.
Nothing about him was flashy, including the wedding band on his left hand.
A gold ring, I noticed, that was marked and scratched, making it real and well-worn, and it made me like him a little more.
“I am Raymond Holdun,” he said, and if he noticed the way I was sizing him up, he didn’t seem to mind. “I’ll be representing you, which could be extremely easy or extremely difficult depending on how much you tell me, and how much of it is true.”
“Lawyers are like doctors and nurses. You don’t lie to them and you don’t keep things from them. They’re not the cops…well, not your lawyer anyway,” I said with a shrug.
At that, he smiled. He opened his bag and drew out a few large folders before setting one down, flipping through it and drawing out a stapled selection of papers. “That sounds familiar.”
I looked down and laughed. “How to Tell Cops to Eat Your Whole Ass. I was pretty drunk when I wrote this one. Forgot I put a section about healthcare workers in it. You printed this off?”
“I have people for that, but I read through some of them,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “I wrote quite a lot.”
“Sleep isn’t something I have an abundance of,” he told me, and I snorted. “I also have the communications between you and what is regarded as a foreign agent.”
“They mentioned Russia,” I said with a huff.
“Not that they’ve shown me anything. It’s just been a lot of talking, threats, stuff like that.
But I can tell you right now, there’s no way in hell I was talking to some Russian spy or whatever.
Or if I was, there was no way for me to know that.
No one I ever spoke to was anything like that.
I can tell you right now that there’s no hiding the fact that I’m disgusted with a lot of things, but I wouldn’t sell this country out.
I’m disgusted with this country because I know it can be better, and I believe it can be better, but it needs to change, not be destroyed. ”
“Hmph,” he grunted softly, drawing something else out and holding it up. “Real Patriots are Haters.”
“I’m going to see a lot of my work being talked about, aren’t I?” I asked with a sigh.
“Your writing will be used by the prosecution to make you look as though you’re a dangerous dissenter and potential traitor,” he told me, setting the paper down and crossing his hands in front of him.
“We’ll be doing the same, but to show that at the heart of things, your criticisms and even some of your…
thinly veiled attempts to rile up the populace are coming from a genuinely patriotic place.
That will come a little easier for us because you have mentioned in several of your works and conversations that you want this country to do better, and have openly condemned several other nations for how they handle things. ”
“I like how my running mouth got me into trouble and might help me get out of it,” I said with a snort, shaking my head. “A shame we can’t use their ‘deal’ with me to help.”
“Deal?” he asked.