Chapter 33
Piping-hot coffee in hand, Evan slipped out the back slider of his town
house. He followed the back side of his building until it ended, then he made a left and walked toward the parking lot out front.
Evan was home when the cops came banging on his door but had opted not to answer.
If they’d had a warrant for his arrest, they would have come in.
Yet as the cops lingered around out front after Evan didn’t answer, Evan saw someone in a gray sedan meet the group.
The guy wasn’t dressed in a police uniform but sat in the parking lot, chatting with the officers longer than any civilian would.
When the cops left, the man got into his car and backed into a handicap parking spot beside the building across from Evan’s.
And that was where the guy remained. It was creeping up on three hours since he’d parked, but Evan never saw the guy emerge from his vehicle once.
Evan figured the guy for an undercover cop staking out his town house, and he planned to get some answers about why.
Evan crossed the parking lot, walked along the front of the building across from his own, then went up from behind the guy’s sedan.
The car was on, sitting at idle. Evan could see the inside of the car being lit by the screen in the dash.
He watched the man’s driver’s-side door mirror as he approached but couldn’t tell if the man was looking.
As he stood outside of the window, he could see the guy tapping away at his phone.
Evan knocked on the man’s window glass. The guy snapped his head to the left and set the phone down. Coffee in Evan’s left hand, he made a spinning motion with his right index finger, indicating for the man to roll down the window. The guy did.
“Nice night, eh?” Evan asked.
Wide-eyed and looking as if he was in his early twenties, the guy stammered.
“I brought you a coffee for your stakeout,” Evan said. “I saw it in a movie once. But had I known you were just a baby, I would have brought you a milk or juice or something.”
The guy didn’t respond. He damn sure didn’t laugh or reach for the drink.
“What are you watching my place for?” Evan asked. “Did the grown-ups tell you to do that?”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about, buddy,” the guy said. “I’m not watching your place. Why don’t you get on your way?”
The guy made a quick movement toward his right leg.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” The words barely left Evan’s mouth before he splashed the scalding-hot coffee through the open window. The steaming liquid splashed off the guy’s face and was immediately accompanied by his screams.
Evan dropped the coffee cup, yanked the baton from his hip, and delivered a flurry of stiff backhanded blows with the butt of the still-folded baton through the window void. The steel connected with the guy’s forehead and face, over and over. The man’s screams were quickly silenced.
Evan pulled the driver’s-side door open then looked around.
He panned left and right but saw nobody walking about.
Nobody looking out their windows. He put his eyes back on the guy.
Slumped over the center console of his car, the man didn’t move.
Evan didn’t figure that he was dead, probably just knocked out cold.
“Let’s go have a talk,” Evan said as he stuck the baton back into the sheath.
He pulled the guy from his car, noticing that the man’s phone remained on his seat.
Evan smashed it against the steering wheel and dropped it to the car floor.
He reached into the car, killed the running engine, and swung the door closed.
After kicking the broken coffee cup beneath the sedan, Evan grabbed the guy under his arms and dragged him across the parking lot.
He’d kept his head on a swivel, looking for anyone watching, but again saw no one.
Evan muscled the guy through the iron gate and into his house.
Evan closed his front door, locked it, and dropped the guy to the kitchen floor.
A minute later, Evan had the guy duct-taped to a chair, and more duct tape covered his mouth.
Evan dragged one of his kitchen island stools before the man and took a seat. He looked the guy over. “You’re not in the best shape, dude.”
The man’s face was cherry red, swollen, quickly bruising, and covered in blood.
A pair of gashes, one in the guy’s hairline and another above his left eyebrow, hung open and spilled blood down his face.
Evan again pulled out the baton, extended it, and began to tap the man’s bloody cheek.
Ten or fifteen taps, each one stiffer than the last, and the guy finally started to wake up.
“Welcome back,” Evan said.
The guy groaned. His eyes were still more closed than open.
Evan bopped him on top of the head with the baton. “Hey!” he snapped.
The guy opened his eyes, squinted hard, and looked around.
“Are you with me?” Evan asked.
The guy mumbled something into the duct tape covering his mouth. The darting of the guy’s eyes stopped and fixed on Evan.
“There we go,” Evan said. “I have your gun.” Evan poked his chin toward the gun that was sitting on the dining room table a few feet away.
The guy turned his head and looked. Evan had found and removed the weapon when he was taping him up.
“You’ve got a half roll of duct tape securing you to that chair. So you aren’t going anywhere.”
The man mumbled something Evan couldn’t make out.
“I’m going to take the tape off your mouth so we can have a talk. If you scream, I’m going to bash your brains in with this baton. Nod if you understand,” Evan said.
The guy mumbled something again then went silent and nodded.
“Good.” Evan leaned toward the man and ripped the tape away from his mouth before tossing it to the floor.
“Ah! Son of a bitch,” the guy barked. “Assaulting and abducting an officer. You’re a real genius, aren’t you?”
“Watch the volume of your voice and watch what you say,” Evan said. “Or this turns into batting practice real quick.”
The man didn’t respond.
“I guess my assumption that you’re a cop is confirmed. So why are you watching my house? What do you guys know? Or think you know?”
The cop made a weird face as if he was disgusted. “What the hell is that smell?”
“I don’t smell anything.” Evan slid off the barstool and put the tip of the baton to the man’s kneecap. Then he paused. “How old are you?”
“Why? What the hell does it matter?” the cop asked.
“Well, let’s say that you live through this,” Evan said.
“I mean, do you want to spend the next sixty years of your life with a limp? And that’s if I decide to go easy on you.
I could just smash your knee into hamburger and they’d probably have to cut off your leg.
Again, that’s if you live. When I get going on this leg, there’s a good chance that you’ll just bleed out.
Then again, there’s also a good chance that I accidentally take it too far. ”
He didn’t respond.
“Okay. I guess let’s see how this plays out.” Evan lined up and brought the baton back with both hands as if it was a baseball bat.
“What the hell do you want to know?” the cop asked.
“What the other cops told you,” Evans said. “I want to know what they have that led to them staking out my house.”
“That’s all kind of irrelevant now, isn’t it?
” the cop asked. “Whatever happens to me, you’re done.
You kill me, they know you did, and they hunt you down.
Maybe you can run. Maybe you get away. But that’s just going to be for a while.
Someone, somewhere, will find you. And then you’ll rot in jail.
And if you don’t kill me and just run, well, the same thing will happen.
They’ll find you, and you’ll go to jail.
You doing this destroyed any defense you had.
You went from a person of interest to ten to fifteen years in prison at a minimum.
And that’s if they don’t pin the other murders on you. ”
“Why am I a person of interest?” Evan poked the baton into the cop’s chest. “What did they find?” He gave the cop a love tap on the side of the jaw with the baton.
“Damn, man,” the cop said. “I’ve been on the job for two months. Do you think they’re going to actually tell me anything? I don’t know who you are or why they even wanted me out here. My boss called me, said we need you to watch a house, and here I am.”
“Did you forget what you said two seconds ago?” Evan asked. “I caught that last part. The ‘if they pin the other murders on me’ part. So you now trying to act like you don’t know anything doesn’t really fly.”
“Whatever. I’m not telling you shit.”
Evan cracked his neck from one side to the other. “Suit yourself.” He grabbed the roll of tape and ripped off a two-foot section. “We’re gonna tape you back up. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to be a screamer.” As he went to put it around the cop’s mouth, the guy started to scream for help.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Evan mumbled.
Evan jammed his hand over the guy’s yap then wrapped the tape around the cop’s head, shutting him up. The guy continued to scream into the tape, but his muffled cries weren’t loud enough for anyone else in the building to hear.
“I told them that I was going to kill someone else if they didn’t tell the press about me,” Evan said. “And, well, I’m a man of my word.”
Evan got into his batting stance, lined up, and yanked back the baton.