Undermind: Nine Stories by Edward M Wolfe Page B

in the backseat of his car, my hands
and feet bound with zip-ties. The last thing I remembered was him
reaching into his pocket to put his wallet away and then his hand
came back out with a black thing with silver tips on the end. His
hand flew toward my neck before I realized what was happening.
    I struggled into a sitting position and looked
out the window. We were back at the house with the dead girl. The
guy got out of his car and walked over to some cops standing next
to a cop car. Crime scene tape was strung around the yard and
driveway.
    This was really happening.
    The driver’s side window was down about two
inches. I leaned forward and turned my head to the side, straining
to hear what he was telling the other cops.
     
    “What brings you here, Detective Ladd?”
    “Oh, I was just in the neighborhood.”
    The three of them laughed briefly. I never
understood how cops could make jokes at a crime scene. I guess they
get used to dead people.
    “Did they put you on this?”
    “No. Actually, I was driving nearby when I
spotted what looked like an attempted burglary. Guy was going from
window to window at a house, so I came up behind him and asked what
he thought he was doing.”
    “You shoulda waited till he broke a window or
somethin’. You probably can’t get him on Attempted B&E
now.”
    “I got better. Listen to this. First thing the
guy says to me is he got high on Ketamine last night, killed a
blonde girl, and now he’s just really thirsty. Says he’s just
looking for some water. He’s not looking to steal anything.”
    “Oh. Well if that’s all, you shoulda let him
go.” Again, they all laughed as they broached the subject of murder
as they stood on the lawn, with a fresh corpse inside the
house.
    “I’m thinking I’ll take him in as a 5150, just
in case he’s violent, bein’ that he’s talkin’ that way. And then I
notice he’s got what could be blood around his fingernails. I made
the connection with the homicide here just a few blocks away and
thought you guys might wanna take him and verify if that’s blood,
and see if his prints match the ones on the knife used on the
vic.”
    “How’d you know she was knifed?”
    “Uh... I guess it was radio chatter. I don’t
recall. But anyway, I got this guy in the backseat. If it turns out
I just delivered a gift-wrapped perp, tell the FOS he owes me a
case of Heineken.”
    “Will do. Let’s see what you got.”
    “One more thing. When I asked the guy to repeat
what he’d said about killing someone, that’s when he lost his
marbles and started saying he didn’t kill anyone. He said I was the
killer. Then he started ranting about how I was framing him, and
some shit about Yahoo and the internet, and I just lost track.
Definitely a 5150, whether or not he did the girl. When he went
totally nutso, I had to Taze him.”
    They came over to the car and let me out, but
only to transfer me to the back of a squad car. I was burning with
the desire to tell them what was really going on and how the
detective was the real killer, but he’d already primed them to
think I was crazy if I started talking about that, so I just kept
it inside. I knew from watching cop shows that it doesn’t
accomplish anything to protest your innocence to arresting officers
anyway. They don’t care. And why should they? It’s not their job to
determine guilt or innocence.
    That’s left up to the judge and jury. So
anything you say to the cops is a waste of time and breath. As it
turns out, everything I said to anybody about this case was wasted
effort. My court-appointed attorney couldn’t find any reference to
any of the things I told him about. He said he couldn’t find Lisa’s
question, or my answer. I’m not sure if he even bothered looking.
He also said there was no record of a moanalisa86 anywhere online.
And he couldn’t find anything in The Wayback Machine.
    My prints were on the knife. Lisa’s blood was on
and under my fingernails. My saliva was found on