Czernowitz closed the room door behind them as they led him to the squad car. As he ducked to climb onto the back seat, Fowler put light pressure on his head to make sure it remained below the roofline. They slammed the door behind him. It locked automatically.
The two officers climbed into the front, separated from the back by a cage. “Let’s take ourselves a little drive, Mr. Richmond,” Fowler said. “See if we can’t spend some time together, work out what’s what.”
The cruiser immediately turned south onto Elm Street, the traffic light in the early hours.
“Where are we going?” Bob demanded.
“Shut it!” Fowler barked.
“Police headquarters are the other way,” Bob said. “I’ve been there, as you’re well aware.”
“Yeah… well, you don’t get a say in how we do things,” Fowler said. “So shut it! We’ll get where we’re going.”
Czernowitz looked over his shoulder. The words dripped out almost gently. “You’d best not make things worse on yourself.”
He turned around again.
Bob kept an eye out the window.
After ten minutes, it was clear they were heading out of the city.
This isn’t going to end well.
The trick to freeing himself from cuffs, he knew, was to be quiet about it.
Flexibility and practice will allow someone to pull their knees to their chest, extend at the shoulder joints and swing their cuffed hands under their buttocks and shoes, so that they’re ahead of the body.
Doing it without one of these idiots hearing, on the other hand…
Bob moved slowly and deliberately, first sliding his cuffed hands under his backside, then pushing forward with them and his chest simultaneously. His shoulders burned, the left socket near dislocating, a sudden stabbing sensation telling him he was in trouble. This was easier when I was younger.
A last push forced his hands past his buttocks. He leaned back, lifting his knees to his chest as he slid his hands up his legs, just about getting them clear…
The lockpicks tumbled from his hand, onto the cruiser floor.
Shit.
His rustling was too loud, he knew. Fowler peered into the rearview mirror, then whirled in place, eyes off the road completely for long enough to see Bob’s hands ahead of him.
“Sum’bitch!” Fowler declared. “He’s trying to pull a fast one, Witty! Keep your eyes on him!”
Czernowitz drew his service weapon and trained it on Bob, through the cage. “He got his hands from back to front. How’d he do that?”
“Flexible joints,” Bob muttered. He figured his shoulder was going to hurt for a week.
Fowler glanced quickly at his partner. “Put that dang thing away! Use your backup, dumb ass!”
It left little doubt they didn’t plan on processing him, Bob figured. Any time a service weapon is fired, it has to be reported, every round accounted for. But they didn’t want anyone looking into this arrest.
“Sorry, weren’t thinking,” Czernowitz muttered. He holstered the Glock and drew a Sig Sauer P238 from his ankle holster, using his thumb to flick off the safety. He trained it on their passenger. “You just relax, there, sport. You stay quiet, answer our questions, I’m betting everything’ll be just fine.”
Fowler giggled. “Yeah… I don’t think Mr. Richmond is quite as dumb as some of our local meth heads, Witty. I suspect he knows this ain’t a friendly tour of the county.”
“You’re really going to murder an innocent man?” Bob proposed.
“Murder?!” Czernowitz scoffed. “It ain’t like that.”
He sounded genuine, Bob thought. “Is that what he told you? That you’re just putting a scare into me? That you’d just lay the boots to me for a while? Give me a shitkicking?”
Fowler sniffed at that. “Well now, that’s a dirty word, right there.”
“Shitkicking?”
“Murder! No one forced you to come up to our town, start sticking your beak into everyone’s business. Someone kills someone else for no good reason, sure, that’s wrong, I’ll give you that. But you come into someone else’s yard and start shitting on their daisies, son, well… you gone and brought that on yourself, way I figure it. That’s just self-defense.”
Czernowitz looked puzzled. “Yeah… self-defense,” he repeated nervously.
“For a law enforcement officer, that’s a pretty darn generous interpretation,” Bob said. “It sounds more like you’re trying to justify it for your partner here so he doesn’t start getting all guilty, think about doing the right thing.”
Czernowitz shook his head. “Mister, if you’re thinking of turning me on Jeb, you got me all wrong.”
“Witty knows what lawyers are all about, how you’re basically one step off Satan himself,” Fowler said. “Ain’t that right, Witty? We talked about you types to no end, what we’d like to do with the lot of you. I’ll give you a clue: it involves forty-caliber bullets and a big, dark hole.”
“That right, Officer?” Bob asked Czernowitz.
He glanced quickly at his friend, long enough to see Fowler paying attention, waiting for his answer. “Hell, I’d volunteer to shoot a low-life defense attorney, you bet,” Czernowitz said boldly. “You ask the average officer, he’s playing by the book, like Jeb says. But we talk. We talk about what we’d do if we could make the whole system work. But nobody does nothing. Well… this ain’t nothing.”
“What is he blathering about?” Bob asked.
