The Sudden Dark

Fourteen

'Good thing for you is that it's only a minor concussion, the doctor said.' Adam moved back in the chair and studied me. 'Be glad there's no bruising on your brain. Don't know if that's not what you deserve.'

I didn't say anything to that, and only hardly had enough energy to smile for him.

We were in the station's interrogation room, under bright white fluorescents that seemed to be sucking at me with vampiric energy—Adam had successfully finagled himself to be the reporting officer for me, but couldn't manage my questioning to be moved anywhere else in the building. I knew what was on the other side of the mirrored window: detectives I'd once worked with, officers I'd brushed in the hall, cameras I'd used, audio recorders I'd transcribed. 'You know all the common procedure for persons of interest,' Adam told me. 'Which you are, right now.'

I knew.

I'd spent the morning weaving in and out of consciousness, until I had my scalp stitched at an emergency room before being carted straight to the precinct for questioning. Now, it was closing in on five in the morning.

'The name of the corpse?' Adam asked me.

'Clive Reed,' I said. My voice was draining energy. 'Married to the girl, even if he's old enough to be her father. Or, was.'

'Guess it wasn't a loving marriage. The kid, Markwell—he was having a thing with her, huh?'

I nodded. 'If you want to call it that. I would.'

'And she worked at Frank Sumner's strip club?'

I nodded. 'And Sumner and Reed had some kind of association.'

'Could it have involved the girl?'

'Doubt it. I saw an old picture of them—I think their partnership goes back further than her. Maybe they opened the club together.'

Adam nodded. 'Okay, so Clive Reed knocked you unconscious, and you woke up to find him dead, that's it?'

'That's it.'

'And Reed's killer? Could that've been Kit?'

'I don't know that, either. Could've been the girl, but I doubt that, too.'

'How come?'

I shrugged, which was worth the ache of the muscles in my tired shoulders. 'He was a big man, and it was a big gun. I don't know how she could get it away long enough to square him centre-mass. Four times, even. Same thing with the kid.'

Adam looked at me stern with his friendly eyes, fatherly and reproachful, despite the years I had on him. But I was the kid being scolded at that moment. 

'Okay, Max,' he sighed. 'I've got a Law & Order episode's worth of intrigue all reported, so that just leaves you. You took this as just some kind of good-faith investigation for a pub owner?'

'Not an investigation,' I said. 'And not in good-faith...just a distraction, I guess. I thought it'd just be a matter of tracking down a wayward kid and dragging him back to responsibility.'

'But if the robbery story is true, then he had a major charge under his belt. Which you didn't report.' He grabbed and opened the notepad again. 'I checked the file: it's registered as a break-in, assailants unknown. Did Markwell always know it was his kid brother?'

I nodded slowly, no eye contact. 'He doesn't want him back in prison,' I said. 'I don't blame him, if you ask me.'

'I didn't ask you, and it's not relevant. But this is the big one, now. Murder—Frank Sumner's murder. That was the kid?'

It was the question I knew Wayne Markwell never wanted answered; the two threads he was hoping would never have to come together, now laid right there in front of me. I didn't know how to answer.

Adam let go a breath and leaned back. 'Listen, Max,' he said solemnly. 'I need to tell you this right now. You're officially on the books for this case as a person of interest—as an officer on suspension, that means the information's going straight to IA, who'll be calling another hearing about your involvement in a major crime while on leave. And as a private citizen hanging around two murders and a case of grand larceny when he has no right to, you know it won't look good.

'But if you give up the kid, tell us he killed Sumner, then the case can be closed right now. It can all come back to him. We'll snag him and tie everything around him—the robbery to run away with the girl, and killing Sumner and Reed to protect her. And it'll look better for you. The hearing won't be so harsh—you might even have a good fighting chance to come back on the force if you play ball. But not if you let the kid go, or keep withholding information. If you do that, I can't guarantee you'll ever get your badge back.'

I knew what was laying underneath his speech: you can't solve this thing on your own, Max. It can only be solved by handing Kit over, letting him take the heat for everything, shoving him back into the meat grinder. I couldn't even tell Adam about the man in Frank's house, so as to avoid a trespassing charge on top of everything else.

They wanted Kit Markwell in chains, all of them.

But, even to save my own skin, to give my career back to me, to give my life something again...I just couldn't do that to him.

So I shook my head. 'No, Adam,' I said. 'I can't tell you that Kit shot Frank. I can't tell you it wasn't just a drunk in the bar. I can't even tell you he robbed his brother's pub. There's no evidence for any of it, so I just can't tell you anything.'

Adam shut his notebook again with a look of disappointment. He stood silently and left the interrogation room; I knew the procedure, that I had more time in there to stew. I'd been on the other side enough times.

He returned about an hour later, not looking full at me, his head wrung down and away from mine. 'Come on, Max,' he said without energy. 'You're out of here.'

As a courtesy I didn't deserve, he led me through the precinct and to the front doors. As another courtesy, he told me on the way, 'The IA just got together and set a new hearing for you on Friday. Like I said, none of it will look good for you if the case is still open. They might not even believe your story of being unconscious when Reed was killed. You might burn for this, Max, if you keep it all going on like this.'

'I know, Adam.'

The day was dawning bleak and chilled, the streets running thin threads of traffic by the station. Adam went through the doors with me toward the wide spread of the outside world, to everything it was we were supposed to be protecting.

He dropped his voice and slowly palmed the back of his neck. 'I'll, uh...I'm sorry how this is all playing out, Max. I honestly am. Once all this shit is over and done with, I promise we'll go for a drink.'

He stopped and coiled a little once he realised what he'd said.

But I brushed it off. 'Sure, Adam.'

'Fuck, we might even be working together again.'

But I could by the spirit draining from his voice that there was no way he believed it. He patted me hard on the shoulder and disappeared back into my old precinct.

It was a Wednesday morning by then. The new hearing was on Friday. I knew what I was thinking, even though I should've been thinking anything else: that I had three days to solve the whole bloody affair.