Haseejian looked at his partner then turned in the second guest chair to face the young inspector. "Look, ah, before we start, we really need to Mirandize you and call a PBA lawyer…if you want one…?" He sounded so uncharacteristically tentative that Steve almost felt sorry for him.
"It's okay, Norm… I'll waive my rights, I know what they are and what I'm entitled to… and I'll pass on the lawyer, for now." He looked pointedly at the tape recorder on the far corner of Olsen's desk, not a normal sight in the captain's office, then glanced at Healey, cracking a brief, ironic smile. "I hope you have more than just that one reel of tape. This could take awhile."
Healey stared back stone-faced then closed his eyes and nodded slightly. "Don't worry, we've got lots."
Nodding, Steve exhaled loudly, looking at the floor. "Listen, guys, I know how it looks… I honestly do… and I can explain to you how everything went down… well, almost everything… but you have to believe me when I tell you I didn't do any of it. I'm the witness, not the killer, and I'm the witness for a reason."
He raised his head and looked from one sergeant to the other, seeing a trace of sympathy in Haseejian's eyes but nothing in Healey's, and that scared him. If he couldn't convince these men, with whom he had worked shoulder to shoulder for the past four years, then what were his chances of convincing the District Attorney, a jury and a judge, not to mention Linda Zhao's devastated family.
He closed his eyes and dropped his head again, drawing a deep breath in through his nose. "This is going to sound insane… and I'll understand if you don't believe me at first… but I hope I can convince you… that it wasn't me…" he looked up and straight at Healey, "it was Nicole Sanderson."
# # # # #
There was an IV in the back of his left hand, his right arm was angled further away from his body than normal, wires from the heart monitor sticking out from the neck of the hospital gown and an oxygen cannula around his head and under his nose, but otherwise her father looked like he was just taking a nap.
Relieved, Jeannie sank onto the tall stool on the left side of the bed and slipped her hand into Mike's, entwining their fingers. The doctor had reassured her that he was doing fine, his lung was almost completely re-inflated and the bullet would be removed first thing the next morning. He could be on his way home in 48 hours if all went well, and she held onto that silver lining.
But her worry for her father had been worryingly overshadowed when Olsen had been unusually vague when she asked what had happened and Steve's whereabouts. Other than assuring her that Steve was unhurt but elsewhere, he hadn't offered an explanation for anything and she now had more questions than when she had when she'd opened her door to the Tucson police lieutenant hours ago.
Squeezing Mike's hand, she leaned close to the bed and told him she was there.
# # # # #
Haseejian, eyes wide and mouth slightly open in shock, turned slowly to meet his partner's eyes. Healey was staring expressionlessly at Steve, who met the bushy-browed glare evenly. The Armenian sergeant turned back to the younger man. "Nicole Sanderson? The psycho who stalked you and took Mike hostage? The one who had us running around town trying to find him? That Nicole Sanderson."
Steve turned slowly to face him and nodded. "Yeah… that Nicole Sanderson."
"What the hell…?" Haseejian sat back in the wooden chair, as if he wasn't sure if he should believe it or not. "I mean, didn't she disappear off the face of the earth after that?" he asked rhetorically. "I mean, you didn't hear from her after that, right?"
Steve shook his head. "No, not a thing. And it turns out, that's what she wanted. She's been plotting this… this revenge since then… and she pulled it off. She's that good." He turned his attention back to Healey, who was still staring at him. He hadn't moved but Steve knew his mind was racing a mile a minute.
"Why should we believe you?" he asked pointedly.
"Because I can tell you everything she did, every move she made… to frame me for everything that went on in that garage last night." He swallowed heavily. "And then I just have to hope that you believe me."
"And if we don't?" Healey's voice was disturbingly flat. "Every piece of evidence we have right now points to you and you alone. How do you explain that?"
Steve inhaled deeply. "I can…believe me, I can. And there's another piece of evidence I know you haven't gotten yet. The bullet they're going to take out of Mike came from my gun." He nodded towards Healey's pocket, where he knew the sergeant had put the .38. "You'll find one empty shell in the chamber."
Healey's eyes finally left his young colleague and slid towards his partner, but neither of them spoke. Then slowly Healey reached for the Record and Play buttons on the tape recorder and pushed them simultaneously. As the reels started to turn, he identified the parties involved, the location and the time.
# # # # #
Devitt looked up as his office door opened and Rudy Olsen walked into the room. "I thought I'd find you here," the older man said as he shut the door and dropped wearily into one of the guest chairs.
"I thought you'd've gone home after you took Jeannie to the hospital."
Olsen sighed. "Well, I didn't want to just leave her there so I waited till she was ready to go home and took her and then I thought, what the hell, I wasn't going to get much sleep anyway, so I came here. And I can't go to my own office 'cause Norm and Dan are still in there with Steve," he shrugged as Devitt nodded, "so… I took the chance you were here."
Devitt leaned back in his swivel chair and put his foot on the edge of the desk. "Yeah, I decided to hang around too." He glanced up at the wall clock: 8:45. "They had dinner brought in a couple of hours ago and Norm let me know they were going to call it a night around 9. They, ah, they asked me what they should do with Steve, 'cause they're not finished with him yet." He stared at Olsen with raised eyebrows over a baffled expression. "I honestly didn't know what to tell them… I don't think any of us have been in this kind of situation before. You?"
Olsen pursed his lips, shaking his head quickly. "God, no. I don't want to arrest the kid, not yet. Hell, I don't even want to talk to the D.A.'s office yet, and I know that's gonna come back to bite me on the butt but jeez… I mean, I know in my gut Steve didn't do this… but whether or not we can prove it…" He shook his head angrily. "I just don't know, Roy, I just don't know. It all depends what he's telling Norm and Dan right now."
Devitt sighed heavily. "It doesn't sound good, that's for damn sure. But, shit, if he didn't do it, then who the hell did? I mean, somebody had to stab that girl to death and shoot Mike. If it wasn't Steve then who the hell was it that they didn't leave a trace anywhere?"
Olsen shook his head sadly. "Well, let's hope Steve knows and he can prove it… because if he can't… God have mercy on him…"
# # # # #
They were exhausted. Jackets off, sleeves rolled up, ties off, all three men had used up every ounce of their energy, both mental and physical, to get through the past few hours.
It had started slowly, with Healey's skepticism front and centre and Steve desperate to convince the older man that every word coming out of his mouth was going to be the god's honest truth.
"So when and how did this start?" Haseejian began formally after the tape had begun to roll.
Steve rubbed a hand over his forehead. "Well, something tells me it started with that accident Mike and I were in a couple of months ago, but you'll have to talk to him about that. I was told he was investigating it on his own; I didn't know a thing about it. But for me it started late yesterday afternoon," he said softly, shaking his head slightly as the realization that everything had taken place within the past twenty-four hours. It almost didn't seem possible. "Linda was getting off work early and she was going to go over to my place to cook us dinner."
"She has… had a key?"
The younger man nodded. "Yeah, of course. But she wasn't there when I got home… around, I don't know, seven, seven-fifteen. I was surprised because she didn't call me to tell me she'd be late." His eyes suddenly snapped from one sergeant to the other. "The message! She left a message on my answering machine, telling me where she was and that they were going to kill her -"
"Who's 'they'?" Healey interrupted the suddenly animated inspector.
"She didn't say," he shot back angrily, "but that message should still be on my answering machine." He looked pleadingly from one sergeant to the other.
Haseejian glanced at Healey and nodded then turned to Steve again. "You have your house keys on you?" As the inspector nodded and half stood to reach into his pants pocket, the sergeant reached for the desk phone and dialled four numbers. "Yeah, Bill, it's Norm. Look, I need you to come up to Rudy's office. There's something I need you to do right away… Okay, thanks." He hung up, taking the keys. "I'll send him over to your place to get the tape."
Healey nodded. "Good. So, what happened next?"
Steve inhaled deeply, buoyed that maybe there was something concrete that could begin to convince them that what he was going to tell them was the truth. But that thin thread of hope quickly evaporated when Tanner called back just over a half hour later. The incoming calls tape in Steve's answering machine was blank; according to Tanner, it sounded as if someone had called the number then kept the line open for over a minute without saying anything before hanging up.
Haseejian hung up and looked at his young colleague. "Sorry, Steve," he said quietly with a sympathetic shrug.
"She did it," Steve said quietly, staring at the carpet, his elbows on his thighs.
"What do mean 'she did it'?" Healey asked.
The younger man looked up. "I told you she was smart. She knew there was a message on my machine, and she also knew I listened to it. And you know how those things work - after you listen to a message the tape rewinds, right? And then the next message records over it." He shrugged, defeated. "So that's what she did. She called my answering machine and just let the tape run long enough to erase the message that Linda left."
The sergeants looked at each other, Haseejian seeming to accept the explanation, Healey not so sure. The Irish sergeant leaned his forearms on the desk. He knew this information was a blow for the young inspector but they needed to press on, and nothing Steve had told them so far had done anything to uphold his innocence. "So, ah, so you were just about to tell us how and why Mike showed up at the garage," he prompted.
Steve sat back, sagging in the uncomfortable wooden chair. "I invited him," he said quietly.
The sergeants exchanged frowns. "What?" Healey demanded clarification, and volume.
The muscles of the young man's jaw clenched as he looked at the stern features across the desk. "Just what I said… I invited him…"
