A Fair Distance. Running on Empty. Chapter Nine

Sitting on the floor in the interrogation room, I realized that while the bite mark had transferred from the spirit plane, so had another little problem, one that started me blushing from embarrassment. Thank God the way I was sitting was hiding the evidence.

I looked up at Dave and Jim, who were watching me with curious and, in Dave's case, amazed expressions on their faces.

"Could you get me a glass of water, please?" I asked. Jim volunteered to go to the kitchen and he gave me a knowing look before walking out of the room. Damn sentinel senses; they never gave you any privacy.

"Blair, are you feelin' all right? Can you get up and sit in the chair?" Dave was asking me, concern in his voice. He was probably shocked that I had materialized a stigmata mark, but he couldn't charge Jim now with sexually assaulting me.

"I'd like to sit here for a minute, 'cause I feel a little dizzy, and drink some water first," I fibbed. That wasn't why I was reluctant to move but he wasn't going to know the truth, if I could help it.

After Jim returned with the water, I pulled the same stunt I had done a few times when I was fifteen years old; I took a big gulp and then pretended the glass had slipped when I 'accidentally' doused my entire lap with good old H2O.

…After I showered - I told Dave I felt grimy from running a fever - and he detoured me to the kitchen for bandages, more Tylenol, saltwater for gargling, half a bowl of soup, and juice, it was back to the interrogation room where Jim was waiting for me.

Dave escorted me to a chair at the table and then leaned against the wall behind me, his eyes on Jim, who had set up a tape recorder and notebook and was parked in the chair opposite from mine.

Dave had admitted while pushing food at me that he wasn't going to file assault charges on Jim because as he said,'with the outlandish story I was fixin' to tell, the judge would just throw the case out of court anyway.' So I mouthed the words "no charges" to Jim when I looked at him across the table.

Jim nodded at me, rather expressionlessly, and then said, "Sandburg, I want to apologize for what happened here earlier. I honestly don't recall doing what I saw on the monitor tape, but you shouldn't have been treated like that. And before we get started here, I'd like to know what's wrong with you."

"Really, I'm fine."

"Really, no - you're not. I can see that you're sick. You're also about twenty pounds lighter than a year ago. So. What's wrong with you?"

"I have a virus." I refused to look at Jim's eyes and stared pointedly at the tape recorder. "Can we get started now? There's somewhere I had planned on being today and I want to see if I can still make it there."

I didn't particularly want Jim to know what I had. I could see him twisting it around so that I was in the wrong for getting sick, and I didn't want to deal with his attitude.

"Sandburg." Jim growled which caused me to look over at him. I still didn't say anything and Jim let it drop, after giving me a hard stare, which I totally ignored.

Once the preliminary stuff - where, when, who, and what - was established, we moved onto why. Why Cascade P.D. needed to talk to me.

"Mr. Sandburg, can you state for the record where you were during the day and evening of August 9, 2000."

I thought about it for a moment, counting backwards in my head.

"Um… I was in St. Louis, Missouri, in August. I lived on the north side of town and worked for Peterson's Welding and Fence Company. I was filling in for one of the guys who needed to be out for a month or two, some kind of family thing. I kind of worked under the table; they hired me as an independent contractor so taxes wouldn't have to be taken out; I was supposed to do that myself. That way they didn't have to pay workman's comp either, if I got hurt. What day of the week was the ninth?"

"Wednesday," Jim replied to my question after a quick look at his notes.

"Well, I would have been at work, and then in my crappy little rented room, over on Railroad Street. I've got a notebook in my backpack where I keep contact information; it's sort of a journal. I can give you the address and number of the welding shop, if you want it."

Jim agreed and Dave radioed for somebody to bring my backpack to the interrogation room.

"Mr. Sandburg, where is your green Volvo currently?"

"I have no idea; I sold it a while ago, used the money to pay off a good chunk of my student loans. Man, is my car tied in to Chancellor Edwards' death somehow? I sold it to a guy who worked in her office, Nathan Bergman; he ran into me when I was in New Mexico and paid me cash… Oh, shit! Jim, how did she die? Why did my name come up?"

Jim was still in official detective mode, though, and didn't answer my questions. Instead, he asked me to describe my relationships with Chancellor Edwards and with Nathan Bergman.

So I did, telling him things he already knew from when we lived together. Then, with an apologetic glance, I confessed to all the events I had kept from him. I wanted to explain my reasons for not telling him but I could hardly voice them during this interview.

For the record then, I explained about the unsolicited derogatory reference letters that Chancellor Edwards sent out to employers about my academic qualifications and work ethics, and the grievance I filed regarding those letters and also for releasing my dissertation without permission. Nathan Bergman had been friendly to me and helped me with the grievance, and was serving as a personal reference for me so that I didn't have to go through the university's system.

The door opened and an officer placed my backpack against the wall while I made it clear that I hadn't seen the Chancellor for close to a year and a half, not since she'd fired me from my teaching fellowship.

I hadn't been certain what I wanted to do after the grievance had been rejected as unfounded; any further step would have had to involve a lawyer I couldn't afford, and I wasn't sure I'd win against her. Her lawyer could probably twist my admittedly unusual work record, including when I had been fired over the Ventriss mess, to support her spin-doctored venomous letter.

"Mr. Sandburg, please describe your manner when you met with Mr. Bergman at Rainier University after you were notified your grievance had failed." Jim asked me in a bored sounding voice.

"Disappointed that the grievance hadn't gotten approval, but I was polite about it; it wasn't his fault after all." I answered, somewhat puzzled by his request.

"Did you yell, scream obscenities, throw objects around the room when Mr. Bergman was present?"

"NO! Jim… are you going to tell me what's going on?"

"What's going on, Mr. Sandburg, is that you are being asked to cooperate with a murder investigation. Please describe the contacts you've had with Mr. Bergman since leaving Cascade, including the time in New Mexico when you sold him your Volvo, and please list any witnesses who saw that transaction…"

Jim took me through the whole series of questions again, before asking the one huge, honkin', humdinger of all the questions –

"Mr. Sandburg, did you kill Marie Edwards?"

"No, I did not."

"Did you strike her in any way? Were you present in Cascade on August 9, 2000? Did you drive a green Volvo in Cascade on August 9, 2000?"

"No, I've never hit her; I wasn't in Cascade driving anything on August 9, 2000."

Jim turned off the tape recorder and looked at me with a satisfied expression. I could tell he had turned up the dials during the questions so he knew I wasn't lying.

Big deal.

He knew before he had asked me the first question that I hadn't killed her because I wasn't like that. Simon would probably be happy to hear Jim had cleared me with his sentinel senses, though. Not that it counted for anything to the rest of the world.

"Sandburg, we need to establish your alibi ASAP with your St. Louis employer. Also, I need you to go through your journal and make a timeline of where you've been the last year, with rental addresses and work information listed. I want you to list why you left each job, whether you were let go or if you left voluntarily. We're going to be checking to see if Bergman had anything to do with your hop-skip-and-jump work record."

My eye must have twitched or something, because suddenly Jim was looking at me distrustfully.

"Look, if you know anything, suspect anything, even if you don't think it's relevant, I want to hear about it. Do not keep anything back. You remember how that works; don't you, Chi- Sandburg?"

I know I had an incredulous look on my face and I tried to give Jim a hint by rolling my eyes back towards Dave, who was still holding up the wall behind me. Jim had totally lost his earlier satisfied expression and had replaced it with an irritated, suspicious one. Which he was directing at me. God, did I have to dot the i's and cross the t's for him? Had it slipped his mind that hewas the one responsible for getting me fired from some of my jobs?

"You know what?" Jim was glaring at me. "I'm not in the mood for any damned charades. If you're holding something back, then spit it out. Or I'll file obstruction of justice charges on you."

Ohhhh - he shouldn't have said that, 'cause it pissed me off, like Ka-boom! And I found my hands acting out the ka-boom part, and my mouth spilled out his god-damned secret.

"You son-of-a-bitch! I was going to give my Karma a boost and let what you did go, just ask you to not do it anymore, and let me try and salvage a life for myself. But you asked for it, Big Guy, so to hell with you and your vindictiveness!

"Yeah, I know why I was fired from about a third of my jobs. Did you think that I wouldn't have made any friends at my jobs? They told me about the phone calls to my bosses. And sometimes if the secretaries liked me, they showed me the letters that made me out to be this sexual harasser-guy and suspected embezzler. Those letters told my bosses I was close to being arrested and it would spill over to them if I kept working there. The 'guy' who contacted them said he wanted to warn them, since it wasn't my employer's fault that I had faked my references. He hinted that there'd be a big investigation; and of course, no business wanted that on their doorstep. So I would get canned and told if I were smart I'd move on. The bosses sometimes speculated to the office staff that this was a scam or something, but that didn't stop them from firing my ass.

"I saw your name on the letters - ELLISON! How could you do that to me, Jim? I've tried Naomi's mantra - and I made quotations marks with my fingers when I repeated what I'd heard from my mom my whole life - 'I'm letting this go; I'm letting this go,' but - HELL NO! I'm not letting this go. You were an asshole to do that to me, and you're still an asshole now, acting like you have nothing to do with me being run all over the god-damned country!"

I was so mad, I was shaking, and whoa – when had I gotten out of the chair and started pacing around?

Jim, the incredible jerk, just sat there with this stunned look on his face. Ha - just let him try and explain how his sick idea of revenge was justified.

I stomped over to my backpack and pulled out my cheap little journal. I riffled quickly through it for the information on Peterson's welding shop; grabbing Jim's notebook, I wrote the name and number down for him.

"San-" Jim started to say, but I drowned him out by yelling at him to just shut the fuck up. I threw his notebook at him, picked up my journal, and turned back to Dave, who had watched all my fireworks quietly.

"Dave, I need out of here now before I do something that would really keep my ass in jail." I clutched my journal to me and started for the door. I didn't care where I would be put, I just wanted out of this room where Jim was sitting like the proverbial bump on a log.

~oo~oo~oo~oo~

xxx

"Dave!" Mike waved me over when I walked up towards the front desk; he most likely wanted to explain why he'd jumped the gun about Detective Ellison interviewing our little guest.

"Sorry about Ellison; I thought I'd let him get started while you were stuck in court with the Whites, and just set the monitor to record so you'd be able to go over the session later. I was trying to hurry things up so Ellison could either arrest Sandburg or turn him loose. That kid has been here way too long, for us having no real charges on him. And we've bent over to accommodate Cascade, keeping hippie-boy here instead of sending him to the lock-up where he'd have to deal with the scum up there. I was getting tired of it.

"I sure didn't expect Ellison to go whacko, though. What do you think about this 'low blood sugar' story?"

"I think it's a story." I punched Mike lightly on the shoulder. "But we won't get anywhere with charges that would stick, not after Blair had another bite mark come up, and him in the room by himself; it was the strangest thing I've ever seen."

Mike agreed with a shake of his head; he had watched through the monitor when we made a commotion about Blair's neck bleeding from that new bite mark.

"They're an odd pair; I'm not so sure now that Ellison bosses Blair around as much as I thought. Blair sure laid into him when the interview was over; he thinks Ellison got him fired from some of the jobs he's worked this last year. I don't think so, though. I was watchin' Ellison's face and he seemed honestly shocked at what Blair was yellin' about.

"Hey Mike, I'm going to talk to Ellison again, check on Blair, and then I'm headed home. This has been a long shift and I need some sleep. Blair; he's back in his cell writing out some notes for Ellison's case. He said he wanted to make a phone call when he was done; that okay with you?"

Mike gave a nod and I left to go talk with Ellison. He was still in the interview room, and he was on his cell phone, talking to his captain. He updated him on the results of Blair's interview and told him they needed to start looking at Bergman for the Edwards' case.

There was something botherin' me in the back of my head, something to do with the way Ellison and Blair had acted when Ellison was so out of it. The things Blair had done to bring Ellison around; it sounded real familiar, but I couldn't figure out why it was ringin' a bell in my head. Blair's research on sentinels that I'd found on the internet… it seemed right to me, like I'd already heard it before. Somewhere, I'd learned about men with really good senses. I'd get some sleep and then think on it some; maybe it would come to me after some rest.

Ellison ended his phone call and looked at me guardedly, his eyebrows raised upwards. I told Ellison that Blair's case had been added to the court docket for tomorrow morning, and I reminded him if he needed to interview Blair further, it'd have to be in the presence of an officer. Ellison didn't look happy about this restriction, but he didn't raise a fuss 'bout it.

I wanted to ask him about Blair dyin' and the way that mark on his neck came up, but didn't; Ellison didn't look like he would take kindly to personal questions right now.

I did ask about his case. I was curious about how Blair's car was involved. I understood why he hadn't told Blair any more information. Till Blair's alibi cleared him, it wasn't good procedure to tell him more than what was necessary.

Ellison didn't say anything to me as he slid his phone into his jeans pocket. He seemed tense and tired; then he relaxed his muscles and rubbed his hand over his face.

"We have witnesses who saw a green Volvo driven by a man with long, dark hair hit Edwards, but it was just after dusk so they didn't get a good look at the guy. We also have Sandburg's car being positively identified on campus that night; the car was ticketed for parking in a no-parking area, so we've got the license plate number and description on record.

He gave a little snort. "That kid used to wrack up the tickets at Rainier; his picture is probably on a wanted poster in the campus security office." There was an indulgent look on Ellison's face for a moment, and then he lost that expression and continued talkin'.

"There was enough forensic evidence recovered from the body to confirm the witness' statements that a green car hit the victim. We haven't found the car; possibly it's gone to a chop shop, or been hidden somewhere. And I know Blair's told the truth; he didn't kill that woman. I just need some work documentation to clear him."

Ellison sighed. "Blair's the only one that can connect the car to Bergman, but no judge is going to issue a warrant to search Bergman's house and garage based on Sandburg's unsubstantiated allegation that he sold Bergman the car. Not without hard evidence to back it up."

I gestured towards the door and said, "The Police Chief is on vacation out of town this week, so you're welcome to use his office and fax machine to make calls to check out Blair's alibi."

Ellison gave a nod and I went to talk with Blair before leaving work. Since he'd blown up at Ellison, I reckoned I'd check and see if he wanted to change his statement about that 'attack' Ellison had done on him.

Blair was deeply asleep when I opened the cell door. The notes he'd made were scattered on the floor next to his bunk; I gathered them up, and lookin' at his relaxed face, decided to try something that had always worked on my kid brother.

Quietly, I called his name. Kneeling by his bunk, I repeated sayin' "Blair" in a honey-toned whisper, till he started to stir a little bit. Then I did what I had always done to my brother when we were young'uns. I started askin' him questions in my softest, you-want-to-answer-me voice.

"Blair, is Jim a good kisser?"

"Uh-huh. Make toes curl kisser…"

"Blair, do you love Jim?"

"Love Jim all th' time. Long time."

"Blair, does Jim hurt you?"

"Make me cry don' tell him."

"Blair, what's Jim done that makes you cry?"

"He don' want me."

"Blair, does Jim hit you to hurt you?"

"Nah… grabs me… don' hurt."

"Blair, do you want to stay with Jim?"

"Can't… hates me."

"Blair, do you want to go with Jim if he loves you?"

"Yeah, go home… Jim, Jim don't want me anymore."

Blair was startin' to get really woken up, so I shushed him till he fell back into a good sleep. I know askin' my brother questions this way always got the truth out of him, so I suspected I'd heard the truth from Blair now, mostly asleep as he was.

I passed the notes to Ellison on my way out; he was on the phone talkin' to Blair's boss from St. Louis. Detective Ellison and I needed to have another talk before court tomorrow. Maybe at Ruthie's Restaurant, introduce him to the finest biscuit and gravy breakfast in Tennessee.

~oo~oo~oo~oo~

xxx

Continued in A Fair Distance. Running on Empty. Chapter Ten