Our top story tonight: I don't own Chuck.

Chapter 10

I don't know a lot of lawyers. I guess they tend to travel in different social circles than mine. The only lawyer I could think of at the moment was Jeff's cousin. However, since my current predicament did not involve being injured in an accident or exposure to asbestos in the workplace, I doubted that he was an option.

So, I was feeling somewhat less than confident as I rode in the back of the police car. The two officers were talking to each other, sharing some story about a patrolman at another precinct. Finally, Grimmeault looked back at me through the rearview mirror. "So, once again, the Burbank PD gets its man. Or man-child, anyway."

"So everything you said to Anna was a lie?"

"Sometimes protecting the public involves bending the truth a little bit. I'm sure she'll come to understand that eventually."

"I suppose there's no point in me telling you that there's a dead body a few blocks back that way?"

The two officers glanced at each other briefly, then Grimmeault chuckled. "Back there? I'm sure there's more than just one dead body. Why, is it more of your handiwork?"

"I don't have any handiwork. I keep telling you, I didn't kill anybody."

"Yeah, you do. Thing is, we found the murder weapon. A nice, big metal pipe thrown into a drain about a block from the murder site. And you'll never guess whose fingerprints we found on that pipe. Sorry, buddy, it's all over for you."

"But that's impossible. I don't go around touching metal pipes."

"At least the ones you don't use to murder ex-bosses. No, I'm afraid this is an open-and-shut…" Grimmeault was interrupted by a snippet of the song 'Bad Boys.' Grimmeault pulled a phone from his pocket as he maneuvered the car to a side street.

"Yeah." There was a pause as Grimmeault listened to the phone. "Yes, we got him. What?" Another pause. "Are you sure?"

Wallace looked over at her partner questioningly.

Grimmeault looked back and studied me briefly. "I'd say about 5 foot 4, if he's lucky. Yeah, no kidding. Alright." Grimmeault hung up. "The lab boys. You're never going to believe this."

"So the guys back at the lab did some sort of test." Grimmeault explained to his partner. Angle and trajectory, something like that. They say the blow could only have come from somebody at least six feet tall. Which makes it very unlikely that Tattoo back there could have done it."

"Could he have been standing on something?"

"They thought about that. Didn't find anything at the site that would have worked."

Silently, I was promising to watch every episode of every 'CSI' from here on out. Even the New York one.

"Here's the thing I don't get. We matched the blood type on the pipe, and matched the fingerprints to Grimes back there. Grimes was AB+, so it's pretty unlikely we found somebody else's blood. So how could his fingerprints have been on the weapon? You saw the report, Wallace. You went to pick it up yourself…" Grimmeault paused and looked at his partner.

"Sorry, Al." Wallace pulled her gun out, and fired a shot into Grimmeault's chest.

"Ugh, what a mess," Wallace commented. There was quite a bit of blood splatter around the car, including on me. Wallace pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her face, with the gun still in her other hand.

She turned to Grimmeault's body, which was slumped over in the driver's seat, motionless. "Four freaking months as your partner. I couldn't have taken it much longer. I knew I'd hate being stationed in California. Even the cops want to be actors." She turned to me. "You have some experience working with jackasses. How do you do it?"

"You killed your partner," I pointed out.

"Yeah, well he wasn't much of a partner." She raised her gun. "You and I should talk."

I glanced around to see if anybody else was around. The alley was deserted. Occasionally a car would whoosh by on the main road, but apparently everybody was too intent on getting home to pay any notice to a lone police car parked on a side street. Seeing no options, I decided to see if I could keep Wallace talking. It seemed to work in the movies. "Why are you doing this?" I asked, trying not to stare at the muzzle of Wallace's gun.

The corner of Wallace's mouth turned up in a slightly malicious-looking grin. "One little recording."

"A recording? So this is about the pirated movies?"

Wallace laughed. "You think is about some movies? You really are clueless."

"I, uh, get that a lot."

"No, the movies were just a lucky break for us. That fool who bought them had no idea what he'd found. But with a little…persuading, he led me to Milbarge easily enough. He wasn't much use either."

"So you killed him."

"Actually, he did." Wallace briefly looked back. I turned around, to see the Romanian, along with two other equally intimidating men, entering the alley. The situation was definitely not improving.

"Milbarge was useless, but he did bring me to you. I thought you would just be convenient to pin Milbarge's death on, thanks to your little altercation. We even had your fingerprints when we brought you in for that, so all I had to do was switch the records in the lab. I could never have realized who the friend you were crying about was. It was quite the surprise when we went looking for you at your apartment, and found a whole wall of stuff on exactly the person I was looking for."

"As an added bonus, you even led me to the base in Glendale. Too bad about the tragic explosion there today," she nodded to the Romanian.

"Now," she said, raising the gun to my eye level, "tell me where the intersect is."

"I…I don't know what that is."

"Fine. I'll make it a little easier for you. The intersect is your good friend, Chuck Bartowski."

"Why do you want Chuck? He was just a computer tech?"

"I guess your friend kept some secrets from you. I guess we'll just have to see what secrets you're keeping from me."

Officer Wallace made a quick gesture, and the Romanian and one of the other goons approached the car. The Romanian opened the door and grabbed me by my handcuffed wrists. I winced, but figured I'd try to stay quiet to appear as tough as possible. I don't think they were fooled.

Wallace had walked deeper into the alley, until she found a large metal door. Finding it locked, she stepped back and shot the lock. She kicked the door in and a resounding crash, and peeked inside. "Oh, this will do nicely."

The Romanian and the two others dragged me through the door. The inside was dark, and smelled faintly of mildew.

I heard a soft click, and the lights in the building flickered on. We appeared to be in some sort of warehouse, with dusty boxes piled up all around us. "Once we're done with him, I need you to take care of that car for me," I heard Wallace tell the others. "Just make it clear that Grimes killed Grimmeault. And then I'll need you to deal with some troublesome lab techs." She paused to look around. "This will definitely do nicely," I heard Wallace comment. "Just the amount of privacy we need."

She nodded to one of her underlings. "Shut the door. We don't want any screams reaching the ears of anybody curious."

I was pushed onto a folding metal chair. The Romanian appeared with a handful of thick rope, and tied me securely to the back. The chair wasn't quite as comfortable as the last chair I'd been tied to. I couldn't believe that had only been this morning. "I've had quite a day," I mumbled.

"It's probably not going to get better. But you could keep it from getting a whole lot worse if you just tell me everything I want to know about Charles Bartowski."

"Uh, well, I'm not sure what you want to know. His first crush was Susie Endicott in the fifth grade. He's allergic to cat dander. He's more of an original Star Trek guy than a Next Generation guy." That earned me a rather hard slap, courtesy of my Eastern European friend.

"If you're going to be a smartass we'll just have to be a bit more convincing." The henchman had returned, and was now carrying a rather rusty box cutter. He gave it to Wallace, who handed it off to the Romanian. "He's more of an artiste with these kinds of things, so I'll let him do the honors."

My mind whirled, trying to come up with a way to get out of this situation. I rejected my first idea, offering the Romanian to double what Wallace was paying him, because I didn't have enough to make my car payments, much less bribe a terrorist. Fighting was clearly out of the question. I couldn't even tell them what they wanted to know, since I didn't know what it was. So I went with the best option I had. I screamed.

The scream by itself wasn't particularly effective. But paired with the sound of the explosion from the doorway, it didn't do half bad. The next thing I knew, one of the henchmen fell down with a bullet in his chest. Wallace and the other two began shooting back by the doorway.

Seeing that I probably wouldn't be contributing much, I leaned to my side enough to push the chair downward. After that, I did my best to curl into a fetal position, which wasn't a very easy thing to do while tied up.

My cowering was interrupted when I was joined on the floor by the other henchman, clutching a wound at his side. His savage look faded away after a few moments. Finally, I noticed the shooting stopped. I tried to see if Wallace or the Romanian were still around, but couldn't see them.

A moment later, I heard footsteps, and then felt the chair being lifted. I found myself staring up at the ceiling while I was being carried out. Finally, we exited through what used to be the doorway, and the chair and I were dropped unceremoniously on the ground. I looked up to see John Casey scowling at me.

"Oh, Thank God!"

Casey grunted. "He couldn't be bothered, so I was stuck with the job." He turned to head back into the building.

"Wait! Aren't you going to untie me?"

Casey looked back briefly, and flashed a slightly unsettling smile. "Why would I do that?" Then he turned and headed back to the fray.

We're getting to the home stretch, folks…