After a long night at Jasmine’s talking and planning with her I start heading to the police station, knowing exactly what I’m going to say to him. I walk in to the station nervous as hell, trying to keep my cool. I go to the front desk and the man behind the desk said “Mr. Owens I presume? Detective O’Brian is waiting for you in his office, this officer will show you the way.”
I nod, not knowing how the man knew my name, and walk with the officer towards a group of offices. “At least I’m not going into an interrogation room” I think to myself.
“Wait here” the officer said, and opened a door on his left and walks in, closing the door closely behind him.
Trying to strain my ears so I can hear what’s going on, something down the hall catches my attention. I glance down the hallway and see man in handcuffs snapping his mouth at people walking by. Officers stayed an arm’s length away from him, but close enough to keep people away from him. I jumped when the door behind me opened, and the detective tapped me on the shoulder.
“Jumpy are we?” Detective O’Brian said laughingly.
“The guy down the hallway…what’s he doing? Why’s he biting at people?” I said, trying to cover up why I was so nervous.
“You know as much as me man. That guy is crazy, we picked him up off the street an hour ago chasing some blonde broad. Anyway, forget about him, we need to have a little chat.” he said.
He nods towards his office, and I step through the door. He steps in behind me and shuts the door. He motions to one of his chairs to have a seat as he walked to the other side of his desk. I sit down and cross my legs, trying to act natural and at ease. He sits down and starts thumbing through some papers on his desk, glancing at each paper before turning it over in another pile. I sit there hands folded together on my lap, and play his waiting game. When he ran out of papers, he dug through his drawer to fetch something and I opened my mouth to say “What kind of questions did you have?” but only to get “Wha” out before he interrupted me.
“Your boss left you a pretty interesting voice mail. Did you get a chance to hear it?” he said still looking through his desk.
“No sir, I left at my normal time yesterday. I’ve worked enough overtime lately, haven’t been sleeping well lately ya know? Anyway, I left my regular time to go home and get some shut eye” I said.
He made the “mmmhmmm” sound without looking up from his desk. I sat there silent for a while until he finally looked up. “Aren’t you interested in finding out why I asked you here?” he asked.
“I figured you’d tell me in due time. You already said it had to do with the voice mail my boss left me.” I said.
“Here Mr. Owens..”
“Call me Jacob, all my friends do.” I interrupted.
“As I was saying Mr. Owens, take a listen to this voice mail left for you shortly after you clocked out.” he said, and pressed a button on his computer.
“Jake, I gotta tell you man…I took your advice and told that gal to stay after work so I could talk to her. I think I’m going to try getting her worked up so I can see her at her worst before going any further with her. That way I can see if she’s gonna be worth my time or not if ya know what I mean. Hahaha, anyway man I’ll let you know in the morning how it went! Thanks again man! BEEP” the computer voiced.
“Okay….and?” I said.
“And, mind telling me what kind of advice you gave him?” the detective asked me.
“He was infatuated with that girl. I’m not sure her name…”
“Alicia Stevens” he said, apparently his time to interrupt.
Taking a low breath, I continued “As I was saying he was infatuated with her. I caught him looking through her computer yesterday morning. It kinda creeped me out, but I never saw a ring on her finger, and never seen her get any flowers at the office. I assumed she was single, and told him to go for it.”
“What exactly did you say to him?” he said slowly, getting out a pen and paper.
“Aren’t you already recording this? I mean why the pen and paper?” I asked.
“Call me old school, but I like to write things out before they escape my head.” he replied, motioning his hand for me to continue.
“Okay okay, I told him that he should talk to her after work to see what he really felt about her.” I said submissively.
“See, was that so hard to say? So anything else happen out of the ordinary yesterday after we talked?” he asked.
“I went to a friend’s house why?” I said questioningly. Jasmine and I didn’t talk about if they started asking about what I did after they called. I had to word things smoothly to not exactly lie, but be able to deflect anything they may ask that could get me in trouble.
“Jasmine Richards” he said knowingly.
“That’s right; I went over to her house to talk.” I said, raising an eyebrow. “What’s this got to do with me and the voice mail anyway?” trying to get back on subject.
“Mr. Owens, Ms. Stevens was murdered last night gruesomely. We found your boss…well…as crazy as this sounds…we found your boss eating her.” he said slowly, as if trying to make it sink in.
“What do you mean eating her? Like that dude out there snapping at people?…wait….are you saying he was a cannibal?” I said acting confused.
“We tested his alcohol level, and tested his blood for any kind of psychotics that could have caused his madness, but all that came back was that he had that meat virus.” he explained. “Nothing we tested for came back positive. Hell we even tested the man for STDs. They came back with no positives.”
“So what’d you find out? Did you ask him what he was thinking?” I asked, already knowing what the was about to say.
“Well, we would have, but he charged one of my men. We had to take him out to protect my men.” he said.
I feigned dizziness saying, “he’s…he’s dead? I mean I didn’t really know him that well, but I remember he had a daughter he got on the weekends.”
“We’ve already notified his ex-wife about this, and the media is demanding answers to the gun shots they were notified of…” he said.
“Wait..did you say gun SHOTS….as in plural? Surely you’re not saying he kept coming after you after you shot him…” I said acting shocked. I had not expected him to slip up like that.
“Err….well…fuck. That wasn’t supposed to come out. Mr. Owens…Jacob….let me ask you something. How much damage do you think a 24 gauge assault shotgun does to a human body?” he said, leaning towards me with both arms on his desk.
“I don’t know detective, I’m not really a gun type of guy” I said.
“Imagine dropping a watermelon off the 2nd story window of this office. Whatever is left is what’s left of where ever we shot.”
“Oh wow…so why the multiple shots?” I asked.
“Because that mother fucker kept coming after my men…” he said angrily.
I stood up, and stepped back, “What the hell…how could someone live, let alone keep going after a single shot to the stomach like that?” I said. As soon as I seen him raise his eyebrows, I knew I fucked up.
“Mr. Owens…I never told you where we shot him, and we have all the surveillance tapes from the office. How did you know we shot him in the stomach, and what else do you have to say to me?” he said standing up. He reached out to his back pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
“I think I need to talk to a lawyer…” I said.
“That’s a good idea” he said, and started reading me my rights.