Tail Spin

taste.”
    “There now, all of us agree. Why don’t you tell us where you buried Clay Huggins. You’re not in trouble over that since you’re not the one who shot him. I’ll bet you feel kind of bad about him being dead. He was a friend, wasn’t he—well, at least a professional ally? And now he’s rotting in a field somewhere like he wasn’t important enough to even stick in a casket.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any Clay Higgins.”
    “Clay Huggins.”
    “Whatever.” He looked at Savich. “Dude, I want you to get out of here, leave me alone. I don’t know anything about any doctor in a basement, I was just agreeing with you to be cooperative. I want to take my pain pill and go back to bed. You didn’t even have a box from Gun Smith Euro, did you?”
    “Sorry, no box. It really hurts me, Don, but occasionally I have to lie in my job.”
    Savich said, “Okay, Don, listen up. It’s either a small, uncomfortable jail cell with Big Bubba for a roomie, or a nice hospital bed, with clean sheets. Up to you.”
    “I want a lawyer.”
    “You know what, Don,” Savich said, his voice slowing, becoming scary deep and as cold as ice, “I’ve found sometimes—well, rarely— that lawyers can really help a guy. In this instance, though, a lawyer isn’t going to help you wiggle out of this. Now, if the lawyer’s not a moron, he’ll advise you to cooperate with us and tell the truth since we already have you dead to rights with your DNA. Neither of us is unreasonable. You want to deal? We’ll deal.”
    Everett said, “I don’t know anything, I—”
    Savich slapped Everett’s face.
    Everett moaned, hugged his slinged arm against his chest. “Hey! Dude, what’d you do that for? I’m hurt here, no call for you to hit me.”
    “I want your attention right here, Don, right on my face. That’s right. Look at me. I want you to tell me who hired you and the now-deceased Clay Huggins. I want you to give me the names of the other man and woman who were with you when you went to kill Rachael Janes in Slipper Hollow. I want you to tell me right now, or the only thing I’ll guarantee you is a thirty-year stretch at Attica.” Savich lightly laid the butt of his SIG across Everett’s open mouth. “No, don’t sing me your I’m-so-innocent song.” He leaned closer, whispered in Everett’s ear, “Something else I might enjoy doing, Don, and that’s to let it out to the inmate population that you’re a child molester.”

TWENTY-SEVEN
    Sherlock had rarely seen absolute horror on a person’s face like she saw now on Donley Everett’s. For the moment, it knocked his pain right out of his mind.
    “Dude, it isn’t true. You can’t, dude. Oh, man, you can’t.”
    Savich ran the muzzle of his SIG against Everett’s ear. “When they’re through with you, you’ll sure wish you’d talked to us, Don. On the other hand, you tell us what we want to know, and I’ll see to it personally that you’re in a cell by yourself and there’s not a single whiff of child molestation in your traveling papers. What do you say, Don? Tell me you understand all your options.”
    Everett sobbed into his one available open hand. Sherlock straightened. “You’re disgusting,” and she kicked him hard in the knee.
    “Wha—?”
    “Listen, you moron,” she said, getting in his face. “You’ve done so much bad stuff in your miserable life you nearly fill up a computer disk. You’ve never shown an ounce of remorse about any of your victims, and now you have the gall to whine and cry? You make me sick.
    “Now, you pathetic butt worm, you will tell us who hired you or I’m going to get ahold of some really appalling photos of kids who’ve been molested and write your name on the photos in big block letters. I’ll have the warden paper the bathrooms and the cafeteria. I expect there’ll be bets on how long you’ll last. Can you imagine having a big bar of soap stuffed in your mouth, your jaws held together?”
    Everett stopped crying, shut off like a spigot. He believed she was dead serious. “I heard about that,” he said, and couldn’t help the shudder. “You can’t do that, there are rules you cops gotta stick to. You’re constrained.”
    “Do I look constrained, Don?” Savich shook his head at him. “You don’t get it, do you? You tried to kill our friends at Slipper Hollow. You think we wouldn’t make up a story about you, that we’d hesitate to do anything we