Room for The Wronged

“The room is unfamiliar, I don’t know how I got here.” He was mocking them.

“Oh la-di-da. Unfamiliar? Disquieting? Is the room inconvenient too? Do you need the heat adjusted?” Detective Trench leaned in toward the suspect and breathed pepper and garlic at the man with the face tattoo. Sergeant Reilly nearly leapt forward to grab the detective before he did something stupid right out of the gate. The suspect was cuffed, so it would be hard to explain a boxing match to the brass.

“Fuck you,” said the man. The ghoulish skull moved in one way, the man’s face moved another. The ugly ink contrasted weirdly with the suspect’s expression. Jekyll and Hyde fighting for airtime.

A young beautiful woman was dead, her brains splattered against the wall of the squalid apartment at the tenement building in Atlantic City, off the main drag, where the streetlights cast the darkest shadows. Another Friday night freak-show, courtesy of drugs and sex, and the human filth that gets washed up on the Jersey shore.

The Chamber Street squad found skull-boy, the 45 Special in his hand. They beat the crap out of him, but with body blows that left no marks, and just a little crack at the skull for fun. He had to be carried into the station, feet first. Trench figured he could leave the station feet first too.  

Sergeant Reilly? Reilly’s job was to make sure that didn’t happen. Reilly had seen it all, and dealt with things with equanimity, but cornerman for Trench tonight was a tough assignment. No love for skull-boy, but they needed to stay inside the lines.

“Make sure he behaves tonight!” said the Duty Officer, earlier that evening, at the front desk, when Reilly walked into the station with Trench.  The Duty Officer, Tony Howell, was all seeing, all knowing. Reilly gave the Duty Officer a promise, but it might be difficult with Trench; the man was a force of nature. 

“Yes, Gandalf”. 

The Duty Officer was not amused.

Trench was a broke-nose prize fighter that beat confessions out of the street scum with his fists, and with questions if absolutely necessary. Sergeant Reilly, a portly man with a buddha face needed the overtime but not the hassle.  

The room felt oppressive, just a box, with bolt-down metal furniture, white strip lighting, a gray door, a camera.

“Detective, we need to confirm his name?” said Reilly, prodding Trench, notebook at the ready. It seemed like as good a starting point as any.

Trench figured otherwise.  Last things first. He had a way of getting to the point very quickly, and mostly by intuition, also known as prejudice. Why bother with formalities? The end justified the means. Trench needed a confession. A confession would square the circle, save everyone involved a lot of time and paperwork, and grief. Not really. Grief fills every vacuum left by a death. The girl’s parents would be woken by a knock at the door, cop car lights flashing. Dead of the night. Trench was a hard man, a mean bastard, but he had a heart that ached for retribution.

“And you don’t know how you got here? Is that right?” 

“Not a friggin clue.” Perp was twisting trying to feel the back of his head, but the chain constrained his movement. 

“Funny. Very funny. I heard the hollering when they brought you in.” The Duty Officer was pissed at the commotion, cussed out the Chamber Street boys. 

“I’m glad you think it was funny, detective.”  Hoity toity again and stuck up. It was like interviewing Cary Grant, only this particular Cary Grant had a spider’s web inked on his neck, a skull on the right side of his face, and meat-blender scars. More MS-13 than MGM. Scum. The kind of man that needs to be thrown in a cell and left there to rot, or better still, thrown to old sparky. This man was leaving Interview Room Number Two feet first, horizontal.

“And you don’t remember killing this girl?” Trench thrust a polaroid picture at skull-boy. A Jackson Pollock, collector’s item. 

“Is this a joke?”

That aching heart again, it came and went. The girl was only nineteen, Rosalie Turner, from Canton, Ohio. She was a looker, a country gal, her whole life in front of her until this useless piece of garbage splattered her brains against the wall of the miserable squat. Aspiring actress, or a dancer, or something. Atlantic City, what a miserable place to end the American Dream.

Interview room number two. The prisoner was cuffed, attached to a thick chain that secured him to a metal bar that ran down the center of the table. “Let me go, you’ve got the wrong man.” Insolent and self-righteous, and a cold-blooded murderer, and his hands were cuffed, and everything about the man was just plain disgusting, especially this pantomime, this pretense of innocence. 

Trench punched skull-boy in the head. 

“Fuck! What do you think you are doing?” The prisoner held his trapped hands to his forehead. Trench punched him again. 

Reilly jumped up, intervened, pointed at the CCTV camera near the ceiling. The light was red, and so was skull-boy’s face and T-shirt, an instant explosion from a broken nose. Someone would have to clean up the mess. Reilly had no stomach for it. Gandalf would have a fit.

“Let’s try getting his ID straight,” said Reilly, easing Trench back from the desk, into the metal chair. Lovely place to spend a Friday night, and lovely company: a murdering psycho and Trench.

Reilly held up the Tennessee driver’s license, still in the evidence bag. “Clay Turner, the third. 54 Wesley Street. Sparta. Age matches. No tats though.” Reilly was amazed at how far and fast a life went off the rails. He was looking at a picture of the prisoner, younger, fresh-faced and clean-living. Another choirboy gone bad on the church of the people. The boy from Sparta.

“No.” said the suspect.

“Whadya mean, no?” said Trench, thick with Jersey shore.

“Not me, not mine. I ain’t Clay whatever”  The creep had his head held high, taunting, “first, second or third”. The blood was running down his neck. His cheek looked red-raw and swelling, so the skull tat was purpling and alive.

“And I guess you’re not here in this room, right now?” said Trench, thick with sarcasm.

“Leave me the fuck alone. Whoever dimmed her lights, it weren’t me.”

Trench was up and at skull-boy, smashing his fist once, twice, and a third time for justice, for the girl from Ohio, for luck, for the New York Jets, for his wife’s infidelity, for Mr. Clay Turner the Third. 

Reilly jumped up, grabbed Trench’s arm and nearly got thrown at the wall. Skull-boy was a bloody mess, but still breathing, though slumped sideways, held in place by the taut chain. Tension in the chain, tension in the room. It was gone midnight, the small hours, when evil is most infectious, and resistance is low. Reilly need Trench to go outside.

“Let’s go, get a cup of joe, cool down”, said Reilly, opening the heavy metal door. Trench was steaming. Sergeant Reilly pushed Trench out the door.

Detective Vincent Carpella, five o’clock shadow, stained shirt, stinking of sweat, was sitting on the corner of a desk, just outside the interview room where he’d been waiting patiently, watching the interview on the video monitor mounted outside Interview Room Number Two. He watched Trench smack the perp around. Trench was a mean bastard, built like a tight end, with the face of a boxer, a role model of a sort. Reilly looked worried, a role model of another sort.

“Well, the Spartans were helpful, eventually.” Carpella spent nearly two hours on the phone with a Detective Carl Summers, his new buddy from Sparta, Tennessee, very chatty. Flatt and Scruggs, blue grass, Carl invited Vinnie to visit. Carl would take Vinnie in the cruiser to see the Wildcat Falls.  

“And?” Trench was in no mood for chit-chat.

“Turns out Turner’s a minor league Oxy dealer that got involved in some kind of human trafficking thing. Pure unadulterated friggin evil, wanted for killing a couple of low lifes in Nashville, for abducting a girl. Missing, presumed dead.   Clay T. Turner, the third”.

“How long?”

“About three months ago”

“Presumed dead?” Trench was shocked.

“They move faster than a banjo-playing biscuit down in Tennessee”

“Well, he isn’t dead, but he might be when I’ve finished with him.” said Trench.

A great weight was lifted for Trench, by the simple confirmation that they had a very bad man in custody, that he’d been able to exact some small measure of extrajudicial revenge by beating the crap out of Mr. Turner, the third, skull-boy, scum. The courts might throw the book at him, but not a punch in the face and not the death penalty. For now, this beating was a taste of things to come, later, in the big house. Trench’s mind was at ease. He didn’t need that coffee. Time to go home. Where there’d been a raging fury, there was now an empty sadness. His wife was gone, the home was just a house.

Reilly was relieved. They had their man, the confession would come, though it probably wasn’t even needed. Forensics would make the connections.  It was Saturday. If he got home quickly, he might catch enough ZZZs to be up in time to take his daughter to the little league ballgame in the afternoon. She was crackerjack at the plate.

Tony Howell, the duty officer, was walking towards them, down the corridor, taking a bathroom break. 

“Gandalf’s coming,” whispered Carpella. It was probably best if they distracted the Duty Officer. There’d be hell to pay if he saw Turner bloodied and battered on the CCTV monitor. Paperwork, brass. They could clean things up, given a few minutes with a paper towel and a mop, shuffle skull-boy down into a holding cell without Gandalf noticing.

“Gentlemen. Progress with the shooter? Have you already got a confession?” said Gandalf. He was in a prostate hurry. Thirty years of desk work.

“All good Sarge,” said Carpella, a bit too jolly. Trench looked tired; Reilly looked anxious. The Duty Officer sniffed trouble.

“Not yet Sarge, but we’re getting there,” said Carpella, twitching.

The Duty Officer looked up at the video monitor. The prisoner was slumped low in the chair, miserable. Blood on his face, on his T-shirt, on the interview table. 

“What the hell happened to him?”

There was no hiding the truth. Let the chips fall as they may. It didn’t look good at all, true, but then again, this was the evilest mother-fucker on God’s earth. Even Gandalf would have to go with the flow or look like a righteous dick in front of his colleagues. 

“Clay Turner, the Third. Killed a woman, shot her through the head,” said Reilly, “and Carpella talked to the police in Sparta, where Turner’s from. This guy deserves everything he got. We got a bit of justice done in advance, that’s all”.

“Assholes!” 

“Killed a woman, shot her through the head”, said Trench.

“That would be Turner, Clay Turner. Room One,” said the duty officer. 

It was Stan Gutterman covered in blood, slumped on the table. A patrol man found him blabbering outside Bally’s Atlantic, brought him in, psychotic and delusional, having a bad episode, worse than usual. He’d been brought to the station almost comatose in order to protect him from harm. Gutterman was a noisy foul-mouthed asshole, a schizoid, but harmless, even when drunk.  The Desk Officer arranged for Gutterman to recover in Room Two. Baby-face Turner was in Room number One.