TWENTY-SEVEN

I guess I could have tortured myself asking him all kind of questions. But to what end? Torturing myself to death trying to get something out of this man who obviously had no intention of ever telling me what was on his mind? No, I’d been wasting too much effort along those lines already. So, despite it going against my nature, I kept my mouth shut as we rolled up to the low-rent apartment on Buford Highway, accompanied by a couple of officers from the Fulton County Police Department. Since interdepartmental busts require a good deal of advance planning, and since Lt. Gooch already had the warrant, it was obvious that he’d been prepared for this, at a minimum, for a matter of days.

One of the Fulton County Policemen knocked on the door. It was answered by a large white man with faded jailhouse tattoos on his forearms and a metal stud in his eyebrow.

“What,” the man said belligerently.

“James DeWayne Brashier?” Lt. Gooch said.

“He ain’t here, dude,” the tattooed guy said.

“It’s him,” Gooch said to the Fulton County cop. “Cuff him.”

“Damn,” the tattooed man said. Then he turned obligingly and put his hands behind his back.

“James DeWayne Brashier, you’re under arrest for the murder of Norman Givvens.” Lt. Gooch spit some tobacco juice on the sidewalk. “Detective, you want to inform him of his rights?”

 

 

We spent the rest of the day booking the murderer in, transporting him to the jail, doing paperwork on the case. And I didn’t speak a word the whole time.

After we’d finally gotten everything taken care of, we went back to the office. I got my purse and got ready to leave for the day. “Look, Detective,” Lt. Gooch said as I reached the door. “I know you’re mad. Don’t blame you. But I got my reasons how I done this.”

“How many more cases you got up your sleeve?” I said. “You got four, five more solved homicides floating around? Huh? Ten? Twenty?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Pretty much shot my wad today.”

I shook my head in disgust. “Next time you get in his way, the Chief’s going to crush you. You understand that, don’t you?”

Lt. Gooch just looked at me.

“It’s not just you, you know,” I said. “If you go down, I go down, too.”

“Then again,” Gooch said, reaching down to unlock the drawer where he kept his cup of spit, “if you’d of stayed away from them funny white powdery substances, you wouldn’t be in this fix anyway. Now would you?”

“Kiss my black ass,” I said.