The jaunt to the police station went uneventfully. My metabolism had already burned through the majority of the vodka, and I made mental notes that I was hungry, and also that those drinks hadn’t been very strong. I parked my car in the guest parking lot and walked in to the station. I approached the front desk, pulled out the detectives card, and announced that I was there to see Detective West.
The officer nodded and led me to a room that was a cold, angry light bulb away from being an interrogation room. I frowned as I took a seat at a table. The officer that escorted me said that Detective West would be in shortly, then left, closing the door behind her. I fidgeted a bit, waiting. After about ten minutes, I pulled out my phone. I was considering updating my Facebook status to something along the lines of “Waiting to be grilled by a homicide detective” when the door opened, and the man from the bar walked into the room.
“Ah, Ms. Olevski, you came. Would you like a cup of coffee, or water?” I politely declined, wanting to get the conversation over with as soon as possible, while wondering how much lawyers cost.
To my surprise, he really did just want to ask me a few questions about what I saw at the hotel. I guess he had seen my name in Maxwell’s file, since I was assigned to pick him back up. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be a paper trail that lead right to me, so I didn’t feel as panicked as I had when I first thought about the video camera and cigarette butt.
I answered all the questions with a calm, collected mannerism and tried not to be too vague. “Yes, I saw the fire start, no I don’t have any idea how it started, I was in my car waiting for his guests to leave before I went in after him… I stuck around to see if anybody wanted to talk to me at the scene but nobody paid any attention to me”. Mostly true, anyway.
After about half an hour, Detective West thanked me again and sent me on my way.
“Well that went better than I expected.” I thought as I left the building. I exited through a side door and crossed the official parking lot, heading to my car. I had just passed the edge of the building when some reached from around the corner and grabbed me, holding me in a fairly tight grip. I rewarded my assailant with the back of my head hitting his nose, and broke out of the hold. I turned to face him.
He was a fairly large biker in standard leathers, and he was very clearly about to take a swing at me. I sidestepped it, pulling my baton off my belt and flinging it open.
“Oh man, did you pick the wrong target,” I said, easing into my battle stance. He tried to grab me again but missed, and I clocked him over the head with the baton. He must have decided that whatever I had in my pockets wasn’t worth a concussion, and he bolted across the parking lot. He hopped on a motorcycle and took off before I could catch a look at the plates. I sighed, and turned around to walk back inside the police station.
The officer at the front desk was surprised to see me again, and more surprised when I told her I wanted to file a report on a failed mugging or something that just occurred. Another officer came to take my statement. When I was finished, he looked towards the door.
“And this all happened just out there?” he verified.
“Da. Perhaps not the brightest attacker, it was a poor location.” I said. I signed the report and went home, more than ready for the day to be over.