The Golden Goose Gets Cooked

362.

I don't even need to ask. Had Sergeant Carothers been wired to a polygraph machine the needle would be pegged at max. For about two seconds I feel sorry for the old guy but my absolute disdain for dirty cops returns my equilibrium by the third. The ringleader and his accomplices have three choices: They can silence me, they can confess, or they can plea bargain. They know as well as I that any form of bargaining is also the admission of guilt.

I reach to pick up my phone and place it in my shirt pocket, a deviation from its usual storage site in my front pants pocket. AK immediately launches into a boilerplate third-party dissertation on the need for professional assistance in the never ending fight for second amendment rights and 'selective management of specific subversive demographics'. As much as I want to stop him right there with his immoral, illegal and racist oration, I feed him all the rope he unintentionally requests.

It feels like a trial in discovery phase as the three all add to the damming testimony, at one point I am disappointed in their performance; so weak and shallow, more bias and bigotry than legitimate alibis. It strikes my that they know that their golden goose is about to be cooked, with the guilt of spilled blood and treasonous conspiracy about to be offered as desert.

Perhaps for the best, Sergeant Carothers' land line rings interrupting the self incrimination. He has a short conversation with what I can only guess is his boss, and begrudgingly hangs up the phone.

"You can have the prisoners," he says in an exasperated tone. And then adding an obviously ad-libbed caveat of, "as long as you leave your phone with us."

The silence in the room is louder than an unsilenced 45 caliber hogleg. I stall for some quick thinking time, examining the eyes of every man in the room as I do so. We are after all, brothers in arms. We have all taken the same oath to protect and to serve.

A mime might have done it better, but my one request in response contains sufficient volume for all to plainly hear. "Please give me a evidence bag and I will surrender the phone, identifying it as my property, and hence property of the DOJ."

The resulting scramble for a suitable sized envelope is comical. When successful I take the phone from my pants pocket and drop it with thumb and index finger into the bag like a radioactive fish.

"Can we prepare the perps for transport?" I ask.

There are no guarantees, no handshakes and no 'understandings' issued or implied as the men begin the task, paperwork included.

In less than thirty minutes we are ready to transport, not an off-topic word spoken between or among us.

I head back upstairs to find the Escalade and tail the bus. Along the way I take the phone from my breast pocket and stop the recording.

And then call the hospital to get an update on Mustang.