Louis Shalako: Core Values, Chapter Thirty. Louis Shalako.

Constable Grunion.

Chapter Thirty

The obligatory police interrogation scene…

“Why did you kill him, Chuck?” The sergeant asked for the third time.

“Who did I kill?” For the third time Brubaker asked the sergeant.

His guts churned inside, but why tell them that? Fuck ‘em. These people were fucking idiots. They honestly believed he was a killer. Frightening. But he was extremely angry as well.

Across the table sat Sergeant Phillip Oberon, with his shaven head, the ear ring, the little goatee like Howie Mandel. The man must have been on his days off or in court that day. He sat across from Brubaker in a hideous sport jacket, the biggest, loudest, most shit-brown and piss-yellow plaid Chuck had ever seen.

“Somewhere in the world a ‘73 Volkswagon Super Beetle is missing its seat-covers,” he told Oberon’s companion, a semi-attractive female cop, with a little blonde ponytail hanging out of the back of her hat and thin wisps of hair falling out from under it.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere.” The sergeant, with a hint of pink up high on his cheekbones, brow darkening with outrage.

“No it isn’t.” Bru agreed. “C’mon, Sarge. Who did I kill?”

The sergeant flushed.

“You know very well.”

“Do you have a specific complaint? Could you type up my confession for me? So that I could at least read it before you fuckin’ dingbats break all my fingers?”

“There’s no need to be so rude, Mr. Brubaker.” This was the blue-eyed cop-woman seated at Oberon’s side. “Simply answer our questions, and it will go easier for you. We’ll put in a good word with the judge.”

Bru couldn’t help himself. He just started laughing with a kind of sick delight in his heart. It was like his greatest nightmare, and his best dream come true, a kind of horror.

He might as well enjoy it. If you’re going to be eaten by a bear, at least you get to watch. His face was all tight around the eyes. It was like his face wanted to jump off and go after them. His jaw ground back and forth.

There was just no way to control his demeanour.

In life, all of our worst nightmares come true.

He didn’t remember who said it, but it was true. He was being accused of something, after all.

“So. Who did I allegedly kill?” He asked again.

Sooner or later Oberon had to go for dinner, or cover for someone’s coffee break. At some point they had to have a shift change. Oberon had to shit or get off the pot.

“Why did you kill him? What did you do to the body?” The sergeant asked, ever so patiently.

“I made bouillabaise. That’s a kind of soup. Marvelous with a Merlot.” Bru grinned, looking at the girl, in conscious parody of a commercial for Bradley Smokers. “You from around here?”

He watched Oberon write it down.

“Why did you kill Professor Pakenham?” She finally said it.

The woman-cop blurted it out, yet Bru could see just the tiniest approving nod from Oberon. She was some kind of protégé, and he, ah, promised to help her through the exams or something. Bru could see the relationship, all laid out like a condiments tray. The shocking revelation took a while to sink in, yet he heard them. Never before in his entire life had he ever wanted to kill someone so bad.

Can’t tell ‘em that.

The sergeant explained further.

“With your history of violence, and your history of mental illness, including a persecution complex, what with being all paranoid and delusional, we have to make certain types of assumptions.” The sergeant was explaining earnestly in a friendly, and non-judgmental fashion, and Bru just sat there drinking it all in. “You fit the profile.”

Bru sat there in a kind of haze.

It was a kind of out-of-body experience. He had no criminal record. His mental illness, was a bogus construct of the police system, from when LaSally accused him of taking his picture. Bru had no history of violence.

What a piece of shit.

“I have a question for you, Sarge. Did LaSally actually have a signed landscaping contract with Zedco? Snowplowing, salting the sidewalks, looking after the planter boxes, that sort of thing?”

“Who? What do you mean?” The sergeant spluttered. “That’s ancient history.”

“Not to me it ain’t. Look. The man honestly believed I took his picture. Okay, I can accept that.” said Bru. “But why did he get so upset?”

“How would I know?” Retorted Oberon. “He said you were bothering him. He made a big long video statement saying he was afraid for his family.”

“You withdrew that charge five minutes before court time. You knew it was bullshit.” Bru told him. “All you really wanted was for me to sign that bail agreement, sign that Bond at Common Law. Then your no-good, sorry, corrupt ass is covered, and your fucking school buddy got everything he wanted. You took my fucking house, Oberon”

“We have a complaints process.” Oozed Oberon smoothly and with a kind of been-here-before imperturbability, an urbanity that Bru badly wanted to wipe off his face.

“You are the biggest asshole it has ever been my displeasure to meet. You’re all fucking dirty, and I want you fucking pieces of shit out of my town.”

"We're not judging you, Chuck..."

Big gobs of sweat were rolling down from his armpits under his shirt. His hands felt clammy…heart pounding, hard to breathe…he felt dizzy all of a sudden. And Oberon and his sidekick were writing it all down so furiously, so intent upon their dirty little business.

“We’re not judging you, Chuck. We’d just like to try and, ah, understand, so that maybe we can prevent some other poor guy from, ah, making the same mistake.”

The sergeant’s sincerity was sickening.

So much so, that as it all clicked in at once, Bru puked his guts out all over the table- top. Luckily, enough spilled over the edges to get both of their trousers dirty.

Everything had a horrible, disorienting air of unreality about it. His head swam, and sweat popped out around his eyes, and he just puked, and puked, and puked.

“Fuck.” Said the sergeant, while the constable was quicker on her feet and only had a couple of specks, which she brushed at disgustedly with a quickly-produced snot-rag.

He wracked and heaved as he tried to draw a shuddering breath into his body.

“Are…are you telling me that lump of bones and stuff was the Professor?”

But Bru was talking to a pair of backs retreating out the open door.

Soon another officer came to the door and beckoned him out. He showed him to a bathroom and watched him wash his face and get a drink of water. Then he put Bru into another interrogation room.

“Sorry about all that.” Bru apologized. “It came as kind of a delayed shock.”

He felt tears sting his eyes, and didn’t care what these bastards thought.

“Just so you cocksuckers know, the Professor was a friend of mine.”

“That’s the wrong attitude, buddy.” So said the officer menacingly.

“Like fucking hell it is.”

“You lip off to the Sarge again, or swear in the presence of a lady, I’ll personally take you out in the boonies and give you a beatin’ you’ll never forget,” the cop growled at Bru.

“Okay. You’d better get them back in here then.” Chuck growled right back without hesitation. “I’m looking forward to this, you little piss-ant.”

The cop just scowled and Bru laughed in his face. The cop blanched at the smell, and backed off. Right then the door opened and Sergeant Oberon stuck his head in.

“I’ll take it from here, Jack.”

The big bruiser, probably a hundred-fifty kilos, with a shaven head and wearing heavily-stitched black driving gloves, departed with a mean glance over his shoulder at Bru. Bru had seen the type before. Easy meat.

“See you around, you fat fucking fall-down faggot. So the rumour going around about the Glove Patrol is true then.”

Thus commented Bru to the sergeant, who just nodded. Oberon and the constable took their seats again.

“We’ve got it all down, Bru. There’s no sense in struggling. You’ll just make it worse for yourself.” The chick-cop, Constable Grunion.

“We don’t know everything, of course. Was there something between you and the professor? Something sexual?” She asked with a delicious tremor.

She must have been totally unconscious of it.

“What else did I do?” Bru asked in resignation.

Sooner or later, this had to end.

“Where did you rent the wood-chipper? We can find out where you bought the acid…and whose trash compactor you used…we got you dead to rights.”

She told him all this with a charming smile, and a kind of verbal flourish. She shoved a document across the table.

“Do you have a pen?” They looked at each other for a moment in sheer triumph.

He took the proffered confession and signed and carefully dated it after consultation.

Charles knew it was a Thursday, but wasn’t too sure of the exact date. Then he pushed it back to them. Right about then the phone rang urgently. Phil Oberon snatched it up.

“We got ‘im.” He exulted gleefully. “Almost too easy…what?”

Then the poor sergeant’s world came crashing in. He got up and walked out and left the door open, with the phone laying on the desk.

The constable picked it up.

“Hello?”

She listened intently for a couple of minutes, and so did Bru, because she didn’t know he had especially acute hearing, what with being a mutant and all.

“Yes, sir,” she said in finality.

With a deep sigh, she placed the phone back in its cradle.

“I’ll take you home now, Mr. Brubaker.” The lady was temporarily unable to make eye contact.

“Thank you constable. I guess the DNA stuff wasn’t human after all? The juice?”

He went for the confession, but she snatched it out of his hand angrily. He didn’t press the issue. What a souvenir it would have made. He did try to tell them. But, some people just don’t listen.

***

That confession would have made a good souvenir.

“Tell you what, ma’am. We still don’t know what happened to Hilier. We still don’t have nothing from that old lady that went for a walk? Right? Then there’s that kid.”

She opened up the cruiser door and held it for him.

“Just a scrap of the old girl’s nightgown, right?” Bru prodded.

She climbed in the other side.

“If I get anything, I’ll let you know. Like when I’m out riding my bike and stuff.”

He thought for a half a moment.

“My impression of that lump, is that it’s like an owl-cast, not exactly the same as a fur-ball or hairball. I suppose it could have come out of something’s ass.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brubaker.”

Chuck decided to go easy on her, and the rest of the ride home was silent.

She pulled up into his driveway and looked at him sideways for a moment.

“You must really hate us, Mr. Brubaker.”

“It’s not your fault. It goes back a few years.”

A gesture of kindness, or at least, the best he could do.

There was nothing to say.

“Why would anyone ever want to hate a Lennox cop?” He asked to the profound silence.

She had no answer.

“Just so you know. I don’t know what happened to those people, and all we really have is a foot and a lump of bones. And the professor was a good man.”

***

Thank God, but they never even asked about his van insurance. Fuckin’ dummies.

Neither had the OPP, for that matter.

He stood in the driveway and watched her drive off up the street. Then he went into the house to brush his teeth and have a cup of tea. A person has to eat, at least once in a while. And for some crazy reason, in that intuitive Brubaker fashion, he had the feeling that he had most, if not all the clues. The word axolotl buzzed around in his head. Why, and for what reason he simply didn’t know. Yet. But it would come, probably at two-damned-thirty a.m. That was just the way the gift worked sometimes.

You learned to live with it.

***

Upon later review, Chuck discovered that his audio recording was brilliant. Clean, sparkling, digital sound, good volume, voices clearly distinct and recognizable. Just fucking brilliant. The only problem was, what the hell was he supposed to do with it? He found himself totally stymied by that question, which was a little bit unusual for him.