Lauren’s parents rotated in their seats to face him, their expressions bidding him to expound.
“By all means,” Michelle said, appearing sprightlier. “Please.”
“Very well,” Dave said. “Let’s see. Where best to begin? A twosome of years following my discharge from the Army, I took on a firearms instructor position at Point Blank Weapons Training Center. Several years into doing so and after becoming a chief instructor, a guy by the name of Alan Russell walked through the door, inquiring about defensive shooting lessons. He said he’d been brought up around guns and knew how to shoot, but he wanted to know more, as much as he could, a motive just about everyone working there had heard a few times. We spoke more in depth about our standard self-defense curriculum and what all we had to offer, and he eventually opened up to us about a recent run-in he’d had involving two would-be assailants several miles off the beaten path.”
Chapter 40
FEMA Resettlement Camp Bravo
Tuesday, March 15th
The strike to Sasha’s face was nothing. It felt like a glancing blow, as if her interrogator’s intention had been to not hit her squarely. The punch impacted her jaw with a quick, dazing thud; the pain came, lingered a few seconds, and dissipated until it was extinct.
Sasha tongued at her inner mouth and gums for injury, finding nothing aside from a dulled, temporary lack of feeling. The nontechnique tickled her. She’d been struck in the face hundreds of times before by larger, stronger, even drunker adversaries, most of them male, every damn one of them more competent than this person.
Officer Carrie Hewlett was short, stout and unusually overweight for the prevailing circumstances, if one could believe it. Practically everyone Sasha had known or encountered had shed circumference from their waistlines resultant of the collapse. How this woman had managed to pack on the pounds was incomprehensible, almost. Officer Phil, God rest him, had himself seemingly achieved a similar miracle. After Sasha’s latest run-in with him over the prospect of stolen food, she’d developed a notion as to how. There was no way to confirm, however, as McCracken’s unfortunate demise prevented him from being reached for comment.
“You’ve been in the hole for a week, Ms. Ledo,” Officer Hewlett groaned, her balled-up fists pressing down on the table beneath her weight. “Haven’t learned your lesson yet? How much longer are you going to hold out on us?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” cooed Sasha. “A little while longer, I suppose. Maybe more than that.”
“Oh, really? I know what you’re doing, see? That’s a stalling tactic. I’m trained to know that, by the way. And you can stall all you like, but it won’t get you anywhere, trust me.”
“It won’t?”
“Well, it hasn’t so far, has it?”
Sasha shrugged. “It hasn’t failed to get me out of my room every day for an hour or so.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Hewlett frowned. “You know, this would all be over and done with if you just came right out and told the truth. Haven’t you ever heard that the truth will set you free?”
“Who hasn’t?” Sasha quipped. “It’s from the Bible. But it’s been misapplied for decades like some virtuous proverb, mostly by cops, investigators, detectives, members of law enforcement and the like, rendering the entire verse a farce.”
Officer Hewlett gritted her grimy teeth. “Are you implying that all law enforcement officers are liars, Ms. Ledo?”
Sasha looked sideways at her. “I’m not implying anything. It’s the damn truth.”
“Well, the only liar I see in this room happens to be you.” The interrogator backed away and folded her arms. “For the purposes of this inquisition of ours, I’ll repeat myself again. All I need is for you to tell me what happened to Officer Phillip McBride and Officer Jonas Cochran. And if you don’t, it’s back to the hole with you.”
“Same scenario as yesterday? And the day before?”
“You betcha.”
Sasha poured on the scorn. “Oh, damn. The slammer. Solitary confinement. Locked up alone in an old hotel room converted into a cage, with a shower and a porcelain toilet all to myself. Doing hard time. Woe is me.”
Hewlett put a grumpy hand to a hip. “I bet you’d change your tune if I dragged those girls you adore so much in here and questioned them instead of you.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” Sasha hissed. “Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged, you know. Actually, it’s probably more proper to say that it’s already been arranged. You being here is just a formality. Guilt isn’t far from being assigned. Two officers found dead in your dormitory says a lot, and once the autopsies come back, we’ll know everything beyond a shadow of a doubt. After that, game over, Ms. Ledo.”
Sasha sneered. So what if it was? What difference would it make at this point? This senseless tripe had been ongoing for months, and she’d yet to learn any way of escaping this hellish place. She was on her own again, seemingly powerless to mend her predicament, and was running thin on give-a-damn, nearing the point of having nothing left to lose.
She curled an edge of her lips. This inquisition was over. Even if she had to stoop low, unerringly low, like a mean-girl, middle-school bully, the time had come to shit or get off the pot. “Hey, Carrie? How fast can you run the hundred?”
“Huh?”
“The one-hundred-yard dash, landbeast. What’s your best time?”
Officer Hewlett didn’t answer. Her chin quivered and her eyebrows pulled tight.
“Just the other day, I heard that heart disease is killing off members of generation XL right and left. I sure hope you get your blood pressure and cholesterol checked often.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said, chunky brewster. Exactly what is your BMI—on a scale of one to manatee?”
Officer
