Bottle Kill Ch. 03

This story is part of an ongoing series. The chronological order of my stories is listed in WifeWatchman's biography.

Feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated, and I encourage feedback for ideas.

This story contains graphic scenes, language and actions that might be extremely offensive to some people. These scenes, words and actions are used only for the literary purposes of this story. The author does not condone murder, racism, racial language, violence, rape or violence against women, and any depictions of any of these in this story should not be construed as acceptance of the above.

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Part 14 - A Successful Arrest

7:30pm, Wednesday, February 10th. After I spoke to Judge Hannah Doss, she issued the search warrant I'd requested. I joined Detectives Teddy Parker and George Newman in personally executing it, and found what I needed.

"Okay," I said to Newman, "you go back to the Courthouse and get the arrest warrant, send the electronic copy to my Police iPhone, and go back to Headquarters. While you're there, ask for this warrant, also, then get Julia Rodriguez and Joan Laurer to make that arrest." I handed Newman a sheet of paper.

"Teddy, you and Commander Croyle are with me." I said. They followed me to my Police SUV. As we got in, I called Laura, who told me that almost everyone had left for the Molecular Biology Conference Banquet at the University Conference Center. We drove there, and I parked in an 'Authorized Vehicles Only' area.

I remembered the University Conference Center as the location where Louella Hopper had been murdered. (Author's note: 'Casting Aspersions', Ch. 01.) Going inside, our badges got us past the entry tables, where attendees were checking in. We went down the hall to the room where the cash bar was.

"Not in here." I said as I scanned the room. We went back into the hallway, and I saw a line down the hallway that led to the dining room. As we came up, I saw Adriana Rodriguez and Nick Prometheus in the line. I headed towards them...

... and right past them. Marty McMillan was in the line with his boss, Dr. Chapman of SynGen Biosciences. Marty was nearly as tall as me, and he towered over the older man, as well as Adriana and Nick behind him.

"Mr. McMillan," I said, "can I have a moment of your time?"

"Uh, we're about to sit down to eat." said McMillan, looking at me as if I were a turd on the floor that he wanted to see disappear. Dr. Chapman also looked at us strangely.

*CHIME!*

It was my Police iPhone, and the timing could not have been better. It was the arrest warrant.

"Please, sir," I said to McMillan, "we need to speak with you for a moment." I then got closer to him and said "You can come quietly, or we can make one hell of a scene here in front of everyone." I took him by the elbow and tried to lead him away.

"What are you doing?" he snarled as he slung his elbow across his body to take it out of my grasp. "I'm not going anywhere with you!"

"Yes you are." I said, a bit more loudly. "I have a warrant for your arrest." I again tried to grab his arm, but he tried to push me off. Oops. Not recommended.

*WHAM!*

My takedown of him was almost faster than the human eye could see. Marty McMillan was now face-down on the floor, and I was pulling his arm hard behind him.

"OWW!" McMillan yelled. "Police brutality!"

"MARTY MCMILLAN!" I yelled at the top of my lungs as Teddy Parker helped me to subdue McMillan and cuff his hands behind his back, "YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR THE MURDERS OF THEODORE BOONE AND TIFFANY WESTGATE, BOTH HUMAN BEINGS!"

People were getting out their cellphones to record the arrest. I said loudly "Anyone who is recording! We are going to confiscate your phones as evidence! Please cooperate and give us your phones!" The phones disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared.

Two Uniformed Officers ran up to help, and they bodily picked up McMillan after he was cuffed. As they 'vigorously' perp-walked McMillan past his Biology colleagues, I was yelling loudly into his ear, my voice echoing down the hallway: "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT! IF YOU GIVE UP THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT, THEN ANYTHING YOU SAY..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

7:30pm, Wednesday, February 10th. Town & County Police Headquarters was a beehive of activity. Marty McMillan had been taken through Booking, then fitted with the stylish orange jump suit that was the preferred (okay, mandatory) clothing of our guests in the holding cells. He was not permitted a belt nor shoelaces, and was on suicide watch.

His attorney Hunter Harris was finally found after a lengthy search, and the redness of his nose and his eyes behind the shades he wore in an attempt to hide them when he came into Headquarters bespoke of a man that had begun partying early... and hard.

As he was taken to talk to McMillan, Teresa said "Do you think Sergeant Tango, our drug dog, would alert if we had him sniff Hunter Harris right now?"

"Probably." I said. "And I'm sorely tempted to bring Sergeant Tango in to sniff at Hunter's vehicle. But we've got bigger fish to fry... much, much bigger fish."

To ensure that the Accused was properly represented and would have no legal loopholes, I called the Courthouse and asked for a second public defender to augment Hunter, expressing concerns about Hunter's health at the moment. They sent Dexter Epstein, who was the most incompetent public defender on the Rolls.

"Between the two of them," Vice Lieutenant Micah Rudistan said with great joviality, "he's got one full lawyer representing him." But McMillan was represented.

The Prosecution was a different story. Chief Moynahan called District Attorney Miriam Walters and told her that either I could call ADA Paulina Patterson, or Miriam could come to Headquarters herself. When Miriam said the case was assigned to ADA Savannah Fineman, the Police Chief told the District Attorney that that was unacceptable, unless Miriam thought Savannah could endure a literal, physical, crowbar beatdown... and not necessarily from Commander Troy.

So Miriam did show up... with Savannah. And Paulina Patterson had come in... ostensibly to bring her daughter and mine, Tasha Troy-Patterson, to visit me in my office. My eldest daughter, seven-year-old Carole, was also here, her Auxiliary Detective badge on its chain around her neck.

"They're ready for you." Captain Claire Michaels said after knocking on my door and peeking in.

"This is gonna be awesome sauce!" Carole said happily as everyone walked down the hallway.

"Mind your manners, Carole," I said, "or I'll call your mother to come pick you up and take you home. This is not a game we're playing, here."

"Yes sir." said Carole, whose attitude improved immediately.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Muddy water, let stand, becomes clear." --- Lao Tzu

The Monitor Room could not hold all the very interested Detectives, so the impending interrogation was going to be fed to the matrix of monitors in Classroom 'E'. Pottsville PD Lieutenant Shane O'Brady had come in with Detective Joan Laurer, and they joined the MCD and Vice Detectives that were on hand in Classroom 'E'.

Tasha and Carole went with Paulina, the Chief, and Miriam into the Monitor Room, where Carole watched while Tasha played a game on my iPad.

"Lieutenant Davis, you're with me." I announced, inviting him to come into Interrogation-1 with me for the interview. "But let me take the lead on the interrogation."

"Nooooo problem, sir." said Jerome Davis. "I know we've got him and we've got the evidence, but I still haven't figured out how you figured it out."

I smiled, then said "The waters are becoming still, and clear."

We headed for the anteroom. Savannah Fineman tried to follow us in, but she was stopped by Lt. Commander Croyle, who in earlier years had been called 'Teresa Cunt' for her exceptionally mean-spirited attitude. Savannah was now getting the full force of that bad attitude, which very few people could withstand.

"Commander!" yelled Miriam Walters. "This is ADA Fineman's case! She has every right to go in there."

"Nooooo, Mizzz Walters, she does not." interjected Chief Moynahan. "Mizzz Croyle is saving your ADA from being humiliated, if not worse."

"For God's sake, are we going to go through this again? Here and now?" Walters spat, exasperation in her voice. "You know... you do your jobs, and let me and my people do ours?"

"You are in my House, Ms. Walterrrrs." drawled the Chief. "And you will play by my rooools while we are here. The Iron Crowbar does not want Ms. Fineman in there; in-deeeed, by the time he's done, you'll be asking Ms. Patterson to take over the case to ensurrrre a successful pros-e-coooo-shun."

Miriam gave up, and had Savannah go into the Monitor Room with her, followed by Teresa...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Meanwhile, Jerome and I came into I-1. Marty McMillan was sitting at the table, his hands cuffed to the ring embedded in it. He looked morose and defeated. Next to him was Hunter Harris, and Dwayne Epstein was on Hunter's other side, looking like he usually did: confused. Sergeant Hicks was the Uniformed presence.

Jerome and I sat down on the other side of the table, me to his right. "I'm going to read you your rights from the card." I said, and proceeded to do so. When I asked if he understood the rights, he said nothing.

"He understands." said Hunter Harris, his voice on the edge of rambling. "And does he really need to be chained to the table like that?"

"He resisted arrest and assaulted a Police Officer." I said. "Furthermore, he stands accused of multiple crimes of violence against other human beings, resulting in their deaths."

"You have no proof of that." said Dexter Epstein, showing why he was the County's most incompetent public defender.

"Yet I somehow managed to get a very good Judge to issue warrants leading to your client's arrest." I said levelly. "So, Mr. McMillan... you are being charged with the first-degree murders of Theodore 'Tex' Boone, Tiffany Westgate... and Charlene Conway nine years ago."

"Don't say anything." said Hunter Harris. To me he said "I have to agree with Mr. Epstein. I can't wait to hear the proof of your baseless accusations."

"And you shall." I replied. "In fact... why don't I just tell you what happened, and Mr. McMillan can correct me if I go astray, okay?"

The Monitor Room and Classroom 'E' broke into murmuring at that, having seen me do that many times before. In the Monitor Room, Carole said "Here we go!"

"Mind your manners, Carole!" said Tasha as she watched the iPad. When Carole turned on her sister, Tasha broke out into a fit of laughter, having amused herself greatly at her sister's expense.

"Lay-deeeeeees." Teresa said, putting a hand on each girls's shoulder, quietening them down immediately before Paulina could say or do anything. Teresa had boys at home; by comparison, girls were easy to deal with. At least while they weren't teenagers yet...

Meanwhile, I began my narrative in I-1: "To understand what happened last weekend, and to give context to your crimes, Mr. McMillan, we have to go back a couple of decades. Boone had a series of incidents going back 22 years. Then he had incidents 16 years ago, 14 years ago, 12 years ago, 10 years ago. And those are the ones we were able to find; there certainly could be many more that never reached the attention of Law Enforcement. All of them involved some form of assaults on women, including sexual assaults. And then they suddenly stopped. I'll circle back to that in a moment."

Your Iron Crowbar: "What's important here is that Boone had created a pattern of incidents... and one of those incidents, I believe, was 20 years ago, right here in our Town & County. You and your wife had gotten married the same weekend of the Poker Championship that Boone won, and you were in a suite that they called the 'honeymoon suite' at the time."

I leaned forward and said levelly: "And I believe that Theodore Boone drugged both of you, and then raped your wife Heather."

Marty McMillan's face was set in stone, and his eyes were boring into me as I continued: "Unlike some of the other crimes, there was no Police report. But there is a Police report and autopsy a few weeks later, encrypted, heavily redacted, but we found it and we broke the encryption. It's the report of your wife Heather's death. She bled out after getting an abortion at the local Planned Parenthood facility."

I said "Heather became pregnant, and I freely admit I'm speculating when I say that I don't know for sure what your arrangements were at the time, nor whether or not she told you, but in any case she knew it could have been Boone that impregnated her, and she chose to end it. She went to the Planned Parenthood clinic, and I am sorry to say they ended the pregnancy by killing the mother. There was a massive cover-up at the time, and maybe you were paid well to move along from it."

McMillan said nothing, just stared hatefully at me. I said "And now we move forward to nine years ago. You had taken a job a year before with SynGen Biosciences, located in Villa Nueva, which is on the other side of our State, south of Westphalia and Eastphalia. And then two things occurred: there was a Molecular Biology Conference over there... and there was a Poker competition in which Mr. Tex Boone was participating, and he was there with his fiancée, Charlene Conway."

I said "Charlene Conway was found dead in Pottsville during the time of that Poker tournament. She was somehow spirited out of a hotel room in Westphalia and found beaten and murdered in Pottsville, and one feature of the case was that her engagement ring went missing.. Anomalies occurred with the videocameras, so potential evidence against Boone didn't hold up... but more importantly, there was no record at all of your presence there."

"Then you have no proof, none, that my client committed that murder." said Hunter Harris, who was rapidly sobering up.

"Vee shall see." I said in my 'German' accent. "I also will make note that nine years ago a man named Raymond Westboro was alive and well, thriving and killing people. We call him the 'Consultant of Crime', and he was the most fearsome and loathsome criminal I ever had to deal with. He made Professor Moriarty seem tame by comparison." (Author's note: 'Along Came A Spider', 'A Tiny Slip' for a lot of the Westboro saga.)

I continued: "Westboro was involved in things in Westphalia back in those days, including dealing with Westphalia PD Lieutenant Paul Cash." (Author's note: 'One Night In Bangkok', particularly Ch. 04.) "And if someone wanted to kill Charlene and maybe frame Boone for the crime... Westboro would have been the man to go to."

"As if my client has, or ever had, the money to hire someone like that." Hunter Harris said.

"But Boone did." I replied. "And that's the insidious beauty of how the Consultant of Crime operated. He helped McMillan get revenge on Boone, and then Westboro began blackmailing Boone! And McMillan here did have a few things he could provide the Consultant as payment... including a diamond engagement ring he'd taken off Charlene's finger."

I continued: "Before his fiancée's death, Boone had been audacious like his poker play in seducing other men's wives and sometimes assaulting them. But after losing Charlene, the more practical man that made his money in the bond markets took over, and the incidents stopped."

Your Iron Crowbar: "There were two reasons for that. First, Boone realized that someone had come after him by attacking his fiancée and maybe even trying to frame him, but he wasn't sure who... after all, you and Heather were but two drops in a bucket of women he'd assaulted and men he'd cuckolded, and as such, he had other enemies that could've been the culprits. And second, the Consultant of Crime contacted him, and attempted to extort some of Boone's many millions of dollars by threatening to expose Boone, and may have guided the Bureau of Indian Affairs to investigate the incident at the State Line River Reservation casino and hotel."

"For those reasons," I went on "Boone drastically scaled back his public appearances, and there were no more sexual assault incidents that we could find. He also stayed in Las Vegas, Nevada, and did not return to this State for years... last weekend, to be precise. He had obtained security... using a firm he'd invested in... and he increased it when he began dating Tiffany Westgate."

Your Iron Crowbar: "And now we get to present time. You, Mr. McMillan. learned from your consultation with Westboro, and you believed you could attack Boone a second time, especially here in the County and even at the hotel where he'd raped your wife, leading to her fatal abortion."

"You did plan it fairly well." I said. "You came here a week before in a SynGen Biosciences vehicle, and you scouted out both the Hyatt and University Hotels. You also ate at the same bar exactly a week before last Sunday, so that you might be remembered by the servers there even if there was some confusion about exactly when."

I said "This past Sunday you checked in at the University Hotel, went over to the Hyatt, and came into the Poker tournament room while Boone and his entourage were there... as well as me, Commander Croyle, and the Sheriff. You told your story about being there 20 years before, and Boone not only didn't recognize you, he had you put in the same hotel suite as you'd been in all those years ago."

"Which is a point in our favor." said Hunter Harris. "The University Hotel's records show my client used his key to get back into his room there after he went and ate Sunday night, and he was back either before or very near the time of their deaths. He'd have to be Superman to fly across Town that fast."

"True, which brings me to my next point. Mr. McMillan also did something else: he got help." Affixing my gray eyes on McMillan, I said: "No one in this world is more happy than I am to say that Raymond Westboro is dead, so you could not enlist his aid. But you did consult with someone else, someone who was able to give you similar information about video cameras... maybe even help sabotage them."

"But most importantly," I went on, "one helper was at University Hotel, and used your key to get into your room just before 10:00pm. That person also opened the door and let you in when you did get back, probably via a taxi or Uber ride, giving what appears to be a perfect alibi."

"And again, how does my client pay for this?" snarled Hunter Harris.

"I'll circle back to that in just one second." I said. "To finish up, after you had dinner at the pub, you taxied or Ubered to the Hyatt. There were some Whiskey people there as well as Poker people. All you had to do was go up the fire escape stairs, and your confederate could've let you out of the fire escape stairwell on one of the upper floors."

"In any case," I went on, "you went into Tiffany's room and began strangling her. But you heard people in the hallway. You grabbed a bottle of whiskey you saw on the desk and rushed into the bathroom. When Boone came in, he may not have immediately seen Tiffany lying on the floor, so he didn't cry out. He went on inside, saw Tiffany on the far side of the bed, and as he was going to check on her, you came out and hit him on the head as hard as you could with that whiskey bottle, killing him. Then, seeing as there was no more reason to cause Tiffany pain, you just quickly broke her neck and then left the room, and exited again via the fire escape stairs."

"Nice fantasy." said Hunter Harris. "You should write it up and submit it to the Literotica website. And you will never prove a word of it."