Superbia (Book One of the Superbia Series) (18 page)

“What on earth
for?”

“Seriously?
 
Don’t stand here and make me spell it all out
so all your neighbors can hear, sir.
 
Just grab your coat and come quietly and I won’t handcuff you and drag
you down the front steps.”

An old woman
limped down the stairs, “Pete?
 
What’s
going on?”

“It’s the police,
dear.
 
They are putting me under arrest.”

“What?
 
How dare you!” she shouted.
 
“That deceitful little brat.
 
I knew she was planning something like this!
 
I knew it!”

“Calm down, Eris,”
Pete said.
 
“Everything will be
fine.
 
I’m just going to go with them and
sort this all out.
 
I’ll be back soon.”

She grabbed onto
her husband’s arm, “You aren’t going anywhere until I call an attorney.”

Vic’s eyes
narrowed, “Lady, I’m going to do this the easy way or the hard way.
 
Get your hands off of him before I lose my
temper.”

“Are you
threatening
me?” she shouted.

Frank gently took
hold of Mrs. Lamia’s arm, escorting her away from her husband.
 
“Let’s everybody calm down.
 
Ma’am, we are conducting an investigation and
we need to talk to Pete.
 
You are welcome
to come with us if you want.”

“No she isn’t,” Vic
said.

“I’ll get my
coat,” she said.

“She can drive
herself over to the station and wait in the lobby,” Frank said.
 
“Go put him in the car and I’ll make sure
she’s okay.”

Vic led the old
man down the front steps, keeping a firm grip on his arm.
 
“At least your partner has some decency,” Pete
said.
 

Vic leaned close
to him and said, “Shut your fucking mouth before I accidentally roll you into
the street when a car drives past.”
 
He
shoved Pete against the car and pulled his hands behind his back.
 
He slapped on the first handcuff and heard Pete
yowl as the steel arm cinched around his wrist.
 

“I’m seventy-five
years old, you son of a gun,” Pete said.
 
“You’ll break my darn wrists.”

“Aw, that’s
terrible,” Vic said.
 
He snapped the
other cuff on just as hard and then clicked both cuffs closed until steel
ground against bone and Pete shrieked in pain.
 
He threw the door open and grabbed a handful of Pete’s thin white hair
as tight as he could and shoved him down inside the vehicle.
 
Pete fell into the seat sideways with a cry.

Frank hurried
down the steps as Mrs. Lamia fumbled with the front door lock.
 
“What the hell are you doing?”
 

Vic got into the
car and started the engine.
 
“Get in or
you can ride back with the old bitch.”

Frank ran around
to the passenger side and jumped in.
 
He
looked back at Pete, writhing in pain, shouting, “My hands are going numb.
 
Please loosen these.”

Frank turned back
to Vic, “Dude, you need to calm down.”

Vic jammed the
car into reverse and screeched backwards out of the driveway, leaving the old
woman struggling to get into her car and follow.
 
“Hey!
 
All you are doing is creating a problem for us down the road!” Frank
said.

“There is no down
the road.
 
Don’t you see that yet?
 
There’s just tonight, and this child
molesting piece of shit who is about to tell us every fucking sin he’s ever
committed or I’m going to beat him to a fucking pulp.”

“Please, please
loosen these,” Pete moaned.

“Your wrists are
about to be the least of your troubles, asshole,” Vic snarled.

“He’s going to
bruise,” Frank said.
 
“His arms are going
to turn purple and we’re going to lose the entire goddamn case because of you.”

“I don’t care!”

“Pull the car
over,” Frank said.

“No.”

“Pull the car
over before I punch you in the fucking face!”

Vic slammed on
the brakes so hard that the air smelled like burnt plastic.
 
Frank leaned back over his seat and said,
“Turn around.”

“God bless you.
 
Bless you for being kind,” Pete muttered.

“Shut the fuck
up!” Frank screamed.
 
“I didn’t do this
for you.”
 
He shoved the old man forward
and stuck his handcuff key into the slot to loosen the cuffs.
 
Pete gasped in relief and Frank told him to
sit back and be quiet.
 

They drove in
silence for a while, until Vic finally mumbled, “Thanks for ruining my chance
at softening him up for the interview, douchebag.”

***

Frank got out of
the car and went to the back to let Pete out.
 
The station door slammed shut in Vic’s wake.
 
“Come on, sir.
 
We’re going inside.”

“Your partner’s
going to hurt me, isn’t he?
 
He’s going
to beat me like I’m some sort of criminal.”

“Nobody’s going
to beat you, I promise.”

Pete shifted
across the seat, coming toward the open door, “I didn’t do anything wrong.
 
I swear to God.
 
I swear on the Holy Bible.”

“Then you don’t
have anything to worry about.”
 
He
reached down and helped Pete to his feet.
 
He escorted the old man into the station and led him down the hall to the
interview room.
 
Pete sat down and Frank
uncuffed one of his hands and attached it to a metal bar on the table.
 
“Let me take a look at your wrists,” he
said.
 
They were red, with impressions in
the skin from the metal, but no bruising.

Vic was sitting
outside of the interview room, staring at one of the desks.
 
He did not look up as Frank said, “Listen,
are we going to do this or not?”

“Go to hell.”

“Okay,” Frank
said.
 
He sat down on the desk and folded
his arms.
 
“So let’s say we just put him
in a cell and wait for him to see the judge.
 
Is that what you want?
 
Beth will
have to testify and get torn apart by a defense attorney.”
 

Vic did not
budge.

“Or, we put our
personal feelings aside and go get a confession from this bastard.
 
With that and the wire, there is no way he’ll
try to fight it.
 
Otherwise, you’re
forcing that little girl into a trial.”
 
Frank shrugged and said, “I’m sure her dad won’t do anything to screw
that up, right?”

Vic smirked and
said, “I manipulate people.
 
I don’t get
manipulated.
 
Nice try, though.
 
Somebody’s been teaching you well, rookie.”

***

They let Pete
Lamia sit in the interview room while they watched him through the one-way
mirror.
 
“Some schools of thought say you
can tell a suspect’s guilt by how they act when they’re sitting in the
interview room.
 
If they are alert and
anxious, it means they’re innocent.
 
If
they get sleepy and relax, they say it is an indication of guilt.”

Pete was sitting
motionless, sunk down in his chair.
 
Frank frowned and said, “I can’t tell if he’s awake, asleep, or just
old.”

They walked into
the interview room and Pete said, “When do I get my phone call?”

“When you get to
jail,” Vic said.
 
“Do you understand that
you’re under arrest?”

Pete shook his
head and said, “No.”

Vic looked
confused and said, “Well, the handcuffs on your wrist mean that is what you
are.”

“I mean that I
don’t understand what I’m under arrest for.”

“We’ll get to
that,” Vic said.
 
“In fact, there are
several very important things I want to tell you that I think you need to know,
but first, I have to read you your rights.”

“I already know
them,” Pete said.
 
“I watch those cop
shows, about the crime scene people.”

“Is that
right?”
 
Vic slid a form stating the
Miranda Warnings across the table and said, “Read this.
 
If you agree to hear what I have to say, sign
the bottom.
 
If you just want to go see
the judge, that’s fine too.”

“I don’t have
anything to hide,” Pete said.
 
He picked
up a pen and scribbled his name on the bottom of the form.
 
“This is all a huge misunderstanding.”
 

Vic took the form
back and hid it under the table.
 
“So
explain it to me.”

“Beth is like my
granddaughter.
 
I raised her dad and his
brother after their father, my brother, died.
 
God rest his soul.
 
We don’t have
any children, so they’re all we’ve got.
 
Everybody that knows me knows what kind of person I am.
 
I spent twenty years on the school
board.
 
I wouldn’t do these kinds of
things you are accusing me of.”

“I’m not accusing
you of anything.
 
Beth is.”

Pete nodded and
waved his hands, “She’s a little bit of a drama queen.
 
Did they tell you that?
 
She’s the kind of girl that does things for
attention.”

Vic shifted in
his seat and folded his hands on the table.
 
“She’s needy.”

“Exactly.
 
She
wants
me to come in and read to her every night.
 
Give me a kiss, Uncle Petey.
 
Rub
my back.
 
That sort of thing.”

“So do you?”

“Sometimes,” he
shrugged.
 
“She takes things a little too
far sometimes and I have to tell her it isn’t appropriate.”

Frank opened his
mouth to say, “Get the f—” but stopped talking when Vic held up his hand.
 

“It happens,” Vic
said.
 
“Little girls want to
explore.
 
They have questions, right?”

“They do!” Pete
said.
 
“These kids today, they listen to
the rap music and see the TV with everybody naked and they act older than they
are.
 
I tell her all the time to slow
down and be a kid, but she’s always insisting.”

“I’ll be
perfectly honest with you, Mr
.
Lamia.
 
I think she brought a lot of this on
herself.
 
What happened was, her mom got
hysterical about things and forced the kid to come in.
 
She didn’t want to say anything.”

“Some mother,”
Pete muttered.
 
“Always harping on poor
Paul about this and that.”

“Listen, I’m
going to be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Lamia,” Vic said.
 
He stood up and took several steps away from
them before he turned, cupping his chin like he was an academic professor.
 
“We know
something
happened between the two of you.
 
We have
evidence of that.
 
What I need to
determine, what the court will need to know, is did it happen by force or was
it something else?”
 
Vic stopped walking
and clapped his hands together loud enough to make both men jump in their
seats, then he spread them wide and wiggled his fingers like a circus showman,
“Something harder to fathom.
 
Something…special.”
 
Vic’s eyes lit up, “A moment, Mr. Lamia.
 
A moment of love.”

“Of course it was
love.
 
I love her.”

“Did she get wet
when you touched her?”

“What?”

“Did she get wet
when you touched her down there?
 
Did her
body respond to you?”

“I don’t…”

“I bet it
did.
 
I could see it in her eyes when she
spoke about you.
 
I know she loved it.”

Pete Lamia smiled
and said, “She did.
 
She really, really
did.”
 

***

They watched the
old man writing on a yellow legal pad through the one-way mirror.
 
“What’s he writing?” Frank said.
 

“A letter to Beth,”
Vic said.

“And how does
that help us?”

“It’s as good as
a confession.”

Frank put his
face against the cool glass window, “That really disturbed me in there.
 
Watching you give him permission to be what
he is.
 
I understand what you were doing,
but in a lot of ways, I couldn’t believe the things that came out of your
mouth.”

Vic nodded.
 
“With my first couple of cases, I tried
yelling at them until they gave it up.
 
It didn’t work.
 
Pedophiles don’t
feel remorse.”

“So you make them
feel good about raping young girls?”

“You think I
enjoy it?
 
Do you know how many dreams
I’ve had where I’m reliving what these sick fucks tell me?
 
Do you have any idea what it does to me every
time I let one of those fuckers into my head?
 
I feel like I want to rub a cheese grater up and down my insides.”