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He was quick, but Nate was quicker. Within seconds he was up, blocking Long’s way to the exit, a bodily presence that might as well have been a wall. Laura stood up to give him back-up from the other side, leaving Long with nowhere to run to.
“I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the precinct with us,” Nate said.
That was when Ellis Long made the stupidest mistake of his life.
He tried to shove Nate, a man who was easily twice his weight in muscle alone, in the chest to get him to move aside.
Nate simply stared back at him.
“Move out of the damn way,” Long snarled, shoving him harder and then raining down a couple of blows from closed fists on Nate’s chest.
Laura could see this getting heated, especially with an audience. A quick glance around showed that several of the locals were clearly interested in what was going on, and some of them were setting down their glasses as if gearing up to wade in. She stepped forward quickly, taking out a pair of handcuffs – thankful to herself for bringing them, when she wasn’t properly kitted up as she would have been on a normal case – and grabbed one of his wrists. He flailed but she managed to get it hooked on, and Nate grabbed the other wrist so she could get the cuffs connected.
“Alright,” Laura said quietly, trying to keep things simple and isolated to just the three of them. “That’s enough. You’re coming down to the precinct to answer some questions, on suspicion of murder. Got that?”
Long’s only answer was to struggle so hard against his cuffs that he nearly fell over and took her out with him. She made a desperate sound and righted him again, and Nate grabbed his lapel to stop him falling a second time.
“Hey,” someone said, standing up from a nearby table – a tall, older man with a long straggling beard who looked like he had seen a fight or two in his life. “What do you want with Ellis?”
“This matter doesn’t concern you, sir,” Laura said, wanting to get Long out of there before things reached a tipping point. She and Nate were only two.
“I think it does,” the man said, and another couple of men from the same table stood up, folding their arms across their chest. Laura was beginning to get the impression that although Long was regarded as a local weirdo, he was seen astheirweirdo. In the sense that it was quite possible half the town would show up in his defense if they thought that outsiders were targeting him.
Laura looked around and realized that a lot of eyes were turned their way. Feeling the need to prevent some kind of challenge going any further – and especially the risk of them being overpowered by the crowd - she lifted up her badge and showed it to the room at large. “This situation is under control,” she said. “We’re actively seeking information in the murders of Joy Kingsley and July Hall. If any of you have information, I would urge you to come forward.” That, she hoped, was enough of an announcement to diffuse things – the implications being twofold: first, that Long was being arrested for the murders, and second, the same awaited anyone else who kept information to themselves.
She turned, giving Nate a look which she hoped he would interpret as a need for haste, and started to hustle Long out of the bar. They needed to get going before someone decided that they didn’t like the FBI very much anywhere and were happy to risk getting thrown in cuffs themselves in order to make a point. Thankfully, perhaps because of the speed with which they moved, no one followed them – except for the eyes of just about everyone in the place.
It was only when they were right at the door that she caught Nate looking back longingly at the table and the remains of the grilled cheese he hadn’t been able to finish.
“Cheer up,” she told him as they stepped into free air and headed rapidly towards the car. “If we just caught a murderer, I’ll buy you takeout.”
***
Laura groaned, leaning back in her chair and then immediately sitting straight again in response to the uncomfortable, stiff structure. It was worse than sitting in a school chair. “We need to get him to talk,” she said.
“Yeah, but I don’t see how we’re going to do that,” Nate said. “He’s given us that no-comment bull at least fifty times. And now that he’s refusing to talk without a lawyer, we don’t have a choice.”
“As soon as a lawyer gets here, he’s just going to tell his client not to say a single word,” Laura pointed out. “If we had DNA from either of the victims we would be able to compare it to his, but there’s nothing. The man I saw doing this – he was wearing gloves, a coat and hoodie covering his hair. He knew what he was doing. There’s not going to be any DNA unless we find some kind of early case where he messed up.”
Nate grimaced and shook his head. “This sucks. And I’m hungry. You promised me takeout.”
“I promised you takeout if we had a killer, which we still don’t know for sure,” Laura pointed out. She sighed and checked her watch. If she had been at home, she would have been in bed by now, never mind dinner. “But, fine. Go order something. I don’t care what.”
“Alright!” Nate grinned, practically leaping out of his chair and heading out into the hall.
Laura stayed where she was. She needed to keep an eye on Ellis Long. They’d left him in the interview room while they waited for this elusive lawyer to show up. He was sitting in his chair – a very similar one to the torture device she was sitting on, which made her feel somewhat better – with his arms folded across his chest, not moving. She tried to picture the face of the killer in her visions, obscured and half-seen in the dark as it was, fitting it against his face. Was he the same man? Could that be the same nose she had seen, the same eyes?
It was almost impossible. She sighed, knowing that she wasn’t going to get anywhere by just going over it again and again in her own head. She needed another vision. Another clue of some kind. Something that would take her over the edge and let her know that she was on the right path.
The whole while they had been arresting Long, all the time she’d had his arm in her hand, the march from the car to the precinct, all of it – she hadn’t had a single vision. Didn’t that mean something? Was she barking up the wrong tree?
The door opened and Laura looked up, expecting to see Nate asking her to choose between takeout options – but it wasn’t him at all. It was one of the local police officers who had assisted them since they came into the precinct, a man whose name Laura had already forgotten.
“Hi, Agent Frost? We just heard from the lawyer that represents Long. He’s not going to be here until the morning. I told him we’d have to hold his client until he gets here, and he just said something about it adding to the official complaint he was going to be filing as soon as he arrives.”
Laura groaned, rubbing her forehead. “Fine. Take him to the holding cells for the night, then,” she said. “He can decide for himself whether he thinks his lawyer is a brilliant strategist or should be fired for calling our bluff and making him sleep here.”
“Right,” the officer nodded, quickly disappearing, and closing the door. Laura got the impression that she was coming across as being in a bad mood, and the man had wanted to get away from her so she couldn’t take it out on him.
