The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(5)

13:19:21:48

They took me to the emergency room first. Multiple lacerations and contusions. A broken nose. Twenty-five stitches on my forearm where he sliced me with the dagger. Bullet removed from my shoulder. And an X-ray of my butt to see if my coccyx was cracked.

After the doctors were done with my body, a couple of cops came by and took it to the police station. I asked for my phone call. I called the attorney for my father’s estate, Alphonso Needlemier. He told me not to talk to anybody until he got there.

I was alone in one of the interrogation rooms. There was a mirror along one wall. It had to be one of those two-way setups.

I wondered who Delivery Dude was, who had sent him, and why. I had my suspicions. At the hospital, I took the Ring of Solomon from my finger and slipped it into my pocket.

At least thirty minutes passed. Nothing happened. No one came in. The big clock hanging on the wall behind me clicked. My nose itched under the bandages. My butt was sore and I couldn’t find a comfortable sitting position. I had a very bad feeling about it—not about my butt, but the situation in general. Where were the cops? Why had they dumped me in this room? Where was Mr. Needlemier? Who was Delivery Dude, why was he after me, was Sam okay, and why had they arrested me? I was the victim here.

Finally the door opened and two people came in, a man and a woman. He was older, with a huge bald head and a fat red nose; he might look like Santa Claus if he grew a beard. She was young-looking, with dark hair and even darker eyes.

She introduced herself as Detective Meredith Black. His name came out as a grunt, but it sounded like Kennard.

“Why did you arrest me?” I asked.

“How about reckless endangerment, kidnapping, willful destruction of property, assault and battery, and attempted murder?” rumbled the big-bellied Kennard in a voice about as far from Santa Claus’s as you could get.

“That’s a lot,” I said.

“You a smart guy?” he barked at me.

“Not by any standard I can think of,” I said.

“Let’s see how smart you are after twenty years at Brushy Mountain,” Kennard said.

“Here’s what we know, Alfred,” Meredith Black said, placing a hand on Kennard’s hairy forearm. “A car collides with an SUV in front of Samson Towers and blows up. A minute later, a John Doe is shot at point-blank range in the penthouse suite of the building. Ten minutes after that, a high-speed chase that results in the deaths of five Knoxville police officers and an unidentified suspect who appears to have committed suicide by means of an improvised explosive device.”

“How is Sam?” I asked. “The John Doe. They wouldn’t tell me at the hospital.”

She ignored me. “And now we have you. And you seem to be the common denominator in all of this, Alfred.”

She pulled a small tape recorder from her purse and set it on the table between us.

“We’d like to hear what you have to say.”

“I’m supposed to wait for Mr. Needlemier.”

“Who’s Needlemier?” Kennard asked.

“My attorney. Well, actually he’s my dad’s attorney. Or he used to be.”

“Your dad fired him?”

“My dad died.”

“Bernard Samson,” Meredith Black said. It wasn’t a question.

“That’s right. That’s why I was in that office when the car blew up. I guess that was all a setup so the phony delivery dude could get upstairs without running his package through security.”

“What package?” Meredith Black asked.

“The package containing the shotgun. I guess you found the shotgun. He said he had a package and Samuel said ‘I’ll take it,’ and he said something like, ‘Okay,’ and then he shot him.”

“Who is Samuel?” Meredith asked.

“The John Doe. He’s alive, isn’t he?”

“So Samuel shot the delivery dude?” Kennard asked.

“No, the delivery dude shot Samuel.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Then he tried to shoot me.”

“Samuel?”

“The delivery dude! Samuel’s my guardian; why would he want to shoot me?”

“Why did the delivery dude want to shoot you?” Kennard asked.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say, but I didn’t ask either. He ran. I ran after him. He did this to my arm and this to my nose and then he parachuted down the stairwell.”

Kennard gave a belly laugh. Meredith shot him a look and said, “We found the chute.” She turned back to me. “So you followed him outside, hijacked a police car, and forced the officer to give chase.”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to know the same thing you guys do: why?”

“You don’t know why someone would want to kill you?”

“No,” I lied. I had been working on the list before they came in. There was Mike Arnold, the rogue OIPEP agent who had sworn to kill me. There was the remnant of the private army of Mogart, the black knight exiled from the Order of the Sacred Sword, who might want a little payback for my killing their leader. And, finally, OIPEP itself, which wanted the ring in my pocket. I wasn’t sure OIPEP should be on the list, mostly because I liked and trusted Abigail Smith, the director, but like Samuel said, the Company could be ruthless.