To (Un)Live and Die in Las Vegas...Part 5

Once at Police Headquarters, I was hustled out of the van quickly and taken back to be fingerprinted. I was being escorted by two of the burlier officers who clearly had no idea that I could have easily snapped the cuffs on my wrists and the chains that they had placed around my ankles before we got out of the van. I had no intention of resisting though, since I knew how dangerous and often thankless a job it can be to be a police officer in a large metro area. I knew I was innocent and that it would only be a matter of time before they would release me, even if Papa Locks and Drake had done their best to set me up. I was confident that Jennifer's spirit would help to provide the details to my friends of what actually happened.

Imagine the surprise on the fingerprint tech's face and on the faces of the officers who were with me when they uncuffed me and then took my leather gloves off, only to see no flesh from which to obtain fingerprints. He (the fingerprint technician) actually recoiled in shock and horror to see hand comprised only of metal plated bones connected by strange wires that served as both nerves and connective tissues.

I do my best to clean away any decaying flesh as I see it, but the place where the flesh from my arm ends, is pretty gruesome looking, and is probably putrid smelling as well, so I usually make sure to wrap my wrists in clingy plastic wrap and then keep my gloves on almost all of the time, especially when I am out in public.

The officer on my left gasped as he saw (and maybe smelled) bare hands and the raw, ragged edge of the flesh at my wrist. He seemed to turn several shades of green, and shifted his weight ever so slightly away from me.

The other officer was more blunt, "What the fuck..?"

The technician looked up from my skeletal hand, "What are you mister?"

I tried to keep the smile from my face, "It would take more than a little explaining. But as I told the commander back at the scene, I am an FBI Agent. You obviously will not be able to take my fingerprints. I would recommend that you take me to a holding cell or to an interview room and I will be more than happy to explain myself and this whole situation to someone. I would prefer to do so only once."

The officer on my right, a sergeant according to the stripes on his sleave, said, "Uh yeah Charlie, I don't think we'll be needing you to print this guy. We'll take him to room 6, do you think you can call the Captain of the Watch and ask him to call me?"

Charlie nodded, holding out my gloves towards me with the very tips of his fingers, still obviously repulsed. He visibly flinched when my shiny, skeletal hand reached out and grabbed the gloves. He backed away from the processing counter to a smaller desk just behind him, where he busied himself by picking up the phone and dialing some numbers on the keypad.

The sergeant pointed down the hall to our left, so I shuffled off in that direction, still holding the gloves in my left hand. They followed, each to side, just a half step behind me.

We got a lot of strange looks from other officers and from several detainees, one such guy was obviously inebriated and therefore seemed a little less shocked than most of the others, probably saw me as just another alcohol induced vision.

A couple of turns later and through an alarmed, locked door I was led to a short hall where there were a number of interview rooms, each with the required audio-visual equipment for taping confessions and the one-way windows that allowed folks outside of the rooms to observe what was happening inside.

Room six was your standard interview room, pretty barren inside, with only a single large table and four chairs by it. All police departments must order from the same Korean War-era catalogs, since this old, dented furniture could have easily been in my own department back in the day. Once inside the room, I was told where to sit, as the junior officer reached down behind me and snapped my leg iron chain into a solid steel ring that was underneath the chair. Ideally, that would prevent me from being able to escape.

Once I was 'secured', the sergeant and his young partner left, looking back uneasily as they secured the door.

For the first time in my exsistence, I was sitting in the 'suspect' chair.