Who's the Moron Now

This wasn’t Paul’s first rodeo. He’d sat in this chair many times before. The cop who was questioning him was a slow talking moron. Damn, this wasn’t even fair. The poor stuttering fool had no clue what he was doing. Paul figured he’d be out of the police station in about an hour; this was just too easy.

“So, Mr. Dwyer, I can see from your record that you’ve been questioned by the Middletown Police Department several times before.” The cop had a folder in front of him, evidently it was Paul’s record. Paul thought it should have been thicker.

“Yea so?” Usually during questioning Paul would have said the magic word “lawyer” by now, but with this clown asking the questions didn’t think it was necessary. He didn’t think he should pay his thieving lawyer for something he could handle himself.

Detective Sorin rubbed his forehead and in a slow painful way asked, “A Mr. Robert Cummings was murdered last night, did you kill him?”

“Jeez, are you freaking nuts? I never killed nobody. I thought you dragged me in here to ask about a stolen car or something!”

“No, Mr. Dwyer, you’re here because we have a witness who says she saw you leaving Mr. Cummings’ apartment last night around the time of the murder.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I don’t know no Cummings guy. Who said they saw me? One of my old girlfriends, I bet.” Paul was irate, the dumb cop had things all screwed up. The idiot could barely talk. Paul felt like smacking his dumb ass in the back of the head and telling him to “spit it out!” “Look at my record, I never done no violence.”

“Yes, but we have a witness and a dead body. Do you have an alibi for last night around midnight?”

Paul knew where he’d been but he couldn’t tell the cop. He and his brother, Francis, had hijacked a truck down by the docks around that time. The whole job was a setup. The driver had been payed off and everything had gone off without a hitch. The cargo from the truck was on its way to Chicago and the truck was burning in a vacant lot in Newark.

The detective sat there patiently waiting for an answer. “So where were you last night?”

“Oh yea, I was with my brother Francis.”

“You know if you don’t come up with something better than that I have no choice but to charge you with murder. Like I said, I have a witness.”

Paul was scared to death. It was one thing to get busted for robbery but murder was a whole other thing. They still had the death penalty and he could get the needle for something he didn’t do. He was sure he wouldn’t be the first nor would he be the last. Damn, he should have gotten a lawyer. It was too late now. This idiot was about to arrest him for murder. “You gotta know I didn’t kill nobody. I’m not a killer.”

“All I know is that I have a good witness. Someone who knows you says they saw you leaving Mr. Cummings’ apartment after hearing a shot.”

Maybe it was because he was scared shit-less but it seemed to Paul that the cop was speaking faster. “C’mon man get serious. Why would I kill a guy I never knew? This is all bullshit and you know it.”

“I don’t know it, Mr. Dwyer. How do I know you didn’t know the victim? I do know that a very credible witness says you were there and she saw you running from the scene. You don’t have an alibi, only some story about being with your brother.”

He had no choice, “Ok… Ok, I’ll tell you where I was.” Paul went on to explain how he and his brother had hijacked the truck and where the merchandize and truck could be found. He sat there like a deflated balloon.

The detective left the room with a huge smile on his face. There had been no murder, no witness, and no Mr. Cummings. There had only been a seemingly dumb cop and an unsolved hijacking.