Room 348: Death at the Inn - Ch # 8

“Did anyone thump on the entryway following entryway, to check on the guy?,” Brennan asked.

“No,” said Steinmetz. “I continuously inquire myself, if I was in a circumstance like this, you know, what would I do, and I admit—”

He never wrapped up the thought. The criminologists had something else they needed him to do.

A Long Silence

‘Hey, Spear, what’s up?” inquired Steinmetz. He’d dialed Mueller on his cell phone. Apple and Brennan were recording the conversation.

“Not much,” said Mueller. “Just sittin’ around. . . . ”

“Well, I fair got back from down there.”

“How did it go?”

“Well, I told them the entirety story. You know, what had happened, that we were stickin’ to there, you know?”

“What’s that?”

“You know, the story that we were stickin’ to, that we got domestic late that night, you know, and the fellow hacked and whatever.”

“Right.”

“And, uh … ” Steinmetz started to fix and haw. “And, uh, I was fixin’ … I was gonna take off there at that point, since your attorney said it would be O.K., right? You know?”

“Right.”

“And when I cleared out there they said, ‘O.K., you know, tell us the truth.’ So, I, you know, I told them the truth, what truly happened.”

There was a long hush on the other end.

“About the weapon going off and all that?” Mueller asked.

“Yep.”

“What did they say?”

“Well, that I would be in inconvenience, you know, if I didn’t tell them.”

Another silence.

“So, what did they say?”

“Not much. I don’t know if they are going to get ahold of you, or Trent, or what the hell they’re going to do.”

Mueller moaned intensely. At that point he groaned.

“What did they cruel by that? I cruel ‘Tell us the truth’? Did they say anything approximately the weapon earlier to that or what?”

“No. They fair said they knew precisely what happened. Told me to halt fuckin’ lyin’. They were beautiful pissed. And at that point I told them precisely how everything went down, and what truly and really happened.” Steinmetz proposed that Mueller call Apple right absent. “They likely are going to come and get your ass, presently that they know the truth and everything. You ought to likely attempt to make a few kind of exertion, you know? … The fellow, he kicked the bucket from the gunshot.”

“Are you shittin’ me, Tim?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, my God, are you joking me? Are you genuine right now?”

“I’m genuine as a heart assault, Lance.”

Mueller denied to accept it. For the another few minutes of the call, he went around and around with Steinmetz. His legal counselor had gotten the post-mortem examination report and guaranteed him that the man had not passed on of a discharge wound. The story had been all over the news. “It doesn’t make sense!” he said. “If there was a discharge, if he was slaughtered from, you know, a gun, they would have said something on the damn news!” Mueller had worked difficult to persuade himself that the coincidental discharge and the passing of the man in 348 were disconnected, and the post-mortem examination report had affirmed it.

“It doesn’t make sense. . . . To begin with the coroner ruled that it was a heart assault. At that point they begun saying that something fell on him There’s no way! There’s completely no way that fellow was murdered by a bullet.” He inquired Steinmetz how he was doing.

“How’m I doin?,” Steinmetz said. “Not great. I require to drink a few more beers.”

Mueller clearly connected the same cure, since he afterward called Brennan, clearly inebriated, and begun attempting to clarify himself. He said he needed to make a statement.

“You’re drunk,” Brennan told him. “I propose you call your fuckin’ attorney.”