030: Arrested?
**Chapter 30**
Quietly, without letting my aunt know, I accompanied the detective to the police station. When I arrived, a few angry men and women were already making a ruckus inside. It may have been a small and peaceful town, but the station itself wasn’t tiny. Still, their voices carried outside, which either meant they were extremely loud or my hearing had improved that much.
“Is it him?! Is he the one who assaulted my son and did this to him?!” One woman at the front of the group was the loudest. There were three men and four women total, meaning one of the guys either had no father in the picture or the man simply wasn’t present.
I stayed silent. Even inside a police station, everything I said or did could be used against me, and I preferred to avoid that.
“Okay, detective, you got me here. Now what?” I asked, turning to him and ignoring the angry parents.
The detective looked at me. “As I’ve told you before, four teenagers were assaulted last night, and eyewitnesses place you leaving the scene.”
“And I say in my defense that I was never there. What time did it happen, anyway?” I asked.
What? I wasn’t supposed to know the exact time, was I?
Seeing that his wordplay hadn’t worked, the detective simply answered, “Around 8 to 8:15 pm.”
“Hmm…” I took my time thinking while the angry parents continued making noise in the background.
“Well, I don’t exactly remember where I was at that time, but I definitely wasn’t at home, and I was also alone, so I can’t present you with an alibi. I’m not familiar with the area, so I don’t know where I was either, but it certainly wasn’t a park.” My reply stayed as vague as possible.
“So what are you trying to say?” the detective asked.
“I’m saying I didn’t do it,” I replied.
“You don’t expect me to take your word for it, do you?”
“Of course I don’t. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Dig into it. Find out what really happened.”
“Excuse me?” He looked mildly offended by the bluntness.
I smirked. “Well, didn’t you take their words against me? Do they have any form of proof of my presence?”
“We have witnesses placing you on the scene,” he argued.
“And I have witnesses seeing these guys organizing a drug deal. Doesn’t mean it’s true. Witnesses don’t hold up in court, and you know that as well as I do. So unless you can present some reliable evidence, I’d like my phone call.”
The detective stayed quiet for a moment. His expression twisted slightly before smoothing out again. “Look, it’d be better if you just cooperated. There’s no need to make this issue so… escalated.”
A gentle way of denying me my phone call. If this had been a quiet matter to be handled between two parties, it never would have reached a police station in the first place. Since it was already here, lawyers should have been involved. Him trying to keep me from calling one was exactly what I wanted.
“Are you denying me my right, Detective Tent?” I asked directly, without hesitation.
“Of course not. I don’t want to escalate this beyond what it already is. You need to answer a few questions, and we’ll be done here.”
He still hadn’t given up on getting me to admit something. Fine. He was about to meet the most tight-lipped and annoying person he had dealt with in a while.
“Fine. What is it you wanna know?” I asked.
“How do you know Jackson Stanton?” he asked right away.
“Didn’t you say four of them were assaulted? Why would you assume that would be the guy I have any connection with?” I asked a question back, starting the process of annoying him.
“Well, Jackson Stanton has told us about you,” the detective replied.
“Then if you already know, it doesn’t make any sense to ask me about it,” I said with an easygoing expression. He was visibly irritated that his second question had been dismissed so casually, but he still tried to keep going.
“Is it true that Jackson is the boyfriend of your cousin Sara Miller?”
“Yes, it is,” I replied.
“Then is it true that you tried to attack him two days ago when you couldn’t bear to see him and Sara Miller kiss?”
“Why would I be annoyed by that? Aren’t boyfriends and girlfriends supposed to kiss? Besides, I was more focused on someone else at the moment.”
“That’s not what Jackson says.”
“If you’re only going to believe what he said, then what’s the point of this conversation at all?” I asked, pushing his annoyance higher again.
He stayed quiet for a second and changed direction. “Do you have any grudges against Jackson Stanton?”
“Why would I? I never met him until a few days ago.”
“Which doesn’t make sense. Why would you attack him if you don’t know him?”
“I never said I attacked him,” I replied carefully. Saying I didn’t attack him would imply one thing. Directly denying his words would imply something else. He understood the difference as well as I did.
“Haa…” He sighed and looked at me. “Look here, Mister Haller, it would be better if you cooperated. Otherwise, I might have to press charges against you.”
“Go ahead,” I replied. “But before that, I want my phone call.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t do that. I will have to hold you for now under Section D-5.3. Non-compliance with an ongoing investigation.” He cited some bullshit law that I knew didn’t exist. Still, I played along like a clueless person.
“Well, I’m still not saying anything unless my lawyer’s here.”
“We can look forward to that,” the detective said. He then had me processed. He took my phone and wallet—only cards, no cash because I kept it in my inventory, since cash couldn’t be processed. After that, he locked me in a cell and left with a few parting words.
“I’ll be here when you want to talk.”
It was obvious he was a cop on someone’s payroll. I was out of my own city and couldn’t freely exercise my usual influence here, but that didn’t mean the law wasn’t on my side.
[Inventory]
I pulled a phone out of my inventory and called my lawyer.
“Get someone here in Pittsburgh. I’m in a police station. Get here as quickly as you can.”
I hung up after telling him the location before and put the phone back into the inventory.
“Hey, you.”
The reason I had been so quick became clear a second later.
“Hook me up with a call too.”
I looked at the guy who seemed like a biker. He was staring at me with a threatening expression.
“Haa…” I sighed, then turned to him with a smile. “Well, I was looking forward to having some fun anyway.”
This was also why the detective had put me in this particular cell even though an empty one sat right next to it. He wanted to intimidate me.
Well, time to get a beating.
~~
“This is outrageous!” my lawyer yelled during the settlement meeting.
He had arrived shortly after the biker finished with me. He wasn’t the one from LA, but a local attorney my main lawyer had called, which explained how quickly he showed up. The moment he walked in, the detective looked puzzled, and then the formalities began. Everything the detective had done was pure bullshit. He denied it, of course, but I still sued him.
I had been injured in the process—lightly, but it still counted. The detective denied every accusation. Even when I repeated the fake law he had quoted, the representative from the preliminary judge’s panel only laughed.
He stopped laughing when I pulled a recording device out of my pocket and played it. As the conversation between me and the detective filled the room, everyone went silent.
Inventory had many uses. Feel free to be jealous.
Once the recording finished and the gravity of the situation settled over the room, I spoke into the silence.
“Now, let’s talk about how much this is going to cost you.”
~~
In the end, the D.A. tried to settle. There were the usual subtle threats, the standard pressure, but I stayed firm. I wanted the detective suspended for a year for handling the case privately instead of properly, plus fifty thousand dollars in compensation. It was taxpayer money, and the D.A. pushed hard to deny the request. One stern reminder from my side that I was fully prepared to take the entire matter to open court changed everything. All of my demands were granted.
After all, if it ever reached a jury, they would end up paying far more.
I finished everything in five hours, used a potion to clear the light injuries, and returned home. The moment I stepped inside, I was hit by that same intoxicating fragrance.
‘Fuck.’