The guy at the bench next to us looked over at that one.
John glared at him. "What are you looking at?”
"A guy that's going to jail most likely,” he quipped.
John sneered at him. Then he addressed us. “I didn’t kill the guy.”
“You want to take off your workout gloves and let me see your knuckles?”
19
John hesitated for a moment. “You got a warrant?”
“If that’s the way you want to play it, we’ll get one,” I said. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”
The fact that he wouldn’t take his gloves off told me there was a high probability he had scuff marks on his knuckles from punching Liam in the face.
“I want to talk to a lawyer.”
“You’re not under arrest,” I said. “But the evidence is starting to stack up.”
John said nothing as panic filled his eyes.
He wasn’t under arrest. We didn’t have to stop questioning him. He was under no obligation to answer. But everybody thinks they can talk their way out of trouble.
“Let’s go through this again,” I said. “You confronted Liam earlier in the day. You left, then shut off your phone before you came back. That looks like premeditation any way you slice it.”
“The battery died.”
“I think you punched him a few times, then grabbed his racket and beat him to death with it.” I tried to sound sympathetic. “I totally understand. Hell, I probably would have done the same thing. A guy like that sticking it to my wifeandmy daughter. That’s gotta sting.”
Rage boiled on his face. “That guy was a scumbag, and he deserved what he got.”
“I bet you enjoyed killing him.”
John glared at me. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
He stood from the bench and marched away.
“We’ll talk again soon,” I taunted.
John headed back to the locker room.
I pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from my pocket, snapped them on, and picked up the water bottle he left behind. It was fair game.
We returned to the station and logged the bottle as evidence.
I called Brenda and told her about the sample.
“I was able to pull trace DNA from Liam’s teeth,” she said. “Somebody punched him in the face before they started with the racket.”
“Let me know when you get the results from that bottle back.”
“Will do.”
We left and headed back to theAvventuraand grabbed lunch at Diver Down. In the afternoon, we hit band practice. The guysrocked out another session. We ended up on Oyster Avenue for a few drinks. Red November was packed with delicious beauties in tight cocktail dresses and spiky shoes. The submarine-themed bar was running a drink special on the Torpedo Twist. It was one of their signature cocktails—aged rum, pineapple juice, a splash of lime, a dash of bitters, and a helluva hangover if you had too many.
We were having a good time, and the crew had rounded up a nice entourage of interested groupies.
