Page 61 of Blue Norther
“Let me go!” he yelled at Mikey.
“You gotta calm down like a hundred notches, man.”
“I’m calm. I’m fucking calm. Just let me be with my girl! She’s fucking sick.”
I turned to the guy standing behind the bar. My eyes drifted to the camera mounted on the wall behind him.
“Gonna need to see the footage that system captured.”
“Yeah. One sec.” He looked down the bar at the other server. “Sydney, I gotta show this deputy to the office. You good to cover for a minute?”
The tall brunette nodded as she filled a glass with an amber liquid that was on tap. “I’m fine. You remember how to make a copy if they need it for evidence?”
“I think so. I’ll holler if I don’t.”
She nodded, and the guy started walking out from behind the bar. I followed him down a hallway and into what was clearly a very disheveled office.
“Sorry. Our boss is like the most unorganized person in the world. Sydney tries to pick up the slack where she can, but it’s…a lot.”
“No worries,” I answered. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Anderson. But my friends call me Andy.”
“Okay, Andy. Did you pour the drinks for that woman?”
“Nope. I was restocking when I heard Syd shout for help. I saw what was happening, called for you guys, and it felt like maybe a minute later the first deputy was here. I didn’t see anything except the aftermath.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, here’s where you can see the security footage.” Andy pointed to a secondary laptop on a small table in the corner of the office. “I’ll just click into the folder for today. They are broken down into hours, and there will only be a file up until ten minutes ago. The system rights new files?—”
“Every ten minutes.”
“You got it. I’m just going to head back out to help Syd. We’re short staffed today. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks,” I replied, sitting in the small fold out chair next to the table.
Fifteen minutes later, I’d called back the bartender to email me a copy of the file and headed out to find Deputy Boone standing by his SUV.
“Hey, Johnathan!” I called, raising my hand in a wave as he turned to face me.
“Colt. Thanks for stepping in to help.”
“Didn’t think my day in Bell Ridge was going to be quite so exciting.”
“What’d you find?”
“Video evidence of our friend there placing his hand over the woman’s drink, stirring it with his finger, then sliding it back over to her before getting her attention that it was ready to drink.”
“Okay. I’ll take him over to the jail and start booking him in. The ambulance just took the woman to St. Clare’s. I don’t think anyone managed to get a statement out of her yet.”
I looked down at my watch. Damn. Two in the afternoon…It was a gamble on how long it would take for her to be coherent enough that we could get a statement from her that would hold up. I guess it really boiled down to what the hell the guy slipped in her drink, and if the hospital could flush it out of her system.
“I’ll head over to the hospital, see if I can’t get a statement from the boyfriend first, then her.”
“Thanks, man. Owe you one.”
“Yeah, I’ll put it on your tab.”
