DARIAN HAD STAYED up the rest of the night after his talk with Nurse Jackie. He really didn't want to be awake, but the last thing he wanted to happen was to go through another dream of that horrible shadow.
Fatigue was setting in deeply and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. Every time he started to drift off to sleep, he would catch himself and try to wake back up. Even the pain he was feeling from his wounds wasn't quite enough to stave off the sleep that was trying its best to encroach his reality.
Just as Darian was about to give up completely and fall into the bliss that was sleep, there was a knock on the door to his room.
"Yeah." He responded without any emotion whatsoever. He knew that it probably wasn't a nurse doing rounds since they always opened the door a bit and looked in to see if he was sleeping or not.
The door opened and a short portly man wearing a grey suit sauntered in. He was going bald and wore thick-rimmed glasses that gave him the appearance of a wide-eyed professor of some sort.
"Mr. Lane? My name is Detective Daniels and I need to ask you a few questions about the night of the gas station robbery."
Well, you certainly don't beat around the bush, do you, Detective? Darian thought.
Daniels walked in and looked around the room as if he was trying to see what he might be able to confiscate or arrest Darian for.
"You mean you want to ask me questions about the night every cop in town unloaded their clips into me and sent me to the hospital where I have spent the last two weeks in an induced coma?"
Darian knew that they had already caught the guy that tried to rob the place, and he knew that someone was going to have to apologize for what happened to him. But he wanted to get a read on how this detective worked and the best way to do that was to bring the most important part of that night right out into the foreground.
"We deeply apologize for that, sir, but you have to understand what the officers were up against when you came out of the gas station."
Daniels's apology sounded sincere, but there was absolutely no emotion behind the eyes to show that he cared one bit whether Darian was innocent or not. As far as he could tell, Darian had been guilty of something anyway and probably deserved to be shot.
"I wanted to see if you could describe the man that came in to rob the place. Were there any identifying marks that you can remember that would help make his identification easier for us and the DA?"
"I heard you already had the guy in custody, so what would you need me for?" Darian was testing the detective to see just how far he could push him before he showed his true self. He knew that it would probably not make his life any easier, but with the lawsuit that he was planning on bringing down, he would have to leave the state anyway.
"Sir, if you could just answer the questions I have, this will go easier for both of us. The sooner I have a positive identification of this guy, the sooner I can wrap it up and let the courts handle it." Daniels wasn't going to play any games today and he knew exactly what Darian was playing at.
"I remember that he was taller than me and seemed like he had done this type of thing in the past."
"Yes, we got all of that from the security cameras in the store. What I need to know is if there are any identifiable marks or tattoos that he might have shown you that would make this a slam dunk of a case, Sir."
Did this moron really think that he and the robber stopped long enough to bond and share tattoos before the criminal shot Lacey?
"Yeah, there was something. His eyes were freaky looking. Kind of a blue and black swirling type of thing. Does that help narrow it down a little bit for you, or have you dealt with a lot of guys that have eyes like that?"
Darian realized as he said it that he might have gone a bit over the line. But they did shoot and paralyze an innocent victim in all of this and he wasn't going to make things easy for them.
"Yes, the man we caught had eyes of that nature. Turned out that he was wearing some kind of costume contacts that he purchased online. His real eyes are green and not quite as impressive as the contacts made them out to be."
"What is his name?" Darian wanted to know who had put him in the situation he found himself. "Are there any charges being filed against him for what happened to me?"
"I can't discuss the details of the case with you, Mr. Lane. I'm sorry. But I can tell you that he isn't going to be getting out anytime soon. While the murder of the girl wasn't necessarily planned, it was during the commission of a felony, and that alone holds a life sentence. As for you, I don't think he will be charged for anything as your issues happened after he had already fled the scene." Daniels looked down at Darian as if to see anything on him that he should have. "I hear you have been paralyzed from the waist down?"
"Yeah. It turns out that getting two bullets in your back while you are trying to tell the cops that the guy they want already left will do that to you." Darian was getting tired of this man and simply wanted him to leave. He hoped that he was one of the cops that shot him and wondered if they could do forensics on the bullet that paralyzed him to see if it turned out to be from his gun. That would be the icing on the cake as far as Darian was concerned.
Darian was about to tell the detective that he needed to get some rest, although he wasn't going to get any, when the door opened slightly and a woman popped her head in.
"Excuse me. Is Mr. Lane in this room?"
Jennifer peeked through the door and saw the portly man standing over Darian. The detective looked back at her and waved her in.
"Who are you, Ma'am, and what business do you have with Mr. Lane?"
"Okay, that is enough, Detective. I think you should leave now and go find someone else to put in the hospital."
Darian was more interested in what the woman wanted and less worried about whether or not he upset the detective at this point in time. At least the woman looked a lot more attractive than the portly detective. In the face, anyway, since she still had the rest of her body on the other side of the door.
"Don't go anywhere, Mr. Lane. I'm not quite done with you and I might have some more questions later on."
"Really? Really? You are telling me not to go anywhere after just noting that I am paralyzed from the waist down? Wow, you really are a detective aren't you?"
Daniels looked at Darian with a gruff concern in his expression and sauntered off towards the door. "It would be wise to cooperate with me, Sir, as I would hate to see this individual be set free to do this to someone else in the future."
With that, he slid through the door and past the woman, looking back in at Darian.