I haven’t heard of him.” John made sure that he contracted
the words have and not into haven’t. He learned during his
training that it was a tell tale sign that someone had rehearsed
their answers if their words were not contracted when offering
denials. John didn’t know if the engineer had received the same
training, but he wanted to play it safe—partially to avoid Hal
being allowed back into the room and partially to toy with the
Engineer a bit. “Sure you have, Mr. Powers,” the Engineer said
with a coy smile on his face that revealed coffee and cigarette
stained teeth. John’s expression didn’t change at all.
The Engineer could be bluffing, trying to elicit a positive
response from him, trying to get John to cop to something that
he did, but that they didn’t quite have the evidence to prove
in a court of law. “You’ve heard of DNA evidence, right?” the
Engineer quipped. Powers nodded in agreement. “Well, guess
what, John. We found just the smallest nail particle in your tool
box; really we almost missed it given the rest of the gore we
found.”
Powers remembered how Mike Ringley screamed and
begged for mercy when Miller tore his fingernails out one by
one. Ringley wouldn’t answer the questions John asked him.
John asked him politely at first, but Miller got frustrated and
wanted to speed things up a bit. Miller had to gag Ringley to
keep the neighbors from hearing his high-pitched woman-like
screams, even though there was a loud and obnoxious college
party going on in the very next apartment. It was enough that
Mike Ringley’s fat bastard of a bodyguard had tried to pull
a shotgun from underneath the chair he was sitting in when
Miller and he ran in the room. The fat fuck was too damn fat
to get his arms around his belly and underneath the chair. He
subsequently had his fat melon splattered all over the carpet by
Miller’s steel crowbar. Powers remembered his head exploded
with a hollow pop that sickened him for just a second. That
really unnerved Mike Ringley, who was crying like baby and
begging for his life. At the time, Powers thought, “What kind
of drug dealer sits on one hundred thousand dollars in cash
without having a pistol of their own to pull out as a last resort?”
Miller started the nail yanking on Mike Ringley’s right hand
pinky finger, and by the time he reached his thumb Ringley
gave up the goods. Maybe Ringley thought that they would let
him go. After John found the money and the unsold product,
Miller shot Ringley with the twenty-two that sounded like so
much popcorn.
