Cassidy finally came down off her rush and started shivering. I pulled her over and sat her sideways with her back to me as we waited. She snuggled up and amazingly, fell asleep. It felt good to know she trusted me to protect her enough to do that.
After about an hour, the police officer came in and unlocked the door. He looked both amused and interested as he led us into a conference room. My dad was there, sitting at the table in front of a speakerphone. The officer had us take our seats and then sat across from us. He studied me for another minute, amused.
“My name is Constable Vincent,” he began. “I thought you looked familiar, and when I received three telephone calls about you within the first fifteen minutes we were here, I realized why. My daughter has your poster on her bedroom wall, Mr. Stryker.”
At that point, two voices came over the speakerphone. Both Frank and Ms. Dixon started talking at once, but Constable Vincent immediately shut them down.
“We will have quiet here for a minute while I explain some things.
“We received a call about a robbery attempt and arrived upon the scene to find three people injured. One of the three has a broken jaw, and the other two are suffering from concussions. One of those two also has a severely broken forearm. Under such circumstances, we do have questions about the two people standing over them, especially when they are both young and unarmed,” he said without seeming to take a breath.
“Fortunately for us, and especially fortunate for you,” he continued, “one of the men had a knife, and I am sure fingerprinting will show only his prints on it. The other did indeed have a revolver in his pocket.
“I need to take into account that you are both young tourists in our country,” he said, and then looked at me. “You’re also famous, which carries with it its own set of issues.
“We pride ourselves on our hospitality as a nation, and we don’t want anything to sully our reputation.
“Nevertheless, I have three unconscious citizens in our hospital, and it doesn’t look as if I will have an opportunity to talk with them for another day, at least. And so you see, I’m faced with a dilemma. What am I to do with you?” he asked no one in particular.
This, of course, brought an immediate burst of voices again from the speaker on the table, but I quickly stopped it.
“Hold on, hold on! One at a time,” I said, and gave an apologetic look to Constable Vincent.
“Constable, this is Juliet Dixon, David’s attorney. It’s my understanding that my client and his friend defended the group they were with, including David’s parents. I guess I’m confused as to why you’re holding them in custody,” she said.
“I apologize for that, but I needed to get some information before I talked to them. We may not be as fast as you are in the United States, but we take pride in the work we do here,” he responded.
“I didn’t mean to say anything to insult you or your fellow officers. My question is, why were they held at all? Couldn’t you simply question them without putting them into a cell?” she asked.
“Ma’am, we had to make sure they weren’t the cause of the mayhem that occurred. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t look at all sides before making a determination. To be frank, we haven’t gotten a chance to talk to the other three men, and that might take a while since they needed medical attention. You will have to bear with me while we complete our investigation.
“Our other concern is, if we release them, they would be a flight risk. I understand that young Mr. Dawson would face the court of public opinion. But once he left the country, it would be almost impossible to get him back if he had to stand trial,” he explained.
I turned to Dad.
“Did Mom text you?” I asked.
He nodded to me, and I turned back to the constable.
“Do you have a laptop or PC we might use? I can show you a video of what happened.”
He seemed a bit unsure, but left the conference room and returned in a minute with what looked like a relatively new laptop. I logged into my Dropbox account and selected the video.
Constable Vincent looked a bit shocked.
“What is that?”
I smiled at him.
“With everything that’s happened to me—the movie and everything else—many people try to take advantage of me. One way we can stop what are called ‘he said/she said’ moments is to keep a bodycam on me at all times.”
I pulled up the video of the fight. Constable Vincent tried to hide it, but I could tell he was impressed. Finally, after playing it through twice, he turned to me.
“This changes everything. Two of the three men on the ground are known to us, as are the two who ran. We’ve had several incidents reported of a strong-arm operation, but to this point have been unsuccessful in tracking it down. This,” he gestured to the video, “simplifies things for us considerably.”
The constable turned back to me.
“But why didn’t mention this before now?”
I looked at him a bit coolly.
“First, because you didn’t ask. But there was another reason as well.”
I looked at him levelly and continued.
