Each time they poured water on Mr. Paulson's wet towel-shrouded face, he thrashed momentarily. Then he held his breath for an inordinately long time, repeatedly convincing the amateur interrogators that they had accidentally killed him. While Mr. Paulson seemed elaborately entertained by the entire process, neither Martinez nor O'Connor shared his enthusiasm for the forced briefing. Preparing for CPR on the skinny, slimy, apparent stranger, O'Connor waited to pull away the soggy hotel hand towel, now gone slightly pink with blood stains.
The only sound in the room was the fart fan and the dripping of water into the bathtub.
“Shit, Chief.” O'Connor didn't want to resurrect the asshole, but this time it looked real. “Dammit! He pulled the damp cloth away to find Paulson's face twisted into a comic death mask, eyes crossed, tongue lolling out. The auditor held it for a moment before exhaling, coughing up some water and phlegm, gasping for air, and then laughing.
“You two ask the stupidest questions, I swear.” A thin tendril of drool and snot trailed down to his already mucus-slathered chest. “Why does everyone have to work for someone?” He spat and attempted to wipe his face on his shoulder. “Fucking hell,” he muttered. Still lashed to the chair, leaned back over the bathtub to keep the floors from completely soaking through.
O'Connor rattled slightly. As relieved as he was that he hadn't killed the guy, he felt a strong impulse to choke the life out of him every time he opened his mouth again. “How in the hell!?”
Paulson chuckled but from a darker place.
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Martinez, taking pity on Paulson, or perhaps just hedging his bets against a potential backlash, took a moment to wipe the snot, blood, and pinkish slime from the auditor's face and chest.
Mr. Paulson bowed his head slightly by way of thanks but chuckled unsettlingly again. “What if I just happened to be a concerned citizen with the unique means to investigate temporal anomalies?” He smiled ingenuously enough that Martinez almost believed him. What if he just happened to be a guy with a bunch of elaborate technology cobbled out of thrift store bins? What if he was some hobbyist wiggly interdimensional anomaly investigator, after all?
“What is with everybody and this temporary investigator thing?” O'Connor asked.
Mr. Paulson chuckled and hung his head, muttering into his chest. “If Mary is leaving you, it's probably not because of the job you're doing here, that's for sure.”
The sentence hung in the cramped bathroom like a gunpowder cloud.
O'Connor plucked the snub-nosed complimentary hair dryer from the wall jack, stretching the tangled spiraled chord out for some length, and wrapped it once around Mr. Paulson's neck. Quietly arranging the tangled spiral of cord around the auditor's throat like a casual garrote, his deranged smile had no visible effect on Mr. Paulson. “What was that nobody? I thought you said something about my wife.”
Martinez, watching the paperwork stack up, thought to intervene, but he didn't want to test the sergeant's rage levels. A man with nothing left to lose was a terrible man to be near. “O'Connor…”
But the sergeant was already refilling the tiny ice bucket in one of the tiny vanity sinks.
Paulson shook his head. “Not much of an electrician, are you?” He rapped his knuckles against the steel frame of the hotel chair.
“You're about to find out.” O'Connor turned off the tap and lifted the plastic novelty bucket out by the handle.
“You're about to find out what a GFI is.” Paulson glanced down at the wet floor and the sergeant's bare feet. “Good for me.”