Free Muzzled by June Whyte Page B

mini-dress that showcased his hairy legs and frilly knickers, leaned over and burped his vomit-enhanced breath in my face—I decided I might as well bang my head against the prison bars until I passed out.
    Reporting Jack Lantana’s murder to Detective Inspector Adams was a big mistake. Think Tyrannosaurus Rex big. I should have contacted a nice polite uniformed constable and left the Colombo look-alike to get on with whatever he’d been doing before I disturbed him. Probably torturing some sweet old Granny he’d caught smoking pot to relieve the pain of her arthritis.
    It took four rangers from the local dog-pound, each armed with a tranquilizer gun, to capture and remove the Cujos. But the moment they’d settled the dogs in the RSPCA vehicle, DI Adams acted. Through the smashed window of the lounge we heard Adams shouting instructions to his back-up team before hauling off and breaking down the front door.
    “We must stop meeting like this,” Tanya told him, saluting his hurried arrival with a can of VB beer—her sixth—as we met him on the other side of the broken door. He scowled, pushed past us and stomped toward the kitchen. We followed. When he reached the industrial sized refrigerator his face grew grim. One look inside and Adams promptly radioed in something called a Code 503: ‘ White Caucasian—60 to 65 years of age—around 85 kilos—probable cause of death, several blows to the head with a blunt instrument.’
    Within minutes, a team of CIB detectives and uniformed police arrived on the scene. While they spread their tentacles into every crack of Lantana’s house, DI Adams produced two sets of police-issue handcuffs and, reading us our rights, fastened them around our wrists.
    End result—after an hour long interrogation, Tanya and I were incarcerated in a holding cell at our local police station, awaiting bail.
    I cringed as Burping Bertha belched in my face again. My stomach did a back flip and I instinctively screwed my nose and turned my head away. That’s when Bertha’s mate, a short fat guy with a small hairy patch just below his bottom lip and tats decorating every exposed body part, shadow-boxed in front of me—all the better to display his flopping belly and active tattoos. That was okay until he leaned into me, face so close his broken nose almost touched mine.
    “Reckon ya too good for me and me mate, eh?” Tat Guy said, thin lips twisting in a sneer. “Think ya somethin’ special, hey, bitch?”
    I was dead meat. No—I was maggoty dead meat. I flattened my shoulders against the rough gray wall behind me until every crevice poked through my sweater. A doomed fly eying a raised can of Mortein spray.
    “Oh, no,” I squeaked. “Not me . I’m definitely not special. I’m just an un-special nobody.”
    Tat Guy made a noise like a constipated vacuum cleaner and spat on the floor, barely missing my one hundred dollar Adidas sneakers, bought at a 50% off sale. “Because if ya do, bitch, I’ll have to smash ya teeth through the back of ya head.” He grabbed me by the neck of my sweater. “Unnerstand?”
    “Understand? Oh, yes. I understand,” I gasped through partially closed off airways. “This un-special nobody understands perfectly.”
    Tanya, who’d been slumped on the bench beside me, singing something from West Side Story and hiccupping when she forgot the words, staggered to her feet. “Hey, you! Porky! Leave my best friend alone.” Bottom lip protruding, she shoved Tat Guy in the chest, her ten pretty pink lacquered nails digging into his sweaty exposed skin.
    Holy catfish ! What was Tanya doing? Committing suicide? Had sculling six cans of booze in ten minutes robbed her of all rational thought?
    I took a shuddering breath as Tat Guy’s hold on my sweater loosened. And just when I’d resolved to break free and insert myself between Tanya and the two hundred pound porker, endure the punch that was surely coming her way, Burping Bertha reached out, his ham sized fist