places: in the headlights

This was something I knew nothing about.  Interrogation.

I didn't have a place, so I ended up back in the woods not too far from where I had left Rod's corpse.  Driving toward the woods I had wondered if I had nabbed someone of use.

In all the excitement, I didn't know who I had actually taken.  The head that I'd struck, was contorted, a man completely surprise and in a moment of abject fear.  I didn't recognize the face while in that moment.

My mind was filled with all the events of the evening.  The questions were like a jig-saw puzzle - a challenge that I'm not too good at.  Tonight I was going to have to make a man talk. I didn't know how I was going to go about it.  I was going to have to wake him up, fill him fear, and force him to spill his guts.

I opened the trunk.

I heard moaning, but it was a dark hole.  I could only make out the shine of his shoes.

He was still limp.  I clumsily rolled him out onto the hard earth.

He moaned a little more.

"Can you stand?", I asked gruffly.

He quit moaning and became silent.

I cocked his .45 over his form.

He squirmed and slowly got to his knees.  I couldn't see him very well.  I know he couldn't see me.  I made him get up and walk toward and beyond the front of the car.  I leaned his back to the tree and tied him off there.  I turned on the headlights so I could interrogate him - so he couldn't see me.  The bright lights always seemed to work in the movies.

The beams bathed his figure in light.  He squinted and lowered his head.  After a moment of rolling his head around, he looked up.

Well whad'ya know - it was Clayton himself.  He was staring into the lights like a wild animal caught in the middle of the road.  He looked scared.  All those times I'd been to his place - he seemed confident and aloof - so sure of himself.

Wide-eyed, he was still like a cartoon - staring in my direction, trying to make out his captor.

"Who are you?"

"Why am I here?" 

"I think I'm bleeding."

Maybe my job is going to be easier than I thought.