Bats hit her again just as McTough walked through the door, visor and all.
He frowned at the bleeding mare strapped to the chair. Her orange fur clung to her body, saturated by cold sweat. “Did the coffee machine break again?” he asked Bats.
He shrugged in response.
“Coffee’s burnt all to hell,” he mumbled.
Bats nodded and respectfully took up his post in the corner. Noir circled the mare once, then poured the coffee over her head. He waited until she was done screaming before sitting down on the opposite end of the table.
McTough hated interrogation rooms. They reminded him of the roomy modernistic confessionals of the church his parents forced him to attend as a child. He was a man aching to serve justice, and he could do surprisingly little of that in this room. Law was on the streets with the drug dealers and the murderers and, in this case, the thieves. Few times did a true confession come out here, and never a good arrest. Almost always it was silence, and then the horrible proper talk of lawyers, eight to the bar to the crowbar to the side of his head.
“You know why I’m here?” he asked. He felt a headache coming on, but he closed his eyes and it went away.
No response.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he repeated, his tone as flat as a mirror.
The mare shook her head violently, along with the rest of her body. Her mane fell around her face in purple knots as she came to rest. She looked up and saw her pathetic bleeding face reflected in the visor he wore over his face. Horrified, she looked up at the lights until her vision swam with white spots.
“Multiple witnesses identified you as a member of the two-pony gang that’s been robbing banks around Ponyville. You don’t remember that?”
She shook again. No, she probably meant.
“So you didn’t do it?”
No no. Two shakes. Or yes.
“Are you going to talk?”
She shook all over.
Turning to Bats, McTough heaved a sigh. “You didn’t give her a concussion, did you?”
He shrugged.
“What have you been doing to her this whole time?”
No response.
“Look miss, one nod means no, two nods means yes. Is that clear?”
Nod.
“Where did you put all the money?”
Silence.
“Did you hide it in your home? Did you put it in a bank?”
Nod. Nod.
“Was that a yes for each? Or a no?” he asked impatiently.
Nod. Reset. Nod. Hard reset. She was shaking again.
“Did you give her a concussion?” McTough asked Bats.
“She’s just terrified, that’s all sir,” he replied.
McTough sighed into his hooves so as not to fog up the visor. Justice was blind, but it was also impatient. He straightened his posture and corrected his vision so his head aligned with hers. This way he could focus on her potential liar’s tells while still projecting a sense of unblinking all-seeing authority upon her. “Look, miss, we have irrefutable testimony that you are the mare who robbed these banks.”
He stood up. From the file cabinet in the corner he produced a thin manilla envelope. “You have no account with that bank. No business with it whatsoever. You’re on summer break from the university of Fillydelphia--which lines up with the dates of all these robberies.”
“Goin’ for your master’s,” Bats added. “Student debt piles up pretty fast these days.”
“Equestria always needs more political scientists.”
“Working on your thesis, too? We recovered it from your hotel. Very studious of you.”
“What’s it about?” Bats asked.
McTough opened one of the files on the table and tilted his head back to read the print. “Moral and Consequential Effects of Rigorous and Overbearing Legal and Governmental Systems on the Psychology and Emotional Well-Being of its Citizens.”
“Sounds like pissbeak-speak to me.”
“Pretty pissbeak-speaky. But I don’t think that’s what you were going for, right?”
No, or maybe half-yes.
“Anyway, it’s got too many conjunctions. It needs work.”
“Like that one song,” Bats chimed in from the corner. “Conjunction junction, what’s your function.”
The two agents bobbed their heads in unison and finished the line, “Hook together words and phrases and clauses.”
The writer despaired in silence, unable to defend her work.
“Anyway,” Noir continued, waving the papers in front of his face like an ornate fan, “I would like to be lenient on you since you obviously have a lot to contribute to the political and moral landscape of Equestria, but I’m afraid you’re putting me in a corner. I don’t know what else to think when you won’t even make the effort to defend yourself from all these accusations.”
No no no no no. Or yes yes no.
“Understand our position here. Think of me. What can I do? I am tasked with dispensing justice. I really truly believe in it. All the evidence points to you, and your partner of course.”
No no no. Yes no? No yes?
“The crime of first degree robbery, which is what you’ll be indicted for, carries a sentence of five to fifty years imprisonment. That’s one count. You and your partner have three counts on your head. You can gamble that the judge will go easy on you since you pay your taxes on time and go on charity missions to the Borderlands, but I assure you he won’t.”
Half-no.
“Nopony will go easy on you. You’re a menace to society. Understand me? A menace to society. You nearly killed an old veteran for his jewels and shot up a pair of banks. You’ve gained a name for yourself, though you don’t actually have a name officially. We don’t want this turning into a Bonnie and Clydesdale story. We’re gonna lock you up until you die to make sure nopony tries to pull a vigilante self-helper again.”
The mare wailed. The noise sounded otherworldly.
“The only pony who will try and cut you any slack here is me. Understand?” He rapped his hoof on the tabletop. “Me. I’m the only one who can help you here. Understand? Understand? Nod.”
No.
“If you come clean, if you give us info on your partner--his name, where he lives, who he sleeps with at night--I can probably convince the judge to give you five years plus community service. You love this community don’t you? Your record says you already do plenty of community service. It’ll be like nothing’s changed.”
She opened her mouth.
“There, see? You love community service. It’ll be alright. Here--we’ll compromise. You don’t have to talk.” Like magic, he whisked a pen and paper from beneath the table and placed it in front of her. “You can just write down the details we need.” He motioned to the other agent. “Untie her hooves, would you?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. She’s a fighter. Kickboxes and everything.”
“Kickboxing? What does a university mare need with kickboxing?”
“That’s probably how she manufactured all those daring escapes. A little illusion magic and lots of brute force.”
“I don’t think he special talent is illusion magic.”
“Well, how else did she mask her magical signature and pull off all those advanced spells?”
“What’s her cutie mark again?”
“Fiery heart. A passion for public speaking.”
Yes yes.
“Are you going to untie her or not?” McTough asked.
“I think it would end poorly for us.”
“You’re scared of her?”
“You saw what she did to the receptionist. He’s impotent now.”
“We’re not allowed to marry. What do you have to lose? Going on another date tomorrow?”
The mare clenched her teeth.
“Look, I have my baton on me, so if she tries to kick you where the sun doesn’t shine I’ll just beat her to death and then you won’t have to worry about your Genghis Khan complex.”
“Twilight Sparkle.”
The mare had a hideous voice. She gurgled when she talked, like she had just eaten an excess of chocolate, and she spit when she hit the ‘S’. Her head lolled. Half-liquid blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
The two agents exchanged a glance. “What was that?” McTough asked.
She coughed up a long trail of mucus and fluid onto the table. McTough deftly moved the pen and paper out of the way.
“Twilight Sparkle,” she repeated. “I wanted to visit Twilight Sparkle.”
“So,” he leaned into the word, dragging it, a cadenza before his resolution--”you’re saying you’re in town to visit Princess Sparkle, whom you should always address formally, who would help you with your dissertation out of the goodness of her own heart? You’re not here to exact revenge on the big bad bankers who are piling up their chips against you?”
“She’s an associate fellow at Fillydelphia U,” the mare rasped.
McTough stood up and motioned the other agent towards the door. “Excuse us.”
“What do you think?” the other agent asked once the door shut behind them.
“I don’t think it’s her.” McTough pulled up one of the five folding chairs spread around a metal table bolted to the ground. He motioned towards the two-way mirror, where a bruised and broken mare sobbed onto the table, restraints on all four legs holding her upright. “The evidence doesn’t really stack up against her. It’s bizarre, but I don't think she’s our Bonnie.”
“What, you believe her? Maybe the princess is our Clydesdale. Maybe they’re lesbian lovers in secret, and rob banks to finance their indecent lifestyle.”
“Don’t talk about the princess like that.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not saying Princess Sparkle is involved. But the evidence against her isn’t damning enough. We’ll need more information out of her. There are other orange and purple mares out there. But we can probably delegate it to the peons or trainees. I don’t think this is worth our time when we could be tracking down more valuable leads.”
“Do you have any valuable leads? I don’t.”
McTough hesitated. Tapped his hoof on the bottom of the chair. Ting tingka-ting, it went, like a busted old ride cymbal. “I think it’s connected to Noir somehow.”
“Celestia, is that all you can think about?” The other agent threw his hooves up. “We have a real crime spree falling right into our lap, and you’re worried about chasing down that washed up marefia cop piece of trash?”
“He is more important than a few banks.”
“No, sir, he’s not. This is important. this is what’s happening today. This has ponies writing letters to their princess. Noir and his backwards marefia bullshit is old news.” He paused. “You’re not trying to throw this mare away so you can spend more time chasing Noir, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not. I’m worried--for you and this case. If this mare slips through our hooves and then winds up shooting up the next bank she robs--” He realized his mistake just as it came flying out of his mouth, a disgusting drooly mix of blood from an old wound and acid. “If this mare ends up being Bonnie, it’s on us.”
“I’m worried about the big picture. The ENB gets robbed again--big deal. They’re required to insure their customers. They could fold completely and nopony would be down a single bit, bar the shareholders.” He paused. “What if whoever is behind this decides to grow a pair and go after the Crystal Heart?”
“Gods. The victory tour. I forgot about that.”
“And that still leaves the question of our Clydesdale. Even if we have half the operation locked up in that room sobbing her eyes out, he is still very capable of killing for it.”
“Gods.”
“The ultimate bargaining chip. He could start a second great war. The Crystal Empire would bomb us to shreds for allowing their Heart to disappear on our watch. You know they would.”
“So you think Clydesdale is Noir?”
Old memories rang in Noir’s skull like distant gunshots. He saw the ponies again, screaming and falling to the floor just behind his reflection. He counted them again. 19, same as always. “Noir’s too old. He can’t run anymore, and he wasn’t handsome enough to be charming in his better years. I think if we catch our Clydesdale we’ll find Noir’s hoofprints all over him. Maybe he puts his hoof on a map and Bonnie and Clydesdale run in with guns. Maybe he’s got them blackmailed. You know how it goes, if you’re in debt to him you’re in debt for life.”
“Maybe.”
McTough nodded at the mirror again. “Someone should call a doctor.” He stood up and took a step towards the door leading to the main workroom of the police station. “I’m going to take a walk, then. Maybe get some coffee that doesn’t taste like shit. Would you like some?”
“Was that an order?”
The door slammed behind McTough. Bats reeled in surprise, bobbing his head like the pummeled idiot in the mirror.