the jacket. What was I turning into?
When we’d gotten in, tied up, and locked the gun in his truck, Erik called the police. It was just a few moments before they were there and I took the time to be seized by a fresh set of nervous shakes.
Erik and I went over our story—I couldn’t believe I was going to lie to the police and said so. Erik reminded me that I was telling the truth, just a highly abbreviated version: Erik caught the guy on his boat, explaining why his truck was there as well as the car that the guy drove. He and I were there looking for a necklace I’d lost on our last trip out; I was frantic when I’d found I’d lost it. We surprised the stranger, there was a scuffle, and we tied him up.
When Ernie saw the cops, he immediately started screaming again, but in a different pitch, saying that we were going to kill him, that we were torturing him…
Erik took my hand and squeezed it. I could feel my teeth grinding together, I was trying so hard to keep my mouth shut.
I knew the cop who came, Officer Lovell, because I’d met him during the to-do out at the Chandler house a couple years back. He stared at Ernie in amazement.
“You’re gonna have to do a little better than that, mister. Erik Reynolds is a business owner, got kids in the Sunday school here. Hell, I eat at his place once or twice a month, special night out for me and my wife. He always looks after us. And Mrs…. er, Professor Fielding, everyone knows her.”
I looked up, startled. Who the hell knew me?
“She does these programs about archaeology and history and stuff here at the schools for the kids, does some of her archaeology work, right here in town. And she’s a teacher, up someplace in Maine, there. Very respectable person.”
Respectable was news to me. I’d always thought of myself as politely invisible at best.
“So you’re going to have to come up with a better story than that they were torturing you out on a boat, threatening your life and all.”
“Officer Lovell. I admit, I had the shotgun, but it was never loaded. I just wanted to make sure the guy wasn’t going to try anything.” Erik asked permission and then showed Lovell that the shotgun was indeed unloaded; he must have removed the shells about the same time he locked the gun back up in his truck. “I didn’t want him to get any ideas about rushing us…and with Emma here…” he trailed off, shrugging, obviously playing the knight protecting the damsel in distress.
“You got your paperwork?”
I felt my stomach turn over as Erik dug out the license and ID. Torture was exactly what we’d done, even if there had been no actual violence beyond the slap that I’d seen. Just the threat of it had been enough, and I was sickened by what I had said, what I had been playing at. I looked over and Erik was nodding sorrowfully, as if he was shocked and hurt by the crazy allegations against us. I don’t know how he did it; I felt the urge to confess the truth, that it was largely as Ernie had said just then. I stuck my hand in my pocket and turned away, a whisker away from admitting everything….
Then I felt the picture of Brian jab me under the fingernail. A sharp pain, and cold anger flooded me. He had threatened Brian, and that negated everything else.
Didn’t it?
I spoke aloud, maybe trying to convince myself. “Look, whatever he might have tried to do tonight—which was bad enough—whatever he was planning to do, he also knows the guy who I think shot Nolan, down at the gym.”
I thought I saw a flash of determination on Erik’s face, really the first look of true emotion I’d seen since he’d mentioned Raylene and the kids. But it was very dark and I was very tired.
The questioning seemed to go on forever, but Lovell assured me that they would find out as much as they could, and finally took Ernie away. That’s when I started feeling sick again, my body rebelling at this new self-knowledge. And still, part of me gloried in it, the stepping outside of the bounds, the violence of it, and the realization that I didn’t crumble in the face of it.
Nolan and Temple would be proud of me, I thought with horror. I