The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,100

there. Did you book the other two?”

“I wanted to wait for you to get here.”

Price sighed with exasperation. “You know,” he said, and rolled his eyes, “you really got to work on your confidence, Kirk. We’ve talked about this. You let Luanne and all them others bust on you too much.” When Kirk said nothing, he continued. “Well, might as well get on the horn. I know they’re looking all over hell and earth for this one.” He looked at Amy. “You okay, girl?”

Amy, who was sitting on the concrete bench next to Wolgast, gave a little nod.

“She said she wanted to,” Kirk repeated.

“I don’t care what she said.” Price took a key from a compartment on his belt and unlocked the cell. “Come on, girly,” he said, and extended a hand. “Jail cell’s no place for you. Let’s get you a pop or something. And Kirk, get Mavis on the phone, will you? Tell her we need her over here pronto.”

When they were alone again, Doyle, who was slouched on the concrete bench, tipped his head back, closing his eyes. “For Christsakes,” he moaned. “It’s like an episode of Green Acres.”

About half an hour passed; Wolgast could hear Kirk and Price talking in the other room, deciding what to do, whom to call first. The state police? The DA’s office? So far, they hadn’t even booked them yet. But it was all right; this would happen in due course. Wolgast heard the door open and then a woman’s voice, talking to Amy, telling her what a pretty girl she was and asking her what her rabbit’s name was, and would she maybe like an ice cream, the store around the corner was opening in just a few minutes, she’d be glad to go and get her one. All of it just as Wolgast had foreseen when, sitting in the Tahoe in the darkened car wash, he’d decided to turn himself in. He was glad he’d done it, so glad it surprised him, and the cell, which he guessed was the first of many in his life, didn’t seem so bad. He wondered if that was how Anthony Carter had felt, if he had said to himself, This is my life from now on.

Price stepped up to the cell, holding the key. “Staties on the way,” he said, rocking on his heels. “You all must have stirred up some real hornet’s nest from the sound of it.” He tossed a pair of cuffs through the bars. “I’m thinking you all know how to use these.”

Doyle and Wolgast cuffed themselves; Price opened the cell and led them back to the office. Amy was sitting in a folding metal chair by the reception desk, her backpack on her lap, eating an ice cream sandwich. A grandmotherly woman in a green pantsuit was sitting beside her, showing her a coloring book.

“He’s my daddy,” Amy told the woman.

“This one here?” the woman said, turning her head. She had dark, drawn-on eyebrows and a rigid helmet of raven-black hair—a wig. She looked at Wolgast quizzically, then back at Amy. “This man here’s your daddy?”

“It’s all right,” Wolgast said.

“That’s my daddy,” Amy repeated. Her voice was stern, correcting. “Daddy, we have to go right now.”

Price had taken out a fingerprinting kit; behind them, Kirk was setting up a screen and camera, to take their mug shots.

“What’s that about?” Price asked him.

“It’s a long story,” Wolgast managed.

“Daddy, now.”

Wolgast heard the door to the office open behind him. The woman lifted her face. “Help you?”

“Hey, good morning,” said a man’s voice. There was something familiar about it. Price was holding Wolgast’s right hand by the wrist, to roll his fingers in the ink. Then Wolgast saw the expression on Doyle’s face, and he knew.

“This the sheriff’s office?” Richards was saying. “Hey, everyone. Whoa, are those things real? That’s a lot of guns. Here, I’ve got something to show you.”

Wolgast swiveled in time to see Richards shoot the woman in the forehead. One shot, close range, muffled to a clap by the long bore of the suppressor. She rocked back in her chair, her eyes startled open, her wig askew on her head. A delicate frond of blood wet the floor behind her. Her arms lifted and then fell again, into stillness.

“Sorry,” Richards said, wincing a little. He stepped around the desk. The room was filled with the acrid odor of gunpowder smoke. Price and Kirk were frozen with fear where they stood, their jaws hanging open. Or perhaps