and that probably shouldn’t be a crime anyway, but heroin? No way.
I tried to keep the conversation to a minimum all the way there. Liz didn’t seem that interested in talking anyway. I just wanted to focus on the hum of the tires on the asphalt, to tap into that droning frequency, as though its steady, mindless whine could calm my nerves and ease me back into some kind of normalcy. I was worried, sitting next to Liz in the confines of the car, that despite my frantic cleanup I smelled faintly of semen and that she would know it, instinctively, through some biological marker deep in her blood.
And that thought took me back, in looping circles, to Brianna Jones; to the stained mattress; to the fact that David Daniels was Tiffany’s brother; to the cop’s gun in my face, the pebbly texture of the street against my cheek, and now the planted evidence in Jendrek’s car. Then there was Pete’s Stick’s death, the phone call from the gatehouse. Tiffany Vargas firing us, bright and early Monday morning. Her inheriting an estate worth tens of millions of dollars. David Daniels washing up on a Malibu beach. By the time I got off on the Third Street exit, I was as tense as ever. What the hell had we gotten ourselves into?
“I don’t know,” Liz said from beside me. Apparently I’d been mumbling out loud.
Police don’t respond well to threats. They’re all like schoolyard bullies. They can dish it but they can’t take it. The mere thought that their authority might be questioned sends them into an irrational panic that causes them to lash out at anything and overreact to everything. It’s even worse when the threat comes from a lawyer. That’s why you never scream and holler and pound your fist on the counter like they do in the movies—this is an outrage! I demand to see my client!—that’s all bullshit. It gets you nowhere.
You go in. You tell them who you are and who you’re there to see. The desk sergeant checks the file, looks on the computer, makes a phone call or two. You wait around for forty-five minutes or an hour. Then some fat bastard who hasn’t lifted anything but a Krispy Kreme in years opens a locked doorway to a long corridor and waves you through, giving you the stink-eye the whole time—so you’re the guy with the smart ass client, he seems to be saying.
They put us in a windowless interview room. I immediately scanned the corners where the walls came together, the tiles in the ceiling, the surfaces of the drab metal table, for anything that looked like a microphone. I doubted they’d be that stupid, but at this point I was suspecting everything and everyone, everywhere I went. Liz watched me, grinning, not from humor but desperation and worry.
“We’re deep in the enemy camp,” I said. “I’m not taking any chances.”
“I’m just waiting to discover this is really a cell and they’ve just gone ahead and arrested us too. Terrorism charges or something worse.” Liz sat in one of the stiff wood chairs and let out a long, slow breath.
I sat beside her and we waited for five minutes. Then another five. There was an old clock on the wall with a mesh grate over it to keep someone from breaking it. It was one of those cheap government clocks, about a foot across with a white face, black numbers, black hands, and a thin red second hand that roamed steadily around the circle, marking off the inexorable pace of our existence. The wire cover seemed an elaborate and expensive method of protecting a very inexpensive clock. And who would want to break it anyway? It wasn’t like smashing it would stop time. And even if it did, who would want to be frozen in a moment where they were trapped in a police interrogation room?
In the stillness, Liz said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you this afternoon.”
It caught me off guard. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. Then I realized I had a litany of things to apologize to her for, but I kept them to myself. We just glanced at each other a few times, like there was something else in the room with us that we didn’t want to look up to see.
Then the lock in the door turned and we could hear movement outside. When the door opened, Jendrek came in wearing one of those bright orange jump suits