The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,78

and an address.

“Who’s Brigitte Fitzpatrick?”

LouElla’s smile could have opened a can of cat food. “Why don’t you go find out?”

23

Jem was halfway back to Toro’s, still turning over the name Brigitte Fitzpatrick, wondering why he didn’t recognize it and how the bitch could have stolen his identity, when his phone rang. He answered it without checking the screen.

“Hannah’s been arrested.”

It took him a moment to place Caleb’s voice.

“Ok,” Jem said. “I’ll be right over.”

“No,” Caleb said. “I’ve got to—I don’t know. I’m going down to the station, and I’m going to see what we do next.”

“What you do next is get a lawyer,” Jem said. “A good one.”

“I know that!” Caleb drew a broken breath. “I’ll pay you whatever Hannah agreed to pay you. I just want you to prove she didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“What was the charge when they arrested her?”

“Murdering that woman.”

“Joy Erickson?”

“Yes.” Someone spoke in the background, and Caleb said, “I know, I know.” Then, to Jem, he said, “I’ve got to go.”

The call disconnected before Jem could answer.

As he drove the rest of the way to Toro’s, he called Tean and told him what had happened.

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” Tean said.

“Just say it. Just one time. Fuck.”

“Should we go down there?”

“Just once. You can whisper it if you want.”

“I mean, would they even let us talk to her?”

“I won’t even make you put a dollar in the swear jar.”

“Jem!”

Jem turned into Toro’s lot and guided the Charger to the back of the lot. As he parked it behind the mildewed box truck, he said, “I think one option is to go to the station. But you know how these things go.”

“Not really.”

“The whole process takes time, and that means we’ll just sit around waiting. Probably better to wait until we know where Hannah is going to be held until the arraignment and try the normal visiting hours.”

“Or I could call Ammon.”

Jem turned off the car, rested one elbow on the steering wheel, his palm pressed to his forehead.

“It’s worth a shot,” Tean said.

“You know what?” Jem said. “Do whatever you want.” And he disconnected the call.

He went inside Your Friend Towing and Auto Mechanic, where Marcy looked like she was having a competition with herself for the biggest bubble she could blow with her gum. Toro was on the phone, so Jem just hung the keys where he’d gotten them, waved, and headed out.

His phone buzzed as he approached the motorcycle.

“I’m going over to the station,” Tean said. “I can’t get Ammon on the phone.”

“Like I said: do whatever you want.”

“Will you please go with me? And before you say no because you’re mad, remember that you’re working for Hannah and Caleb and you can count this as billable time.”

“I never say no just because I’m mad.”

“So you are mad?”

“I’ve had a weird day.”

For a full second, the call was silent, and then Tean said, “Maybe you should tell me about it.”

“I’d hate to keep your phone busy. Ammon might call.”

“That’s not fair. You really don’t sound good. What happened? Are you ok?”

“I’ll meet you at the police station, but I’m telling you, we’re going to be sitting around with our dicks in our hands for the rest of the day.”

“Hey, will you please tell me what—”

Jem disconnected again. The phone was buzzing when he got on the Kawasaki, but the nice thing about a motorcycle was that you had a great excuse not to answer any calls. By the time he was on I-215, he couldn’t even tell if the phone was still vibrating.

The May afternoon was warm. His windbreaker rustled and snapped as the bike hit sixty. The valley looked like a bowl of shit: the brown slopes of the Wasatch Mountains, the brown stucco of homes and businesses, the bleached brown of empty lots and dead weeds. Sure, the peach trees were in bloom, and the lawns were green, and everybody and their mother had roses these days, but that was the thing about shit—it made a hell of a fertilizer.

The Salt Lake Police Department’s main facility was in the heart of the city, relatively new construction that looked like a glass-and-steel amoeba. Jem found a parking spot in the lot, and he locked the windbreaker and his tools in the under-seat storage. Then he made his way to the entrance and sat on a bench. A pair of guys in their twenties were talking quietly to an older woman who was crying—she had a daisy in