by Lulu Pratt
The phone rang several times, and with each ring my heart pounded harder, until I worried that I was in cardiac arrest. A small part of me willed him not to answer.
But apparently my telepathic message didn’t go through. On the fourth ring, he picked up.
“Hey, Zoe,” he said. He sounded so normal, so nonchalant, as though I often called him at night just to chitchat. Maybe in another life, I would have. We could have talked for hours about our days, about our families, about our dreams. But that was before I found out he was working to prosecute me.
Meanwhile, based on the tone of his voice, if he knew anything, he was hiding it well. The notion only made me angrier.
“How could you?” I sputtered.
Silence.
I pressed, “Are you gonna pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about? Because I’ll go apeshit if—”
“You got the summons.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
I laughed, a dark, twisted chortle. “Damn fucking right I got the summons.”
Beat. “I’m sorry, Zoe—”
“No! Don’t ‘I’m sorry’ me. You played me. I thought we were something real, that all this was maybe leading to a future together. But no, you’re just like every other man. You want me when it’s convenient, but the minute it serves you better to screw me over, I’m toast. God, I should have known. You were too good to be true.”
“That’s just not true, and if you would listen—”
“Be honest, did you do this?”
“Did I do what?”
“Did you,” I asked in a rasp, “orchestrate this? How long have you been planning it for? The entire time we were together?” New tears fell down my face at this last thought.
“No, Zoe. I didn’t orchestrate it. This was above my pay grade.”
That didn’t really answer the question. “That’s not what I’m asking, I’m trying — I mean, what I’m getting at… did you know that I was gonna be labeled as a defendant?”
A pause. A very, very long pause. One that told me all I needed to know.
At last, he replied, “Yes. I knew.”
A sob burst out of my mouth, and through it, I managed to cry, “Go fuck yourself.”
“Listen, Zoe, this is the truth. My partner, Tom, believes that you did it. He’s not trying to fill a quota or anything, and this isn’t personal. But the district attorney has taken a look at all the evidence and the circumstances, and she thinks there’s grounds to take you to court. That’s the truth.”
I had to ask. I didn’t want to, but for my own peace of mind, I needed to. I felt like I was marching myself in front of a firing squad.
“Do you think I did it?” I whispered into the phone. I’d lost the energy to shout, the wind had gone out of my sails.
“Well, I’m not sure it’s that cut and dry—”
“Cut the crap. Tell me, Dylan,” I interjected. “Tell me if you think there’s even a shadow of a possibility that I staged the robbery to recoup my losses.”
The silence lasted so long this time that I thought the phone might have gone dead. I pulled the screen away from my face, and saw that no, the timer on the call was still running. Which meant that Dylan was still there.
Minutes later — or what passed as minutes in my rage-addled brain — he finally responded.
“Yes,” he said. “I think it’s possible. I’m not saying I believe it but… I can’t rule it out.”
Pause.
“Okay,” I replied, with an eerie calm that I didn’t feel. “Lose this number. Forget everything we had.”
“But Zoe—”
“There’s nothing else you can say. We’re done here. You’ve broken my heart, Dylan, in ways I didn’t even know it could break. It was my fault, really. I should’ve known better than to trust you.”
I waited for his deep voice to burn back through the phone line, but he remained silent.
“What we are,” I continued, “is professional. Nothing more. You aren’t my lover, you’re the officer who is trying to hang me out to dry. I’ll see you in fucking court.”
With that I hung up on him, and threw the phone down. I didn’t check to see if the screen cracked. I didn’t much care. Who was there left to contact me? I was alone, more alone than I’d ever been.
I tried to stand up and get my bearings, but I was inexplicably woozy. I stumbled, and tried to grab hold of the table, but my hands no longer felt connected to my body. The room was spinning, and the blood rushed from my head.
There was just enough time for me to wonder if I should eat a cookie to raise my blood pressure before I fainted to the floor in a heap.
CHAPTER 29
Dylan
I stared at the phone, willing it to come back to life. I tapped a few buttons — I was still on a flip phone — hoping that the machine would tell me that I’d just lost signal. I knew better, but I tried anyways.
Sitting back in my chair, I let the phone drop onto the desk. I gazed at the walls, waiting for something else to happen, for something to occupy the oxygen that felt too thick for me alone.
Nothing came.
I’d ruined the only prospective partnership in my future — but that was too cold a way to think of it. Because Zoe wasn’t just a partner, she was a new lease on life. God, why did this always happen to me? The minute things looked like they were going well, the world threw me another fucking curveball.
And Danny… then there was Danny. I’d deprived him of a possible mother, or at least, a mother figure. I could take any blow I dealt to myself, but I was terrified to think that my poor decisions were taking a toll on my kid. He was little, now, but what about when he got older? Would he know enough to blame me for cheating him out of a second parent?
“You fucking fool,” I muttered to myself. Then louder, “You damned, irresponsible, awful motherfucker!”
With that, I rose from my chair, knocking it over, and tripped over the leg. The pain shot up my body and I groaned. I tried unsuccessfully to swallow the pain. This one was gonna be a bitch. I stumbled over to the office freezer and managed to put a couple of ice cubes in a paper towel, which I held to my leg. Ouch. I was looking at a least of week of tenderness. Just great.
If nothing else, though, the pain gave me a moment of insightful clarity. I had to get Zoe back, that much I’d already known. She was a great woman, and a good one. And a part of me did believe that, theoretically, it was possible she’d committed the crime.
But a bigger part of me — the part that was run by my heart — didn’t fucking care. If she’d done it… well, so be it. We let guys at the Black Dog skate by on criminal activities because they were a convenience for us. Meanwhile, if Zoe had in fact staged a breakin to cover her debts, which mind you I’m sure were unreasonably high due to rising loan rates, she hadn’t done it to be a menace to society, she would have done it to chase her dreams.
I couldn’t begrudge someone chasing their dreams. That wasn’t what enforcing the law was about.
More importantly, it wasn’t too late for me to prove that she was innocent. So that’s exactly what I set out to do.
Clutching the ice, I limped back to my desk, picked the chair back up, sat down, and began to do a computer search through all relevant files. I sought out any men or women with previous histories of breakins, especially ones that required big hauls. I kept the search within Fallow Springs as we were fifty miles from the nearest town, and somebody would’ve needed to case the joint before the robbery, as Tom and I had already established.
One search after another came up dry. Growing discouraged, I pushed away from my desk, and headed for the row of file cabinets. Maybe trusting the computer had been my mistake. I needed to sift through these cases, one by one. It would take all night. I texted my mom, asking her nicely to put Danny to bed — I’d be at work late.
She agreed, and I continued my search, focusing especially on the names I could recall from recent robberies. Still nada. I went all th
e way back to archives from the nineties. More nada. I rubbed my forehead in frustration. What next? I certainly wasn’t ready to give up, but I didn’t have any insight on where to move from here.
I went back to my desk with a couple of folders that I knew would lead nowhere and put in a few phone calls that I knew would amount to little. But I took every step possible, methodically, because Zoe’s future was in jeopardy.
The calls were just more dead ends, that sounded something like, “Please leave a message after the tone.”
“The number you’re trying to reach is no longer in service.”
And my favorite, “Dull buzzing noise.”
I was powerless, like a bird with its wings clipped. All I wanted was to be Zoe’s protector, but I couldn’t even help her with my professional skills. Some fucking cop, right?
I resisted the urge to slam the receiver down. Instead, I leaned over, and put my head on the desk. I just needed a second to think, to—
“What are you doing here, kid?”
I swiveled around, almost reaching for my gun. I stopped in time, though, it was just Tom.
“Me?” I replied, gathering my bearings. “What about you?”
“Your mom called, said you texted that you were staying late tonight. And I knew I hadn’t given you any instructions to hang back, so something must be up.”
“She’s getting nosy,” I muttered.
“No, she’s getting worried.” He paused and looked at the voluminous piles of folders on my desk. “What the hell is this?”
“Folders,” I said sulkily.
He groaned, obviously not in the mood for a runaround. “Yes, Dylan, I see that they are literally folders. I’m asking you why the damn folders are on your desk, and not in the file cabinet? Or do you need me to clarify the question, since you seem to be having such a hard time keeping up?”
I scratched my cheek, and mumbled something along the lines of, “Uh, you know. Just doin’ a little work.”
His patience was beginning to wear thin. “At nine at night? When you have a kid waiting at home for you?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m not gonna be mad, just tell me what this is about.”
It was time to come clean.
“Well,” I said, “I’m looking into Zoe’s case.”
His eyes narrowed. “What for?”
“Just, uh, following some leads.”
“What leads? I don’t know about any leads.”
I wanted to stand, but I knew that if I stood just then, it would look like a power move. So, I sat in the chair and jiggled my leg.
“There weren’t any hard leads,” I continued, “so to speak. But I’m just looking for something—”
“That’ll get Zoe off the hook?” he interjected.
I stayed silent. What was there to say? He’d nailed it.
“God, you can’t be serious,” Tom said. “I know you like her, but that doesn’t mean she’s innocent.”
“But what if she is?” I shot back. “And what if we aren’t doing our due diligence on this case, just because we both know it’d be an easy conviction?”
He appeared unsteady for a brief moment, and replied, “We’ve done plenty of work. All roads lead back to Zoe.”
“I think you’re blinded by the superficial details.”
“And I think you’re blinded by your feelings.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m a child!” I yelled. “Yes, I like Zoe, okay? It’s true. Maybe even… maybe down the line, I could love her. But if that’s ever gonna happen, I need to clear her good name. And she’s good, Tom, she’s so good. She just — you don’t know her, but if you did — you’d understand this isn’t something she would do.”
He stared blankly at me, as though his mind had evacuated his body.
I went on, “So, yeah, I’m investigating this further because I know we’re missing something, and if I was the man who didn’t at least try to stand up for the woman he cares about… then I’d be no man at all.”
Even if she hates me right now, I added internally.
Tom tugged the cowboy hat down over his forehead, obscuring his eyes. Quietly, he replied, “All right, Dylan. I’m tired of fighting. Do what you want.”
“No, Tom, wait—”
But he didn’t stick around to hear me out. His boots pounded on the floor as he stomped out of the cubicles, and to the front door. He left the way he came, though this time with a greater slump in his shoulders. As if something were weighing him down and bowing his back.
I was wrenched with guilt. Was there anybody else even left for me to alienate? First Zoe, now Tom. I suspected my mom was none too pleased with me, either. Was Danny the only person still on my side? Or was everybody else’s resentment of me slowly started to mold his impressionable brain? I shuddered at the thought.
The only thing I knew with an absolute certainty, was that I had to finish what I started. That was how I could begin to make things right with every important person in my life.
And that meant seeing this case through.
It was obvious what I had to do next, but that certainly didn’t make it easier. Being a man ain’t easy, my brain whispered. Finally, some sound wisdom.
So, I took a deep breath, and sent a text message:
I need to interview your employees tomorrow morning at nine. Just following up on case business.
The response from Zoe came back instantaneously.
Fine
CHAPTER 30
Zoe
I walked into the bakery the next morning with rage coursing through my veins. Like, how fucking dare he?
I was so overwhelmed that I wasn’t even sure what I was pissed about. The fact that Dylan was trying to do his job? I mean, much as I may have wanted to, I couldn’t actually fault him for that.
Maybe it was just that he’d had the nerve to text me about it. Text me! As though we were still on chummy terms. No, not okay. If he had to keep working the case, fine, so be it. But did he have to do it so cavalierly, as if nothing had passed between us?
It was six, and I was ready to hit some shit. I started kneading the dough for the day, until kneading turned into straight up pounding the dough, as if I were waiting for it to cry uncle.
“Stupid.”
Pound.
“Lying.”
Pound.
“No good.”
Pound.
“Son of a bitch!”
Pound, pound and pound again. The dough took everything I threw at it and took it silently. Maybe, I thought, I should resign myself to the life of a pastry chef. Married to my baked goods. Nobody talks back at me and everything is always sweet.
Never mind that the bigger part of me, like an idiot, still wanted love. As if that ever did anybody ever good. The greatest hurts I’d been dealt in life thus far were because I had the audacity to love another person. Some good it’d done me.
And Dylan… well, I wasn’t sure I was falling in love. Yet. But it had definitely been barreling away to ‘love,’ that was the clear trajectory of our intimate moments. I’d never met a man so protective but kind, strong but fatherly, and…
“No,” I said to myself. “Shut up.” I couldn’t let myself think about all his fine attributes, when he’d just admitted he hated me.
Ok, he didn’t say that, but he did say he thought I was guilty. Or like, possibly maybe guilty. Same difference. I wasn’t about to date a man who pegged me as a criminal, talk about not setting yourself up for success. What, like we were gonna get married in the prison courtyard and I’d honeymoon in an orange jumpsuit? Nu-uh.
“Just focus on the bread,” I instructed my turbulent mind. But I knew it would take more than words to calm me.
Wiping the flour off my hands, I went to my purse, and grabbed my cell phone. I hooked it up to a little Bluetooth speaker that I always kept close at hand in case of emergencies. Dance emergencies, not, y’know, real ones.
The small box powered up, and I connected my music library
. In no time, Bowie was blaring from the speaker, which vibrated so powerfully it almost tipped off the counter.
“We could be heroes,” I sang into a baguette. “Just for one day.”
A pirouette around a dining table. Some air guitar.
And just as Bowie was about to close out the song, the front door opened. Kelly, along with Donovan and Samuel — the two other men I contracted — were staring at me, mortified by my unabashed performance.
“Uh, hey boss,” said Donovan, unsure if that term even applied to me anymore.
I wiped my hair out of my eyes and dropped the baguette on a nearby table.
“Hi,” I returned, trying to sound nonchalant and not completely humiliated by what they’d just seen. “Thanks for coming in.”
I didn’t have the money to hire Samuel and Donovan full time these days, but when Dylan had said to bring in my employees, I figured I ought to lump them in that category. There was no realistic chance that they’d be even minutely helpful, but the more people between me and Dylan, the better.
“No problem,” Samuel replied with a professional smile. The two of them were good kids, about Kelly’s age, but far more mature than I imagined she’d ever be.
I added guiltily, “Sorry for bringing you in on such short notice.”
Donovan waved away the comment. “This is for the good of the store. Plus, it’s official police business. So, don’t think anything of it, we’re happy to help.”
“Am I getting paid?” Kelly interjected. “Since I’m like, technically working?”
I sighed and managed to keep my eyes from rolling upwards. “Yes, Kelly, you get paid because the store will be open for business.”
“‘Kay. Fine. I guess I’ll stick around and answer the questions or whatever.”
I wasn’t about to push my luck with her, so I just left my response at, “Thanks.”
Samuel and Donovan looked at one another, and Samuel asked, “Um, Zoe? When do you think the cop will be here?”
“He said nine, so about a quarter hour.”
They nodded. “Okay,” Donovan replied. “Should we just, uh, sit here?” He pointed at a nearby table.