by Gale Massey
The reporter continued. “A young man from Blind River using Mr. Bangor’s credit cards is being returned to local authorities. Stay tuned for more details as the police continue their investigation.”
Fuck. She needed to get to Toby before he said anything stupid.
CHAPTER
27
JAMIE SHOWERED AND borrowed a clean sweater from Angel. By the time she got to Main Street her buzz had worn off and she needed caffeine and some wheels. Jack’s car sat in front of his store and she was wondering about borrowing it again when Loyal’s big red Dodge turned the corner and stopped at the curb beside her. The passenger window lowered and he said, “Get in.”
“I got to be somewhere,” she said, wishing she had her own place, a place with a door she could shut and lock.
“No you don’t.” He reached across the cab and pushed open the door. “Get in. We need to talk.”
Jamie stood on the curb, sunlight glinting off the storefronts. She didn’t want to go anywhere with him.
“Get in, dammit. I ain’t asking a third time.”
She climbed up.
“Careful with your boots.”
She knocked the sludge off the soles. “It’s just snow.” A persistent dinging started when she sat down and closed the door. The interior was spotless and she hesitated, not wanting to touch anything. “Damn, this is nice.”
“Try not to mess it up.”
The dinging was relentless until she buckled the seatbelt.
“Where you so bent on going?” he asked.
“Where do you think? My brother’s in jail.”
“Huh. You got the bail money this time?”
She didn’t, but she thought of the cash she’d collected yesterday—and left with Jack last night. “I thought maybe you—”
“Maybe I’d what? I got him out once already. Cost me a thousand. You know what happens to that money now? Gone. Forfeited. And he wasn’t even out eight hours.”
She’d figured as much. “Maybe Phoebe will help.”
“You think she can? Doesn’t have a dime to help with you kids. Never did.”
“There might be another way. Maybe she could call her parole officer.”
He laughed. “You think she can pull some strings? That’s not exactly how parole works.” He turned north at the stoplight.
They drove another minute, then Loyal turned onto a brick-lined street. Houses on either side of the road were set back behind deep lawns of sycamores and their snow-covered limbs. She recognized Keating’s car when they turned into the driveway. Shit. She looked back at the street, suddenly worried that Garcia might have seen her get into Loyal’s truck. “You think Keating might help?”
“He’ll be home for lunch. We’ll talk it through.” He pulled to the back and parked behind the Cadillac.
When she got out, she looked up at the window where she’d seen her mother that night. The curtains were drawn tight. Four bottles of bleach were strewn on the ground outside the garage.
“Come inside,” Loyal said.
She smelled the bleach as they approached the back door.
Keating sat at his kitchen table inside his bright yellow kitchen eating a massive tuna sandwich. He scowled when he saw Jamie. “Why’d you bring her here?”
Loyal pulled Jamie inside and slammed the door shut. He spread his big palms out, level with the ground. “We got to get everyone on the same page.”
Keating sank into his chair. “You better have a plan to fix this mess. That boy of yours is causing too much trouble.” He picked up the rest of the sandwich and stuffed it into his mouth.
Loyal pulled a chair out and sat down. “Or not. He might offer a solution to everything. Seems to me we could play this thing to suit our needs.”
“What are you getting at?” Keating wiped his mouth.
“Toby could help the situation if he stays put for a while. You could come out of this thing smelling like a rose. We all could.”
One or both of them had cleaned the place up; the smell of bleach was so strong it stung her nose. Keating eyed Jamie and motioned to Loyal to keep talking. There seemed to be a code between them that she couldn’t follow.
“Everything points to a theft gone wrong,” Loyal said. “Toby got caught with Bangor’s wallet, the cops can’t quite figure out exactly where or how that happened but they got enough to suspect the boy. And Toby will never be able to explain it to their satisfaction because he’s got no alibi. He was home alone most of that night, watching TV.”
Keating nodded contemplatively and pushed away from the table. “Might work. But where did he get the credit card?”
“Doesn’t matter. He was found with it and we can make it work.”
It was true. Over the years these two men had learned how to make a lot of things work. Toby might be reckless and wild but he feared Loyal too much to tell the cops where he’d gotten that wallet. At least, until he realized he was facing a murder charge, and by then he’d have changed his story so many times that no one would believe him if Loyal and Keating backed each other up.
Keating drank a glass of milk and belched. “So, there’s nothing to trace?”
Loyal leaned back and crossed his arms at his chest. “Not much. Not enough.”
“What about the girl?” Keating asked, pointing at her with his chin. “Squashing a crazy girl is one thing, but a girl with a crazy little brother? That’s an altogether different bug.”
“That’s why she’s here. She needs to hear it from you.”
“Huh,” Keating said, and cleared his throat, a long and windy noise. He straightened his back and pushed his empty plate to the center of the table where, Jamie supposed, a maid would find it later. He smoothed the arms of his red cashmere sweater. When he stiffened and turned to face her, she saw a transformed man and something inside her shrank.
This was Circuit Court Judge Jefferson William Keating, a man who’d been reelected virtually unopposed in Blind River for thirty years. In this town he decided who was a criminal and who was not. He handed down sentences. He shattered families in the interest of the public good. He decided which companies would drown in taxes and penalties and red tape and which ones would flourish. He might’ve grown foolish over the years but he never suffered fools—and foolish young Toby meant nothing to him.
“Your brother was arrested yesterday for assaulting a public servant. The court was lenient when it shouldn’t have been and allowed bail. Not a day later he was caught making purchases using the stolen credit cards of a missing man, virtually impersonating the victim of his crime.”
Jamie said, “He never even met that man.”
“No!” He slammed his palm on the table. “No, you don’t speak here. You don’t interrupt me when I’m talking.”
Loyal crossed his arms over his chest and gave Jamie a look meant to shut her up.
“But Toby didn’t do anything,” she said. “Doesn’t that matter? What about the law?”
“I am the law!” Keating yelled. “In this town, I am the law.” He sneered at Jamie. “You don’t understand that yet, but you are about to. What I say goes and you don’t get to say anything. That boy used a stolen credit card from a missing man. That gives the law reason to hold him indefinitely. He did that and no one made him.” He hit the table hard again and his plate bounced.
“You mean to go along with this?” She asked Loyal. “He’s your blood. Aren’t you going to say something?”
“This is how I see it,” Loyal said. “Toby is out of control. He’s turning into a drunk troublemaker. He needs to cool off for a few years. Once he’s in the system, the judge can get him into a program where he’ll learn a trade. After a while, he’ll get out and have a chance at a real job.”
The back of Jamie’s head went cold. When had incarceration become the best option for a troubled kid?
Loyal and Keating watched her. They’d said all they had to say.
“There’s got to be a better way,” she said, moving
toward the door.
Loyal moved fast. He grabbed her jacket collar and pushed her against the wall. “This is how it plays. Saves me lot of trouble, so wrap your head around it.”
“Is that what we are? A lot of trouble?”
He shook his head, his eyes suddenly hopeless. “You know what I mean.” She tried to get loose but he had her pinned with his big forearm. “Toby’s always in trouble. You’re always fishing him out. This way you’re done; you get to have your own life.” He had that faraway look in his eyes that he got when he’d made up his mind and nothing was going to change it.
“You got trouble in your house,” Keating said. “First your mother, now your brother. And you? Sleeping with a married man.”
Her face burned.
He waved the air like it was foul. “What’s in store for you? A life of ratty babies, meaningless jobs, waiting tables like your mother, or living off welfare and the taxes of hardworking people. Or worse? That’s all there is for girls like you. No one expects a thing better from your kind.”
She leaned against the wall feeling a twist in her gut. She’d been so stupid. What kind of future would she have with a man like Jack? All her decent choices were behind her, college, the lousy but steady job. Now she was in debt to her uncle and this man.
Loyal stood there nodding and letting the old fool rant about her, her brother, her mother. He said nothing to stop Keating. Silently she begged him to make the bastard shut up, but Loyal shook a cigarette from his pack and fumbled with his lighter. He took a drag off it and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “What’s he saying that’s not true?”
Something inside her gave.
Keating motioned at the air. “Let her go. We’re done here.”
Loyal stepped back. “You got it?”
She caught herself from falling, made it to the door. “I got it.” The brass doorknob in her hand was cold as hell. She yanked open the door and the freezing air hit her hard.
“Where you going?” Loyal asked.
“Where you’re afraid to go.” She needed to see him. The idea of Toby alone in a concrete cell would keep her up all night. Someone needed to visit him and no one else could be bothered.
“Good. Then you tell him.”
She looked back inside at her uncle but he stared at the floor like he was looking right through it, like he could see all the way to hell.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Go on,” he said. “Get it over with quick.”
CHAPTER
28
JAMIE LEFT KEATING and Loyal sitting in the kitchen in smug agreement undoubtedly toasting each other with a bottle of Hennessy. She walked by Keating’s Cadillac sitting unlocked in the driveway behind his house, his cell phone in the passenger seat. Unbelievable. The man thought he was so untouchable he didn’t even have to lock things up. She took the phone just because.
There was a trailhead at the back of Keating’s yard, and Jamie decided to take it rather than walking the streets and taking the chance of running into Garcia. The path ran alongside a shallow creek cluttered with muck and debris, ruining her boots. It was worth it if only for a little privacy and a chance to think through this shitstorm. It was colder in the shadows by the creek. Icicles formed on roots where the water stood nearly motionless. She pulled her cap down over her ears and tugged her cuffs over her half-frozen fingertips. Some of the bandages were coming undone and a finger was bleeding again. She sucked at it and wrapped the strip tighter, hoping it would stick another few hours.
The creek forked beneath a single-lane bridge where the road veered south and led back to town. She stomped her boots and kicked at a metal post rail to get the muck off. Jamie stood in the center of the bridge and looked at the riverbed littered with soda cans and bottles. Water ran deep at the fork. So deep that in the summer, she and Toby would battle mosquitoes and hike through the woods just to jump off the bridge into the cool water. The impulse to jump now, to feel the ground disappear beneath her and leave all this shit behind, was strong. Everything felt edgy and tight, balanced on a knife-edge.
She threw rocks off the bridge, watched them smack the water and sink. She pulled Keating’s phone out of her pocket. It would serve him right if she threw it, but before she did she hit the home button. What the hell? It wasn’t even locked. It was worth at least two hundred bucks online. She stuck it back in her pocket and found more rocks to throw instead.
Overhead, exhaust from the single remaining stack at the fertilizer plant swirled upward into a band of weather coming in from the west. When they were little, she and Toby had often lain on their backs in the field behind the trailer and stared at that plume, watching the exhaust just lift and vanish like a cheap magic show. Inside that jail cell, Toby probably couldn’t even see the sky. The creek ran south toward a greater river, but staring at it now was just wasting time. She had to see Toby and somehow convince him to hang on and give her time to figure out this mess.
She walked across the bridge and caught the road toward town.
The courthouse at the town center faced west. Its high columns and large oak doors appeared majestic compared to the plain three-story hospital next door or the police station across the street and its low, squatty jailhouse—a single-story building of steel doors and surrounded by electrified cyclone fencing.
The only time Jamie had been inside the jail was the day her mother had pled guilty and been sentenced to a prison upstate. Phoebe had wanted to see her children one last time and Loyal had dragged them here on the morning of her transfer. More than anything, Jamie remembered the doors—loud, heavy doors. Phoebe had dropped to her knees to hug them but the guard had refused to take the handcuffs off and when Toby saw them on his mother he’d come undone. He’d run straight back to the door and hunkered there, trembling and inconsolable. When the guard finally let them out, Jamie vowed she’d never enter that building again. But here she was.
Standing in front of it now, Jamie tried to imagine Toby inside, but all she could conjure up was the memory of him cowering at the foot of that steel door, screaming, not so much for his mother but to get outside its walls.
There was a three-bay garage in the parking lot between the police station entrance and the jail. Outside, two men stood smoking cigarettes while another made notes on a clipboard. They were going over Loyal’s old truck. Garcia emerged from inside the garage, squinting in the sunlight. She started walking faster, but he raised his arm and pointed in her direction.
“Just who I’m looking for,” he said. He peeled off a pair of latex gloves as he approached. It came together abruptly. The truck inside the garage. The detectives and their latex gloves. Garcia constantly dogging her.
Jamie tried to quiet the impulse to run from him. She waited as a car passed, trying to separate exactly what she’d told him earlier from everything she knew and wondered what the hell she’d do if he’d found any hard evidence on the truck.
“That your truck in there?”
“Nope, not mine.”
“But you were driving it, right?”
“Drove it some, yeah.” Saying as little as possible seemed best.
“You loan it to your brother yesterday?”
“I didn’t loan it because it’s not mine.”
“He just took it then?”
“He takes it when he needs it.” Talking with him was like walking through a minefield. Anything she said could blow up in her face and he was trying to find a hole in her story.
“I thought it had a flat.”
“Flats get fixed easy enough,” she said, and turned toward the jail’s entrance. She got a few steps away and began thinking she’d shaken him off when he called after her.
“You pick a side yet?”
She paused.
“Because, if not, we found something that makes me think you might slide in sideways.”
A cruiser pulled into the lot. The cop driving it exchanged a two-finger salute with Garcia.
Jamie could barely b
reathe. It had been so cold that morning, and that man had been wrapped up so tight in the tarp. She was almost positive that nothing, no blood anyway, had been in the flatbed of the truck. Loyal had said he’d hosed it down. She thought about running but her feet felt like blocks of ice.
“I’m going to ask you one more time and you need to think hard on the answer. Do you know where TJ Bangor is?”
He’d framed the question in the only way she could answer honestly. She knew the man was dead and lying somewhere beneath a pile of rocks and tree limbs, but no, she couldn’t say where he was.
“No,” she said, keeping her back to him.
She forced her feet to move, first one crablike step to the side and then another, just aiming each foot at the sidewalk and trying not to trip. He didn’t stop her but she felt him watching. She counted her steps in sets of three and made it to the jailhouse entrance without falling down.
The waiting room was stark and smelled of disinfectant. Dingy green walls, a white metal door, pale and scarred metal chairs lining the room. She yanked off her stocking cap and checked in at the clerk’s window. A heavyset woman in a uniform took her name, glanced absently at her face, and waved her toward the chairs. Fluorescent lights shined a bluish tint. The only window was a square foot of wire mesh on the main door. Somehow, that made sense. It was cold. She kept her hands in her pockets and stood near the door, telling herself it wasn’t much worse than the high school guidance counselor’s office. She’d mention that to Toby. But doors were constantly slamming from deep inside the building.
An hour later, her nose was running and she was shivering. In all that time no one had entered the room. She checked with the woman, who told her she’d have to wait her turn. When Jamie pointed out there was no one else there, the woman left the window and didn’t return.
Jamie pushed a chair away from the wall with her boot and sat down.
Fifteen minutes later an overhead buzzer screeched, the locks on the white metal door clacked, and the door began to open with a sucking hydraulic noise. Jamie would have to walk into that hallway on her own free will and trust they had nothing to hold her on.