by Rick Wayne
Detective Hammond leaned back in his chair with his legs spread, like guys do. It was the most relaxed I’d seen him.
“I had a partner like that once,” he said, nodding.
The soft tone in his voice suggested there was more.
“And?”
He shrugged. “She went somewhere I couldn’t follow. After that, things weren’t quite the same.”
“Then maybe you get it.” I stood.
He motioned for me to sit. Very seriously.
“What the fuck, man? I did everything you said. You can’t seriously think that I killed Darren. Or Lykke. Or anyone.”
“Sit,” he ordered.
I did. With a heavy, exaggerated sigh.
He looked at me for a moment. “You’re really not gonna give this up. Are you?”
I made a face like “duh.”
He nodded. “You get full marks for bravery. And loyalty.” He opened his desk drawer and took out another labeled evidence bag, this one much smaller. He tossed it on top of the stack of files in front of me.
My mouth opened.
“Your door’s busted. Legally, we’re allowed to enter.”
It was my baggie. From my kitchen. The one with the illegal pharmaceuticals. I had been so busy freaking out about finding Kell and everything that I had totally forgotten. I mean seriously, of all the things to worry about at the time.
I looked at Hammond, mouth still agape. “That’s bullshit.”
“You’ll be out in a couple days.”
“Okay . . .” I raised my hands. “Okay, look. I know you think you’re trying to help,” I began.
“I am helping. I know you don’t think so, but this is the best thi—”
“For who? Dude, I’m not a kid. And I’m not absent a father figure.” I waved to a picture on his desk. He apparently had two daughters. “You can’t swoop in and—Fuck, why are dudes always doing this shit? Seriously, sometimes all we really need is for you to fucking back off.”
“Like I said.” He turned back to his computer and started typing. “You’ll be out in a couple days. At most.”
“You can’t do this. Please.”
Nothing.
“You’re killing her!” I yelled. People turned.
“No. I’m saving you. We have people—”
“Do any of them believe in magic?” I asked. “The occult? Anything like that?”
Hammond dropped his arm. He flinched a little, too, like I’d just punched him in the kidney. “What?”
“You heard me.”
He thought for a second. “Hari,” he said.
“Who?”
“Detective Chase.”
“Is he here?”
He looked at me for a moment. “No. She works downtown. But if you want, I’ll see if she has some time to talk to you tomorrow.”
“Some time? Kell doesn’t have ‘some time.’ She—” I stopped mid-syllable. I could tell he didn’t care.
He lifted the receiver of his corded desk phone—a big business job with a panel full of blinking red lights and a bunch of single-button presets—and handed it to me.
“You get a phone call. Dial nine to get out.”
Jail was different than I expected. There were no bars. That was a little disappointing. When one has the misfortune of going to jail, one wants a tin cup and bars to strum it against. Instead, the room where I was held could just as easily have been a conference space at some towering government agency—except there were no windows. And it had that kind of prickly wall covering that’s uncomfortable to lean against in a thin shirt.
When Kell and I had been arrested for fighting, we were processed right away and released. Both of us got a piece of paper that had our scheduled court date in big bold print, followed by a stern explanation of all the bad things that could happen if we didn’t show up. The following week, we both got letters in the mail informing us that the charges had been dropped and we didn’t have to appear before the judge after all. But this time I was held. My belongings were bagged and tagged and I was shown to the ladies-only side of the lockup. I half-expected butch lesbians with gang scars to stare me down as I walked a long cell-lined hall. But really, no one looked at me at all. To my fellow inmates, I was just another number—one more case for our handlers to process without incident. They didn’t even see me.
After a while, I was taken before a judge who didn’t see me either. I was one of a group of about ten other people with drug offenses entering a mass plea. Bail was set in blocks. The whole thing took less than sixty seconds. When we were all done, some people were released while the rest of us were brought back to the holding rooms and left to wait.
The worst part, really, was the lack of a clock, which at least would’ve given me some sense of progress. No matter how slowly it moved, I’d at least be able to see that it was now three minutes later than it had been, and three minutes closer to whenever I’d be released. But there was nothing on the walls. Time passed and I didn’t know if I’d been there two hours or ten. Eventually, after what seemed like forever, I got really tired and slept, which suggested I was there at least through the night and what seemed like an age after. But then, boredom has a way of stretching time toward the infinite.
“Suzie Lee Song!”
I sat up. The hefty African American woman who butchered my name was in a uniform at least two sizes too small. She stood impatiently by the holding room door. I looked at her expectantly, waiting for whatever announcement was forthcoming.
“You made bail,” she explained, even more impatiently. She waved her hand for me to hurry up. The clipboard she carried suggested I was just one of a long list of offenders whose release she had yet to process.
The first clock I saw was in the hall where the thin older man with the gray goatee handed me my belongings through a window, but neither were any help.
“What time is it?” I asked.
The clock said 11:30. But which 11:30?
I was allowed to shower and change, after which I had to sign a stack of acknowledgments whose purposes seemed utterly redundant. I was certain there were probably only five or six lines in the whole mess that were really important, but I had no idea where or what they were. I signed and signed and signed again and was finally thrust out a heavy door into the waiting area marked RELEASE in stern lettering. Amid the smattering of worried parents clasping hands and frustrated spouses flipping sullenly through magazines, I saw the Suleiman family. The three of them were clustered together, and they waved me over anxiously, as if now was my time to run and if I didn’t hurry, the relentlessly ticking bureaucracy behind me might change its mind and snatch me back through the one-way door with a big hooked cane, like in a vaudeville act. Cue laugh track.
I realized then I was very, very tired, but I was tired the way a traveler is tired after a long journey to someplace new. I had a kind of bubbling exhaustion. And I felt older. Way, way older.
The Suleimans, on the other hand, radiated warmth. All three of them. Even Abdul. You couldn’t see it on his face, but if you knew the man, it was there. He had a hand resting casually on his wife’s shoulder. For him, that was practically gushing. I stopped a few yards from them. Mrs. Suleiman covered her mouth when she saw what I looked like, my bruises and everything. My lips turned down then. I couldn’t help it. But I choked back the lump in my throat, and with it the tears. I felt like such a failure. A burden on these nice people I barely knew who had only ever gone out of their way to help me, a fellow immigrant, trying to find a place in this big mess of a city.
Samir stepped forward and hugged me. I just stood there, arms at my sides, waiting to break down. But I didn’t. My lips quivered. My heart was hollow. But my eyes stayed dry. It was like something had broken in me, some lever attached to my heart had snapped and was spinning wildly without effect.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said to his chest.
He stepped back and rubbed my arm.
“We didn’t do anythin
g,” Mrs. Suleiman objected. She was wearing a beautiful orange-and-yellow patterned hijab.
“It was your money,” Abdul said, proudly.
I looked to Samir, whose eyes were wetter than mine.
They’d used the money Lykke gave me to bail me out. Two days before, I would’ve said that was too crazy of a coincidence. Now I knew the truth.
Was I supposed to run? It would certainly make me look guilty.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “For everything.”
“Come on,” Samir objected. “Don’t do that. You’re family now.” He stepped closer.
I stepped back. “That’s not it. It’s . . . You just—”
“It’s okay.” Mrs. Suleiman said. “Sami told us all about it. About the rich man and how you were protecting your friend.”
Mrs. Suleiman’s first name was Daria. She had pale skin and painted eyebrows. I’d never seen her hair. She always kept it covered. But I was pretty sure she was blonde. She was from a family of Ukrainian Jews who’d emigrated to Israel. I think that was part of the reason the family fled, and why Abdul was as resigned as he was. Paranoid, even.
“Cerise,” he said in his heavy accent. “You did the right thing.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t. But I want to. That’s why I have to go. Please.”
“Go?” Samir asked. “Where are you going?”
I gripped the plastic bag full of my personal effects. Detective Hammond was waiting in a short hallway on the other side of the lobby area. He was leaning against the wall, just as he’d been leaning against the door in the interview room where I met him. He had a closed file in his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the Suleimans. I hugged Samir again. I hugged Daria. “Really. You all have been nothing but super nice to me and I brought all this crap into your house.”
I stepped to Abdul, whose eyes got big when he realized I was going to hug him as well. But I didn’t care. I grabbed him tight. I wanted him to know I meant it.
He patted my back awkwardly with two hands.
I stepped backward away from them. I waved. The three of them waved back.
“Cerise,” Samir called. He looked so conflicted. He didn’t know whether to be angry or supportive. None of them did.
I didn’t look back. I wasn’t being fair. At all. But it was the best thing I could do. I knew what was happening finally. Leaving was the safest thing for them.
Hammond led me around a corner, presumably so we could talk in private. I stood in front of him and said nothing. I was probably glowering. I wanted to punch him in his misshapen head. His eyes darted from right to left, quickly confirming no one was in earshot.
“The evidence against you seems to have been misplaced.”
The baggy.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He shrugged. “It’ll take a week or two before your case gets reviewed by someone who can make a decision, but at that point the charges should be dropped. You’ll get your bail money back, too. Minus a fee.”
“Is that it?”
“No.”
He looked to me like he was thinking how to phrase his next statement. I looked at the closed file he was clutching in his hand. I caught the first five letters on the tab at the top, SOBRI. The rest was obscured by his thumb. I didn’t have any reaction. I suppose some part of me had been expecting it.
“They found her early this morning,” he said with a crack in his voice. But it wasn’t grief or regret. It was exhaustion. I had gotten a little rest. I don’t think he had. One side of his shirt was half-pulled from his belt.
I nodded in simple acknowledgment.
A moment passed.
“How?” I asked.
He looked down and opened his mouth to give what I’m sure was a list of reasons why it was better if I didn’t know.
“How?” I insisted.
He took a second to gauge whether I could take it or whether the news would send me over.
“They pulled her out of the river,” he said. Then he added, “She was beaten.”
I nodded again.
Kell hadn’t been stabbed or shot or even drowned. She’d been beaten. I’m sure she held out as long as she could. I’m sure that wasn’t very long. It wouldn’t have been for me either. I’m sure she told them where she stashed the dagger. I’m sure she also explained how she couldn’t get it. She’d seen to that. She didn’t trust herself. Lykke was right. There was only one person she trusted. One person in the world.
I looked up at Detective Hammond. I looked him right in the eye. “Is there a back door to this place?”
He inhaled sharply and stood straight. But he didn’t object.
“You owe me,” I said.
He looked at the file in his hand. He nodded.