by E. M. Kokie
We stare. She works something around her head, or her mouth.
I curl my toes harder, until it hurts.
“Here’s the thing,” she says. “In addition to your cell records, I got some other discovery that fills in some of the holes.” I try to swallow. “Now we know that up until eight days out from the arrests, this is all talk, or mostly all talk, as far as I can tell. That night Mark and one other coconspirator use a copied key to go to your uncle’s station, where they use the computer and take some things, oil, gas, some tools and materials. Maybe something else, something they’d hidden there. Who knows? The feds think something more.” She waits for that to sink in. “Then something happens between Tuesday and Wednesday that spooks them. Or some of them. Mark, in particular. There’s been a lot of big talk, but vaguely in the future, until something makes them, some of them, Mark,” Joan says, “think they have to act right away. Now.”
Oh, God.
“Or so the feds think. Because the informant, Glenn Stewart . . .”
Glenn? We don’t need Glenn.
“. . . realizes that things are happening that he’s not privy to. Stewart thinks they are moving now. The government thinks he’s blown his cover and something’s imminent. And they don’t know where Mark is. Or Zach. And the feds think maybe they have the explosives Stewart was planning to offer to provide. And there’s a big ceremony planned for Saturday to honor first responders killed in the line of duty in the previous year.”
Oh, God.
She watches me. Waits.
“That’s why the government moves on Friday.”
I know this part. They arrest Devon and Neal and another guy asleep in their beds. Find Zach at his girlfriend’s. Detain us. Sixteen hours later, they find Mark, in Dad’s truck. Mark, who might have been on the run longer if he hadn’t tried to call Devon, whose phone was already in the possession of the feds.
I force myself to breathe as regularly as I can with my heart pounding in my chest and jaw and temples.
“Something spooked Mark, or them, and caused them to cut Stewart out of the loop,” she says again. “And I think you know what.”
I can’t.
“The government’s getting restless, Bex. Desperate. They need this win.”
I can’t.
“And right now, the most solid evidence they have is on you. They’re still looking at you. All they have on these guys right now is some weapons and ammunition charges. And talk. They want the bombs, the conspiracy, the headlines. And they think you are the key.”
“Why me?”
“They think Mark went rogue, and that he didn’t act alone. They think — or maybe hope — that you became his new coconspirator, so secret even the others didn’t know. They’re looking for anything to tie you to him between Tuesday and Thursday of that week. And if they find it”— she leans closer —“if they find what ties you to him between those days, it will be too late to talk deals. If they can prove you two met, and especially if there is any shred of evidence that you were providing him help about explosives or weapons, then you are done.” Her stare holds me still. “Unless we can explain your meeting first.”
I can’t. Mark. Mom. I can’t be what sends him to prison. I can’t.
“They put you here,” she says, leaning across the table. “Your brother, your father, the rest of them.” She waves toward the walls. “They may not have done it intentionally, and you certainly did enough to put yourself in here, too. But if not for your brother and his friends, are you detained and searched? Does anyone sweep your home?”
I can’t. Not even to her. Not about Mark. They’ll never forgive me.
“If they find anything at all that they think can plausibly show you as a link between your brother and his actions that week, they will charge you. I won’t be able to keep this a juvenile matter.” She waits. Her eyes widen, like she’s trying to force me to talk. “Tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Joan’s jaw tenses. “Fine, then you’re going to be here for a while, maybe prison.” Her voice is hard, like ice. “Maybe prison for a long time. They may all walk, and you’ll spend the next ten years, minimum, behind bars if they tag you with teaching him how to build the explosives.”
I stand. I need to move.
“Sit down.”
I sit.
“They put you here,” she says. “And I can guarantee you that the feds have offered to go easy on you if your father and brother cooperate. I guarantee you that they gave them a chance to help you. And you’re still here.”
No. Not Dad. He wouldn’t just leave me here, not if he could have helped me. Would he?
“You just lied to me. At least twice. I know you did.”
I can’t look away from her eyes.
“I need to know why. Now. If I am going to defend you.”
“If? But you said . . .”
“If you don’t trust me, if our relationship is compromised so that you won’t tell me what I need to know to defend you, then I will ask the court to allow me to withdraw. You can get another lawyer. One you trust,” she says. “Or one who doesn’t care and lets you throw your life away on some fool idea that you are being loyal to your family.”
“You can’t.”
“I can. I don’t want to, but I will. I won’t watch you sacrifice yourself for them.”
I can’t do this without Joan. I can’t. The shakes start again.
“If you really weren’t part of this,” she says, her voice so low I have to lean forward to hear her, “then you need to start telling me everything. I need the details. I need to know the things you most don’t want to tell me. I won’t tell the government unless you give me permission. But I need to know. To defend you. To help you. Now.”
She doesn’t look away. I look down. If I tell her, what does that make me? Do I want to be that person? Someone who betrays her family to maybe save herself? A collaborator? Worse?
“You’ve got to trust me, Bex.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t,” she says. “You don’t. And maybe I’d feel the same way. But . . . I can’t help you if you don’t trust me just a little more. It’s time.”
The silence is loud, pressing in on my ears.
“Help me convince them that you were not involved. If your brother was actually taking steps to move the criminal conspiracy forward, if that’s what you know, then he put himself in this.” I can’t look at her. “And all the others. If they are guilty, they made the decisions and took the actions that put them there. Even your father. He chose to help your brother when he knew your brother was in trouble. He gave him money and his truck.”
Oh, Dad.
If I tell her, she’s going to want me to tell the government. I know she will. She’ll talk me into it. She won’t stop until I do.
I can’t.
“I wasn’t helping Mark with anything.”
“Then why did he have a Bobcat pistol with your fingerprints all over it in his possession when he was arrested?”
Oh, God.
“I can’t.”
“It’s okay to save yourself.” Joan touches my hand until I look up. “You have to save yourself.” Her fingers are warm. “Because no one else is going to. I need to know what happened that week.”
Ican’tIcan’tIcan’tIcan’t. The first drop hits the table, then another, then they spread and splatter and then form blobs. She doesn’t move her hand away. I don’t try to dry them. It’s quiet. I’m quiet. Just the barely there sound of the tears hitting the table.
“Let it out,” she whispers.
I suck in air, scorching my lungs, clogging my throat. It comes back out as a wail. Choking, snotting sobs.
She lets me cry. She doesn’t say a word. Eventually some tissues slide in front of me. She gets up, comes back, and a bottle of water is there.
I start to feel like more than my tears. More than my face. I scrub at it with the rough tissues, until my face feels raw and hot,
the rest of me cold. I take a deep breath and it doesn’t hitch coming out.
“Tell me about Tuesday. You left work early.” How would she . . . ? My texts, to Lucy. My call to Dad. “You saw Mark?” She knows.
“The power went out at the station,” I say. “Uncle Skip sent me home.” She smiles, like she knew, encouraging me. And picks up her pen, ready. “Before that — a few days before, a week, maybe . . . before, anyway — Riggs, Jim Riggs, at Clearview, asked me about Mark. About him not being around as much, and not working for Darnell, one of the men.” She doesn’t push; she just waits. I tell her everything I can remember about the conversation with Riggs.
“And Tuesday?”
I tell her about the guys, the trucks, and the cooler.
“The cooler,” Joan says. “Describe it.”
“Orange on the bottom, white top, big.” I use my hands. “They each had a handle, and from the way they were leaning over, it looked heavy.”
She makes a noise, writes more, looks up at me like she can’t believe I didn’t say it earlier. But when she finishes writing, she just waits for me to continue.
“What?”
She shuffles through the new discovery file, then looks up at me. “A cooler like that is in evidence. It held several firearms that had been illegally modified. And the kits for additional modifications. And some maps and lists. Of supplies.”
Wow. Maybe that’s why they were at the station? Did they need tools? Somewhere to work?
“Anything else? Anything at all on Tuesday.”
My stomach churns. You keep your mouth shut.
“Mark and I talked, for a few minutes. I . . . told him Riggs had asked about him.”
“Okay,” Joan says. “Wednesday.”
We don’t need Glenn.
“Bex?”
My stomach turns over. I’m a traitor.
“Wednesday night, when Lucy dropped me off, Mark was at the house.”
Joan stops writing. I can feel her looking at me, but I don’t look up.
I tell her everything. Everything I can remember.
“I tried to stall. I knew I couldn’t outrun him. I didn’t know when Uncle Skip or Dad would be home. I tried to find out what he thought I had said.” I look up at her. “I didn’t know. I really didn’t know what was going on.”
If you don’t tell me . . .
His arm on my throat. “I mean, maybe he would have stopped. I don’t know. But . . .” His eyes.
If you don’t tell me . . .
“It’s okay,” she says.
I take a deep breath and try to remember that I can breathe now. “He kept asking over and over what I had told Riggs. He wouldn’t believe that I hadn’t said anything. That Riggs hadn’t said anything, not really. I couldn’t tell him anything — he wouldn’t believe me.”
Joan makes a sound but waves me on when I look at her.
“He knew about Lucy. He said to keep my mouth shut. I threatened to tell Dad or Uncle Skip about his stealing from the station, and being there when he wasn’t supposed to, if he didn’t leave, but . . .”
“But what?”
“He wasn’t stopping. And . . . I got away. Ran upstairs.”
The gun, in my hand, ready, tracking him in the hallway.
“I could have killed him.” I look at her. “Upstairs. I would have, if he had tried to shove the door open. I told him I had the Remington, to go away.”
My hands, shaking, with the Remington pointed at the door. Waiting. Waiting. If he comes near that door. If he . . .
“He just left?”
“His phone rang.” I tell her about the call. She won’t. I’m handling it. “He was freaking out. Said he was sorry, but . . .” We don’t need Glenn.
“When . . . ?” She clears her throat, swallows. “Did he come back?”
“No. Uncle Skip came home a couple hours later, and then Dad. I pretended to be asleep. I waited until the next morning to move the bureau away from the door.”
“What did you tell them about . . . ?” I shake my head. “You didn’t tell them? Your mom? Anyone?”
I keep shaking my head. “I thought about it. But he’d found the Bobcat, some of my ammo, some of my money. He took them. Said they were hostages to make me keep my mouth shut. They wouldn’t have believed me. He would have lied, and showed them the Bobcat. I needed proof. I needed to know what was going on, so they’d have to believe me.”
“That’s why you were carrying the gun and the knife,” she whispers.
I don’t have to answer.
She moves her pen toward the page, and then moves it away, shakes her arm, and tries again, actually writing this time. I wait.
“Has he threatened or attacked you like that before?”
“No.” She doesn’t believe me. “Not like that. Not . . . He was just . . . But maybe he would have stopped.” It rings hollow. “I think he was scared.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. As soon as I saw him, I could feel it: something was different. He just . . . He’s never been like that.” I try to stop my hands from shaking.
She asks questions. I answer. About the station, and seeing Zach’s truck there. We go through the fight again.
I close my eyes and answer.
Eventually part of me is answering while the rest just says, over and over, in my head, like a reminder, that I could have killed him. I would have killed him. If his phone hadn’t rung. If he hadn’t left. If he had tried to get into the room. I would have killed him.
Would he have killed me, if I hadn’t gotten away? If I hadn’t been able to get upstairs? Would he have killed me?
I’ve been trying to protect him. For Mom, for Dad, maybe even for him — maybe.
But he could have killed me.
And he left me here.
He’s not worried about what’s happening to me. Neither is Mom or Dad.
For years, I’ve been planning to survive. I thought they would come around and I could save them, too.
But I can’t save Mark. And he won’t save me.
Joan’s right. I have to save myself.
I should be thinking about Mark. About what he did to me. About what I did to him. But when I think about Mark, my brain rotates between how it felt for him to choke me and Mom screaming through the phone. How could you tell them your brother tried to kill you? Why? Why would you do such a thing? Tell them you lied! You have to tell them. . . .
I don’t want to think about Mark. I’m done thinking about Mark. And Mom.
Instead, I think about Lucy. Not about sex. Or her smile. Or her laugh. Not about any of that.
I can’t stop thinking about how I am exactly what she was afraid of.
I wonder if they took the skull ring when they raided my room. Maybe. I hate thinking of Lucy’s plastic ring in some evidence bag somewhere. But I hate worse thinking of it lost, dropped or thrown away while they took everything else. And then I feel stupid for thinking about the stupid ring at all.
Lucy wasn’t the love of my life. That isn’t surprising. But I’m not sure I even really liked her, the parts of her that weren’t about kissing and fooling around. I didn’t even know her, not the real her. She sure as shit didn’t know me. I made sure of it. Not the real me. Not the parts of me that are most me.
Even before the fight, I knew I wasn’t following her to college. We weren’t going to call and text and pretend it was something more. Maybe a weekend hookup, if she was back at her grandparents’ next summer, but this wasn’t going to be some big long-distance romance. The way she looked at Karen and Cammie. The way she dismissed everything I believe, like she was so much better than us. Maybe I would have tried to see her one last time, maybe, just so it didn’t end like that, but it was over.
And then I was in handcuffs and she was the furthest thing from my mind.
Then I was in the hole.
And this is what she feared: that I was some crazy person who could get her hurt or in trouble.
&nbs
p; I lied to her and hid who I was because deep down I knew she wouldn’t like that person. I knew it was unfair, and I didn’t care.
I could have been with her when I was arrested.
They could have thought she was involved.
She’s eighteen. She’d have been held in adult jail.
When Joan first started asking questions, I made a pledge to keep Lucy out of this. If I didn’t say her name, they’d never know she exists. Just another example of how deep my stupidity goes. Of course they’d be able to find the deleted texts and calls. They’d probably already talked to her by the time I was deciding never to say her name. I told her once I could protect her, that I would put myself between her and danger, and I did the exact opposite.
I have no idea what she might say to them.
My head falls back against the cinder-block wall. I let my fingers trace the painted-over seam between slightly rougher painted-over blocks. What would she say? Would she tell them a distorted version of that night with the deputy? Would it be distorted, or was I the one who was seeing it all wrong?
Did she tell them I’m a liar?
I am a liar. I lie a lot. Sometimes without saying a word. How many times did I lie to her so that she would want me? How many times did I keep information from Uncle Skip, or Mom, or Dad, that might have prevented this? What if I’d told Uncle Skip about Mark’s being at the station, about them being at the house? What if I’d told Uncle Skip about Mark, about how crazy he was acting?
“Bex, you doing all right?” Ortiz asks through the slot in the door. “Bex?”
I look up, make eye contact, say “Fine” so she’ll leave me alone. She probably has to ask me since I flipped out. After I told Joan everything, I flipped out.
Lucy was in this from the beginning. Because of me.
Will she end up saving me, even if I broke my promises to keep her safe?
Would I have seen that Mark was planning something, if I wasn’t so wrapped up in her? Balancing so many lies to see her? Would it have mattered?
Mark is going to prison. I’m going . . . somewhere.
Lucy is gone.
Everything’s gone.
And Mom will never forgive me.