"Yeah, no. You go. I'll keep an eye on things here. I hope he's safe."
"Me too."
After she ran out the door and got into her car, Dean locked the door and lowered the blinds to completely block out the outside. He took two cans of soda from the mini fridge behind the curved receptionist's desk then headed down the hallway to the interrogation room.
When he opened the door, his heart ached.
Niki was slumped over the table with his free arm hiding his face. He was trembling and obviously crying. From all of the reports and everything he knew about the young man, weakness was not something he showed easily. Had the threat of theoretical prison time broken down that bad-boy exterior?
Dean shut the door behind him and approached the table. He set the cans down. "Niki? Niki, it's all right."
"I can't go to prison. They'll beat me and kill me in there. I've seen movies. I don't want to be raped. Oh, God. Everyone hates me, but I didn't even do any of this stuff. Please. Please let me go."
Dean sat on the edge of the table and cracked both cans open. He slid one to Niki. "You're not going to prison."
Niki looked up with puffy pink eyes. "You're going to shoot me instead?"
"What?"
"You said you'd put your gun in my mouth. Please, don't. I need to find Jack and Ellie. Please."
"I, no. Listen, okay? What I said back there, I was not in the right state of mind. I didn't mean it. I would never do that to you. You're not really under arrest. I just had to make it look that way until I could get everyone else out of this building. This was the closest safe space I could get us to."
"Then why am I handcuffed to this chair?"
"Sorry." Dean reached over and unlocked him. "There. Oh, your fingers are cold. I had it on too tight. You should have said something."
"I was too scared you were going to shoot me."
"Drink the soda."
Niki quietly did as he was told.
"Now, Opal is at a clinic. She'll be fine. They're patching her up. I trust that Sasha was able to arrange a hotel room for her for the night. We will regroup in the morning. For now, we're going to cautiously make our way to my apartment. It's less than a mile from here. You're going to stay the night and we'll get some food. How does that sound?"
"I'm not going to prison?"
"No. Niki, I promised you that I'm not your enemy and I still mean that. Finish that soda and come with me." Dean led him out through the lobby and into the smoky air. It was a short trip into the rundown residential area near a set of abandoned train tracks a few miles away from Mana Glen. "Here we are. Home sweet home."
The dilapidated brick apartment buildings were surrounded by waist-high grass and discarded sheets of molded plywood. Fifteen broken down cars sat without wheels like ancient statues of some long-forgotten era. Even the streetlights were busted out, the poles covered in wanted ads and shattered glass glittered on the cracked sidewalks.
Dean headed up the creaking steps to the third door on the right on the second floor where the railing with the peeling red paint had fallen off long before. He unlocked the splinter-covered door and pushed it open into the cold apartment where a bare bulb flickered above the simple particle board table, two plastic chairs, and an old television on a wooden crate on the matted carpet floor. Cockroaches scurried away from the light into the cabinets in the kitchen area where the ivory tiles were cracked with some missing around the ancient stove. A stack of folders and paperwork was piled up on cardboard boxes that had been arranged to form a makeshift desk by the solitary twin mattress on the floor against the far wall.
"Have a seat. I'll make us some food." Dean closed the door then went into the kitchen. He rummaged around in his cluttered cabinets until he found a box of macaroni and cheese and a can of spam. "You like mac and cheese?"
"I guess."
They were silent while he cooked, the only sound the ticking of the clock on the wall with the yellowed plastic face. When he finished, he filled two bowls and carried them to the table. They ate quietly, two strangers caught up in something that both wished would end. But there they were, detective and suspected criminal, eating dinner together on the outskirts of a grieving city.
Once they were finished, Dean took the bowls to the sink, pulled on rubber gloves, and began scrubbing them in the soapy water.
Niki finally broke the silence. "This is where you live? Um, nice place?"
"You don't have to use flattery on me, kid. You're safe now. I'm not gonna hurt you."
"I just meant that it's not quite what I expected."
"And what did you expect, exactly?" Dean asked.
"I don't know. I just figured that some big-shot detective like you, working for the man, would live somewhere nicer than this shack."
Dean paused. He turned the water off then pulled off his rubber gloves, the soapy yellow surface squeaking together. He turned around and leaned back against the sink. "A shack, huh?"
"Oh, no, I didn't mean-"
"It's fine. I do my research into my cases, specifically the persons involved in them, mainly the suspects. I know a lot about you, Nikolas. You grew up in a nice middle class neighborhood with two cars in the driveway, your own playground out back behind the warm inviting home that held all of your video games and televisions. Before she left Allen Lambert, your mother cooked you flavorful meals from her Iranian homeland and your stepfather always had some new desert for you to try. You never wanted for anything. I suppose to someone like you, this tiny apartment does seem like a shack. However, to others, it's a mansion."
"What, are you saving the money up or something?" Niki asked. "For retirement? Vacations?"
"I'm broke, Niki. I have a grand total of thirty-five dollars and seventy-three cents in my checking account and nothing in savings. The only retirement I'll have is whatever I get from the police force. I already told you that I have no family to provide for. I have water, electricity, my phone, and food in my fridge. I have my bike to get to work. What more could I want?"
"Then where does all the money go?"
"A lot of coffee and donuts."
"Really?" Niki laughed. "I thought the cops and donut thing was just a joke."
"They're not for me. You want to know? You can't breathe a word of this to anyone. Is that clear?"
"Yeah. What, you dealing drugs or something?"
If only. "If I was a drug dealer, I wouldn't be living here. No. Nothing illegal or anything. Besides this place for myself, I pay rent, utilities, and living expenses for six other families."
"Why?"
"All across Memphis, there are people who need help. Single mothers struggling to get by, drug dealers caught up in gangs and violence, teenage girls selling themselves for a pack of cigarettes, veterans with PTSD or amputations or any number of things that no doctor will help them with."
Niki's youthful face contorted into a grimace. "The homeless."
"Sometimes it happens slowly. You get injured. Medical bills pile up. You get laid off from work and you lose your insurance. Your car breaks down. Your wife of five years dies, leaving you without an income and three children to feed. You can't pay the mortgage. You can't pay rent somewhere else. You can't even buy a package of instant noodles because you got mugged in some alley and lost the fifty cents you found behind a dumpster somewhere. You go back to that overpass or the tarp between two trees you now call a home and see those dirty, starving faces staring up at you with hopeful eyes. But you just shake your head because all you found in those dumpsters was half a can of flat beer, a handful of cigarette butts, and chicken bones that had already been picked clean. You smoke those last few puffs from the cigarettes before tucking your children into their bed of plastic sacks and leaves, singing them lullabies about how tomorrow will be better. You give them the beer in hopes it will be enough to send them to sleep, despite the gnawing at their stomachs that has been there for nearly a week. Then you go out in the night to get into a stranger's car and let him to what
ever he wants to you for a twenty dollar bill so you can buy a couple of bananas and a few cans of beans. Then you're a hero to those starving kids, keeping them breathing one more day."
Niki bowed his head.
"You get to be the hero until the cops show up. They arrest you and rip your children from you, saying they'll be put in a better home. And just like that, you find yourself alone. Your family's gone, your flesh and blood given like slaves or pets to complete strangers. You hate yourself because you failed. You hate the cops and the system and society because no one cared enough to help you. But at least then you know that those little faces you would have died for were smiling with a hot meal in their bellies and a roof over their heads."
"Did . . . did that happen to you?"
"That's not my point. I spend my paychecks helping needy people, fellow human beings who want to keep their families together because I know what it's like to be in their shoes. I never want another parent to be denied their own babies because they don't have the right numbers in their bank account. Love can't be bought, Niki. So, yes. I live in this shack of an apartment so six other families never have to say goodbye."
"I'm so sorry."
Dean turned back around and quickly dried the burning tears from his eyes, hoping Niki hadn't seen them. He cleared his throat. "You want some ice cream? It's, uh, from the liquor store down the street. It's got rum in it. Packs a nice punch."
"I'm nineteen."
"You're on the FBI's most wanted list and I'm about to lose my job when the higher-ups find out I'm helping you, so I don't care if you're a three hundred-year-old space alien from Neptune. You're a man who will be charged as an adult who has had one hell of an afternoon. You deserve some adult ice cream. Don't pretend you haven't had a drink before. I'm not stupid. Now, grab a spoon and eat with me."
They sat together in silence, devouring the booze-infused ice cream while the minutes melted away until Niki sat his spoon down on the table. "What were their names?"
Dean sighed and dug his spoon into the brown ice cream. "Lance, Nathan, and Faith. Seven, six, and three. But that was decades ago."
"Your wife?"
"Holly. Her father disowned her when she became pregnant with our first son in high school. He was the the police chief before he died a few years ago. He was actually the reason I got a job after he found out what all had happened. I guess he felt guilty that he hadn't helped sooner. He couldn't get my kids back, but he gave me a job as an officer. I worked my way up from there."
"How did she die?" Niki asked, looking to the detective's eyes.
"Complications with childbirth. I went into the hospital with a pregnant wife and came out with my daughter and a bundle of funeral flowers."
"Damn."
"After that, I was left with just my photography side business because I was laid off from my job working retail stocking shelves. The photography didn't make much more than grocery money. One morning, I was out taking pictures on top of a mountain when I lost my footing and fell thirty feet down an embankment. Cracked a few ribs, broke my left ankle. Couldn't pay the medical bills. Before Faith was a year old, we moved out of our three bedroom home and into a mini van. Once the van broke down and I sold it for a hundred dollars of diapers and baby food, we made home in the woods behind a supermarket. I couldn't go to a shelter because I knew they would take my babies away from me. I couldn't work because my children needed me there and no place would hire a single man who hadn't bathed properly in a month and wore the same tattered jeans and hole-filled sweatshirt every day with tennis shoes that were mostly duct tape."
Niki picked up his spoon and continued eating. "That's messed up."
"But I know my children are safe somewhere. I like to think so, at least. Sometimes I like to think about them, imagining who they grew up to be. Would little Faith be a nurse like her mother? Would Lance follow his love of skateboarding and compete all over the world? Would my sweet middle child, Nathan, become a famous singer? He was always singing along to the radio. He adored Whitney Houston and Celine Dion. He made me watch Titanic a hundred times just so he could pretend to be Rose. He made me be Jack and we reenacted the ending scene in the water as soon as he could talk."
"You don't have to tell me any more."
Dean scooped up the last bits of ice cream and shoveled them into his mouth. "I know. It's just nice go have someone to talk to. I'm sure the spiders in the cabinets have heard enough of my complaining by now. It's been so-"
The knocking on the door interrupted them.
"Go into the bedroom and hide in the closet. Be silent and don't come out until I tell you to."
As soon as Niki vanished into the closet and the door clicked shut, Dean smoothed his shirt and went to the door. He opened it and smiled at the familiar face of a young officer he had been working with for the past six months.
"Hello, Detective Amethyst."
"Hey, Jimmy. What's up? Come on in and have a drink. Want some coffee? I have that caramel syrup we found at the station. How's your wife? Did she like the banana bread I made for her?"
The officer's blond hair caught the dim light as he shook with fear. "I'm so very sorry, Dean. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back. You . . . you're under arrest."
"On what charges?"
"Please don't make this harder on me than this has to be. Please don't resist, sir."
There were ways he could have protested, asked if there was a warrant or probable cause, but he would get his answers in time. Dean turned around and winced as his wrists were secured in handcuffs behind his back. "On what charges, Jimmy? What do you think I've done?"
"It's not me, Detective. It's Chief Daniels. He didn't give me details. All I know is he's blazing mad and he put out an APB for you. I wanted to be the one to do it instead of those glorified thugs he likes to sick on people. I didn't want you tasered or beaten. Please just come quietly, and I'm sure everything will get sorted out."
Dean grunted. "Are the handcuffs really necessary?"
"Again, I'm sorry, sir. But I can't take chances. They said you're, uh-"
"They said what? You just told me you didn't know what charges I was facing."
"It's your secretary, Ms. Morningstar. She's claiming you assaulted her. She says you made her take off her clothes in your office and you spit on her."
Of course. "That . . . just take me to see Daniels."
"Right away. You have the right to remain-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Let's just get moving."
Chapter 9
Time dragged by in hungry days, marked only by the delivery of a bowl of salty brown broth in the morning and a cup of sour juice at night. The air smelled of bleach from the toilet in the back corner while the only sound came from the air rushing through the vents at the top of the blank walls. The white tiles on the ceiling and the small circular lights embedded in the concrete floor became his only friends. Jack remained flat on his back in the middle of the square cell, his arms out to the sides so he could touch the cold walls and at least feel something other than starvation. Drifting in and out of delirium, he simply existed.
When he did sleep, Jack dreamt of home. More than anything, he yearned to be back in the present with everything back the way it was before. He missed the cold nights by the bonfire at Mr. Allen's house where he would roast marshmallows with Ellie and Niki while telling scary stories until three in the morning. He dreamt of the road trip they took the weekend Niki got his driver's license, down to the Alabama coast. They made themselves sick on beef jerky, cheese puffs, and blue slushies before falling asleep on the white sands and waking up with the worst sunburns of their lives. Except for Niki. He only got darker.
It was those fleeting memories that kept Jack breathing. Even if he could never have that again, knowing that he once had happiness gave him life. He could have strangled himself with his jumpsuit so he wouldn't have to suffer every day for the unknown sentence he was serving. And yet, he chose to keep suffering.
His stomach gnawed at him, the cold, hungry claws ripping into his ribs. His spine ached from the concrete. The heavy steel shackles around his ankles bit into this skin and bruised down to his bones. His eyes were sore from the focused lights. The silence was the worst. Jack's ears burned with the ringing that itched deep in his skull. It was louder than anything he had heard before.
With a screech, the heavy metal door slid open and banged as it stopped. Heavy footsteps entered the room before a man's deep voice with a Puerto Rican accent spoke to him. "Hello, Jack."
Jack sat up and drew his knees to his chest, prepared to block whatever incoming hit was planned for him. The shackles jangled noisily. He kept his eyes clenched and his arms protecting his head as he had for the past four visits from the hooded guards who liked nothing more than to pelt him with fists and kicks to the sides.
"Look at me. Look at me, Jack. It's me, Mr. Dawson."
Jack lifted his head to see the heavyset man in the dark purple suit with the slicked-back black and grey pepped hair and the tiny circular glasses perched on the bridge of his wide nose. For years, he had trusted that man, cared for that man, and called him family. Now he was wearing the color of the enemy and standing in his cell with heavy brass rings on his pudgy fingers, ready to strike. "Why are you here?"
"It's a complicated situation." Manuel Dawson punched the button on the wall, sending the door rolling shut and locking with a clang. He began pacing around Jack, cracking his knuckles between every slap of his polished brown loafers on the concrete. "Before you jump to conclusions or place blame where it doesn't belong, know that things are happening in the present that cannot be overlooked. The free world is falling apart. While the Zurvan Syndicate may have had dark dealings in the past, I swear to you that they are the ones who can save everyone and fix what has been broken."
"Save everyone? Save them from what?"
"Jack, the president has been kidnapped by the Inquisition of Purity. Do you know who they are?"
"I know enough. Why would they want him, though?"
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