“The real-estate deal—?”
“Another dud. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry but my God what’s happened around here while you were gone I can hardly believe it.” All in one breath. “You must have heard about it in Santa Rosa?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Oh, well, then you’re in for—”
“Not now,” I said, “for Christ’s sake, not now.”
I brushed past her, went through the kitchen and into the living room to the wet bar. Wonder of wonders, the screeching parrot didn’t fly in after me. The first scotch went down quick and hot, like swallowing fire. I coughed and poured another and sank into my chair to drink it more slowly. The glass was half empty when I heard Ramona moving around in the kitchen, then bumping through the door into the living room.
“George.”
The way she said my name made me look up. And all the skin on my back, my neck, my scalp seemed to curl upward. The glass fell out of my hand, splashing scotch over my lap; I barely noticed as I lurched to my feet.
“I opened the trunk of your car,” she said in a voice I’d never heard her use before. “I thought I’d be nice and bring in your bag.”
She was standing there with one of the new suitcases in her left hand. In her right were two of the banded packets of $100 bills.
Richard Novak
When my pager went off I was waiting with Thayer and Verne Erickson at the hospital, the sheriff standing off by himself and being pissed at me again because I’d asked Verne to ride with us on the transfer. Thayer and I were like gasoline and fire; Verne’s presence would keep us from setting each other off. What we’d been waiting for the past fifteen minutes was for Faith to finish his phone call. He was inside the resident physician’s office, visible to us through a glass partition, facing away and holding the receiver tight to his ear.
I left Verne to keep watch on him and called the station from the head nurse’s desk. Della Feldman had relieved Lou Files. She said, “What’s keeping you, Chief?”
“Faith. He demanded his one call as soon as Verne and I walked in. Changed his mind all of a sudden, Christ knows why. He’s still not talking to us.”
“Lawyer?”
“What else. One of the doctors gave him the name of a criminal attorney in Santa Rosa. He didn’t want anybody from Pomo County.”
“Can you hurry him up?”
“Why?”
“Big crowd outside already and getting bigger by the minute.”
“How big?”
“Must be a couple of dozen reporters, photographers, camera people. You’d think you were bringing in the Unabomber’s brother. Lot of citizens out there, too. Lining the street and congregating over in the park.”
“Any trouble?”
“Not so far. But a lot of them are young and restless. I keep remembering how the crowds Friday night almost got out of hand.”
“How many people so far? Rough estimate.”
“Counting the media, over a hundred.”
“You send anybody out to keep order?”
“Sherm and Jake. Nobody else here right now but me.”
“Who’s out on patrol?”
“Mary Jo and Jack.”
“Call them in. If you need anybody else, go down the off-duty roster.”
“Right.”
“I’ll have Thayer put some of his deputies on standby alert. And Della, make sure our people keep everything low-key, same as Friday night. The last thing we need is somebody provoking trouble.”
Trisha Marx
I snuck out and walked down to Municipal Park because I had to see John one more time, even if it’d be from a distance and he’d be in handcuffs on his way to jail. I knew I’d cry when I saw him, and it was what I wanted — to feel even worse than I already did. Sometimes you just have to wallow in your own misery, you know?
I thought maybe Anthony’d be there, too. More reason to feel crappy, seeing him, even if I did feel kind of sorry for him. He must’ve been blown away to find out what a scumbag Mateo really was. Give him a little sympathy, show him I was a better person than he was. Show him I was more miserable than he was. I guess it’s true what they say: Misery loves company.
But Anthony wasn’t there. Home with his people, or else out somewhere getting high. That’s always been his answer to anything wrong or lame — get high, feel good so you didn’t have to think about feeling bad.
Some of the other kids were over by the bandstand, but I didn’t see Selena so I didn’t go over and hang with them. She was about the only one I could’ve stood to hang with tonight. I took a spot by myself under one of the trees near the street, where I could see the front of the police station. All the lights over there were blurry from the mist that was rising off the lake, blowing in in curls and long, ragged streamers. It made the people look sort of blurry, too, like will-o’-the-wisps. Newspaper and TV reporters waiting for John, not because they cared about him but because they thought he was a murderer and murderers are hot news. It was sick and freaky, in a way. If they knew he was innocent and a good person besides, they wouldn’t want anything to do with him, he could drop dead in the street and they wouldn’t even look at him twice. The guilty ones like Mateo, they’d fall all over themselves to get close and stick a microphone in his face and call him Mr. Munoz and feel sorry for him if he said he was a kidnapper and a rapist on account of he’d had a shitty childhood—
“Hello, Trisha.”
Ms. Sixkiller. She’d come right up beside me and I hadn’t even noticed her. Right away I was nervous and wary. But she didn’t start in about John or her boat or anything; she just stood there hunched inside her coat, her arms folded and her breath making puffs in the cold night air.
I could’ve moved away and maybe she wouldn’t’ve followed, but I didn’t. Pretty soon I said, “I, um, heard about what happened last night. I’m real sorry it was you Mateo picked on.”
“So am I. But it’s over now.”
“He’s a pig. Anthony’s not like him at all.” Now, what did I want to defend Anthony for?
“I know he’s not.”
“We broke up. Anthony and me.”
“Because of Mateo?”
“No, it was before that.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Um, no.”
“All right. But we do need to talk about John Faith.”
“... Why would I want to talk about him?”
“He’s why you’re here, isn’t he?”
“He’s why everybody’s here. You too, right?”
“Right. You know he saved me from being raped?”
I nodded. “So maybe you don’t think he’s the lowlife everybody else does.”
“That’s right, I don’t.”
“He didn’t kill Mrs. Carey. I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
“Maybe Mateo did it. Did anybody think of that?”
“Yes. If he did, it’ll come out when he’s caught.”
“If he’s ever caught.”
“He will be. Trisha, about John Faith.”
“What about him?”
“I know you helped him. All you did and how you did it.”
Oh, God. I didn’t say anything.
“He tried to convince me otherwise, to protect you. He asked me not to give you away to the police.”
Right. That was the way John was. “So?”
“So I’m not going to. I don’t believe in making trouble for people I like. And I think I understand your reasons.”
“Then you have to believe he’s innocent, too.”