“Plus, I’m young,” he went on. “I have stamina.”
“Is that what you call it?” she countered, rising to the bait. “Is stamina the reason why your right arm is so much bigger than your left?”
Graham laughed hard, loving this. “Jolaine!” he mocked. “You’re talking dirty to me.” He made a muscle. “Wow, it is big, isn’t it? My arm, I mean.”
Jolaine made a chopping motion in the air. “Okay,” she said. “That’s it. We’re done with this topic.”
Graham fell silent, but pantomimed two-handed masturbation of something the girth of a two-liter soda bottle.
“Graham!” she snapped through her laughter.
“Oh. Oh. Oh, almost there.”
She smacked his arm. “Stop!”
He retreated against the door. “Oh, yeah, baby. Beat me. Make it hurt.”
She repeated the chopping motion. “Okay, you win,” she said. “Just please make it stop.”
Graham still seemed spun up for more, but he controlled himself. All that was left was the residual laughter. Somewhere inside all the adolescent swagger and attitude, there resided a pretty decent kid, she thought. A handsome kid beyond the gangliness, with dark hair, bright brown eyes, and a quick smile when he deigned to employ it.
The silence after the laughter didn’t last long, but it brought a palpable drop in the mood.
“How will you know when we’ve gone far enough?” Graham asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. Again, it was tough not to sugarcoat things for him. “I hope that — oh, shit.” A flash of blue and red drew her attention to her rearview mirror. A jolt of adrenaline lit her up like a horse kick.
A cop car was on her tail, demanding that she pull over. As she eased to the shoulder, she tossed her pistol onto the floor of the backseat. She pulled to a stop.
Graham looked horrified. “Jesus, Jolaine, what’s happening?”
Jolaine didn’t look at him as she said, “Do whatever they tell you to do. It’s going to be scary. They’re going to have their guns drawn.”
In one fast eruption of panic, Graham thumbed the seat belt and flung it away. He rose to his knees and peered out the back window.
“No!” Jolaine yelled, but it was too late.
Graham understood the instant he saw the two cops react to his movement. They flung open both cruiser doors and ducked behind them for cover. They had their guns in their hands, and they looked ready to shoot.
“Shit!” Graham shouted, and he ducked for cover.
“No,” Jolaine said. She continued to sit tall in her seat, her hands poised at ten and two on the steering wheel, as if mocking a bitchy driver’s ed teacher. “Sit up,” she said. “Keep your back to them and sit so they can see you.”
“The hell I will. They’ve got guns!”
“Graham, do what I tell you. Of course they have guns. They’re cops.”
Graham pressed himself harder against the floor. “I’m not going to get myself shot.”
“Please listen to me, Graham,” Jolaine said. “What you’re doing is what’s going to get us shot. The police don’t like sudden movement, and they sure as hell don’t like people ducking out of sight after they’ve been seen.”
As if to confirm the point, a booming voice, propelled by a loudspeaker, said from behind, “In the car. Sit up and be seen. Keep your hands visible.”
“We need to run, Jolaine,” Graham said. “This is about the killings. We can’t just give up. You said yourself that we can’t trust—”
“I also told you that you had to trust me. You said that you would.” She glanced back into the mirror. “We can’t outrun a radio. Running will just make it harder on us.”
“How do we even know that they’re real cops?”
Jolaine hesitated. She hadn’t thought of that.
Graham drove his point home: “Aren’t we just making it easier for them to kill us?” He rose from the floor to the cushion of the shotgun seat, but he slumped way down, careful not to expose himself.
Was he right? she wondered. Was this really the end if they surrendered?
“Come on,” he said. “Give us a chance.”
“Respond to my orders,” the cop’s voice boomed. “Do not make this worse for yourselves. Do not escalate this to a level where you don’t want it to go.”
Jolaine’s shoulders fell. The cop was right.
Graham made his last pitch. “I thought your job was to protect me,” he said. “So now you’re just going to give up and get me killed?”
“Here’s what I need you to do,” Jolaine said, “and listen carefully because we don’t have much time before they’re on us. When they come, do everything they say. Follow every order, and do not resist. They’re probably going to hurt you when they put the handcuffs on, but that will just be to get a rise out of you, an excuse to charge you for resisting. It’s a favorite trick when arresting kids your age. Do not give them the satisfaction. Just let them do what they’re going to do.”
Graham felt his breathing taking off like a steam engine. “But Jolaine—”
“Listen. To. Me. They’re going to ask you questions. I don’t have any idea what they’re going to be, but they’re going to ask them. Don’t lie, but don’t confirm or deny anything. I mean nothing, understand?”
Shit no, he didn’t understand. He didn’t have a goddamn clue about a single goddamn thing that was going on.
Jolaine didn’t wait for an answer. “I cannot emphasize that point enough. Everything that has happened since last night — everything at your house, and in the car and in the doctor’s place and at the motel — represents the key to everything.”
“Do they know that I know about the code?”
“I don’t think so,” Jolaine said. “These are local police. I don’t think that local police would know about that. The code would be more of a concern for the feds.”
Graham’s stomach flipped again. “Then it has to be about the shooting in the parking lot.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Say nothing about that.”
“I get it!” Graham shouted. “Don’t say anything about any—”
“We are not telling you again,” the cop boomed over the loudspeaker. “You in the passenger seat. Sit up straight and let me see your hands.”
“Look,” Jolaine said. The rhythm of her words had increased, almost to the point where they were indecipherable, like the guy who reads the disclaimers at the end of car commercials. “There are different groups of information. There’s what the police don’t know, what they do know, what they think they know, and what they want to know. You won’t be able to tell from them which is which. So your best bet is to say nothing.”
He found himself trembling. “Can I tell them my name?”
“Do you have identification on you?”
“No.”
“Then if they don’t have it, I wouldn’t give it to them.”
“So I just sit there and say nothing.”
“If you can get away with it, yes.”
“Isn’t that going to piss them off?”
She nailed him with her eyes. “First, you wanted me to start a high-speed chase, and now you’re worried about pissing them off with silence?”
He started to answer, then stopped. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, and he sat up.
“I assure you that I do not,” Jolaine said.
“Hands in the air!” the cop yelled.
Graham did as he was told, pressing his palms into the roof liner. “What are you going to do about the gun?” he asked.
Her eyes softened. “Not touch it,” she said. “Oddly enough, in this part of the world, having the gun is one element of the law that we haven’t broken.”
Jolaine’s eyes darkened, and he could see that she was focusing on a spot beyond him. “Here they come. Good luck, Graham. Do your best.”