L ESTER’S CELL WAS A STAINLESS-STEEL SINK AND TOILET, A STEEL WRITINGdesk, and two iron bunks recessed into the wall. Above each mattress was a small rectangular window, its bulletproof glass fogged so that all Lester could see was daylight, and the floor was eight feet wide and twelve feet long, the ceiling thirty feet above him, three iron girders painted as white as everything else. Lester sat at the edge of the bottom bunk, both hands resting on his knees. His eyelids were heavy and burned slightly, and his mouth hung partly open with fatigue. He was too warm wearing both jail-issue shirts and he lay back on his bunk, staring at the myriad of holes in the steel bed-frame above him. At the Hall of Justice, he had sat without his shirt in a hardback chair and heard himself tell the truth about everything, his voice low and subdued as he kept seeing the boy spin, his arms hanging loose as rope as he let go of the gun and landed on his side, one arm stretched out, almost pointing, the way toddlers do to something they recognize but can’t name.
Someone had handed him a glass of water and Lester drank it down all at once. In the small room were two deputies, two detectives, and Lieutenant Alvarez standing with his back to the bright window, his face in shadow. The detectives were asking Lester about the Behrani family, their imprisonment overnight, Lester pointing his service pistol at them, moving the son and father against their will to Redwood City. They asked him about Kathy. Was she at the Corona address right now, holding Mrs. Behrani against her will? And Lester’s voice sounded almost normal. “No, she’s waiting for us to get back, that’s all.” Lester looked down at his hands, imagined Mrs. Behrani hearing her son had been shot. He imagined hearing his own son had been shot, how he would immediately picture the worst, little Nate’s smooth face contorted and pale as too much blood left his body too fast. “Is the boy all right?”
One of the detectives said he was in surgery, and Lester turned his wedding ring twice on his finger. He’d washed his hands but there was still dried blood in the tiny cracks of his palms. He thought of Kathy, her red Bonneville in the backyard when a patrol car got there. He looked up. “I’d like to call my wife.”
Lieutenant Alvarez was writing something on a pad of paper, and he stepped forward as quickly as if someone had just insulted him. “You’ll get your two calls at intake, Burdon.”
Lester had felt an impulse to look away, but didn’t. Alvarez shook his head like even this, this eye contact, was way out of line, and he told two deputies to arrest him and take him across the street to the new holding facility, a short walk usually, but now it was long, Lester as handcuffed and bare-chested as a wino, a deputy at each arm, his face down. Inside they uncuffed him and Lester gave them what they wanted, his wallet, car keys, and wedding ring. One of the arresting deputies told him to hold his arms out and he gave Lester a pat search, his hands heavy and careful. The intake officer had broad shoulders, short red hair, and a small white scar on his chin. He sat behind glass and put Lester’s keys and ring in a manila envelope, counted the cash in his wallet, then had Lester sign a form in two places, Lester thinking of Kathy being there when a patrol car pulled up, everything going as completely wrong as it could. He heard himself ask to make a call, but again, his voice was subdued, muffled somehow. The intake officer looked right at Lester but didn’t answer him, just dropped his personal possessions into a box Lester couldn’t see.
The deputies disappeared and one from the holding facility took their place, a short Chicano with a neck as wide as his jaw. He escorted Lester to a part of the procedure he’d never had to stay around for, to a fluorescent-lit room with no windows, a Filipino woman there in a white lab coat. She was small and dark and pretty, her hair held back with a red-and-purple pelican barrette, and Lester wished he at least had his shirt on. She wore white protective gloves. She wiped alcohol on the inside of Lester’s forearm, then pressed a round TB skin pop into it, pulling it away just as quickly. She told him to sit down and she leaned against a counter covered with jars of cotton swabs, held a clipboard, and asked the Chicano jailhouse deputy Lester’s name.
“Lester Veector Burdone.” The deputy’s accent was East Palo Alto barrio. Now the pretty nurse was asking Lester questions of his medical history, his body since he was a boy, his sexual relations since he was a man. Had he ever tested positive for HIV? She looked at him then, directly in the face, and it left Lester feeling he had something to lie about when he didn’t. He answered no and then he was in the photo and fingerprints room standing against a wall in front of the Edicon machine, the technician telling him to look straight ahead at the blinking green light, Lester feeling he was being x-rayed, that this computer graphic of his face, this jailhouse mugshot, was really him, the true Lester.
The Chicano deputy called him over to the Identex and began rolling Lester’s fingertips one by one onto the computer pad. It felt strange to have each finger guided like that, like someone was helping him to dress or feed himself, and as the Chicano officer finished, then escorted Lester down a bright corridor, Lester felt something was about to begin that wouldn’t end for a long time. He knew the schedule for bail; he knew there wouldn’t be any for kidnapping. That meant he’d be here until a hearing. And that could take months. Sometimes over a year. He felt queasy, his mouth suddenly full of tacky saliva. He thought of Carol, saw her in the kitchen dicing onions at a counter. He imagined the kids, both of them drawing with crayons on the floor of Bethany’s room, and again he saw the colonel’s son drop heavily to the sidewalk, blood pulsing from two wounds, and he felt afraid.
The deputy led him around a corner and opened a door for him. It was a small room with a desk and telephone, its white cinder-block walls freshly painted.
“Two calls on the county, Burdone. Five minutes.”
The door was reinforced glass, and the Chicano officer stood on the other side, his arms folded, glancing in at Lester every few seconds. Lester picked up the receiver but didn’t know the colonel’s number. He dialed information, hoping that wouldn’t count as one of his two calls, then he was ringing the Behrani residence, a brand-new listing. His throat felt thick and dry. The phone began to ring and he remembered Kathy as he’d left her, standing in the hallway of her stolen house in shorts and a Fisherman’s Wharf T-shirt, her hair slightly unkempt around her face he’d kissed before leaving. By tonight, he’d imagined the two of them driving north in a rented car, maybe giddy for having just gotten away by a hair. Now he just wanted to hear her voice, a bit husky and unsure of itself. He just wanted to hear her say his name. But the phone kept ringing and no one was picking it up. A patrol car might have gotten there already, but he didn’t think so. Maybe Kathy and the colonel’s wife weren’t in the house, but outside. He pictured them sitting up on that new widow’s walk, waiting.