“Do you need to talk to your client?” the older man asked Mrs. Harris.
“Yes, but… maybe in the morning, if you’ll accommodate me? I need time to prepare, and… yes.”
“That works,” the older officer said.
I nodded.
“You’ll be taken into custody,” Mrs. Harris said. “Nothing more should follow until I’m contacted first?”
The officer nodded.
“For now, stay put, say nothing more, and we’ll see what options we have. Unless you’d like to reconsider your options, as far as legal aid or who will represent you?”
Mundane options wouldn’t get me anywhere better. Well, maybe a slightly better place.
But my time and energy were better spent working outside the box.
On that note, magical options for aid?
It might well be sheer stubbornness at this point, but no. I knew what those lawyers would ask for, and somehow that bothered me more than if it were up in the air. They were planning something, trying to subvert me, and it seemed like too easy a road to take. I couldn’t play along.
Even if it meant jail, or, worse, an asylum.
“Why don’t you take him downstairs, Max?” the older officer asked. “By himself, so he’s safe, with supervision.”
‘Max’ reached for me, and instinctively Ieaned away from his hand. Which probably didn’t hurt the ‘crazy as fuck’ image.
He remained stock still, not reacting to my flinch. “Turn around.”
I did.
“Hands.”
I gave him my hands.
“I’m not going to touch you,” he said, “Since you don’t like that. But that’s only so long as you cooperate.”
“I’ll cooperate,” I said.
He indicated the door. The older man opened it.
There were so many eyes on me, as I was guided out of the interrogation room. Duncan Behaim’s among them.
Fuck, to put it lightly.
I saw two adults, and a little boy. The adults stared at me with red, puffy eyes.
The little boy broke away from the pair of them. He passed effortlessly through the people and objects in the way, before falling in step with me, walking just to my right. I glanced back at Duncan, and I saw him glance down at the little boy and raise eyebrows.
Evan’s body, it seemed, was somewhere in the building. Somewhere close, in any event.
Good. I needed all the help I could get.
If there was even a chance at getting out of this, much less getting out of this with my life intact, it was a damn slim chance.
I’d done everything right, near as I could figure, and I’d still been screwed.
The natural answer was that I’d need to do something wrong to get out of this.
Fuck that.
With all sincerity, fuck that idea backwards and forwards.
I was not going down that road.
I’d need some more help than just Evan, if I was going to get out of this and seize that slim chance.
5.02
“Boots off,” the officer said.
“Huh?”
“No boots, no belt.”
I frowned, but I removed the boots. The lawyers had given them to me, after I’d lost my last pair, before my return to Toronto. I lifted up my shirt to show the lack of a belt.
He slid the iron-bar door into place. The clang joined the cacophony of voices, shouts and drunken howls.
I’d been placed in the last cell in a long row. Many of the others had three to five people in them. My cell and the cell opposite were empty. A single desk and chair sat at the end of the hall. The officer placed my boots on top of the desk, then sat down.
I looked down at Evan, then up at the officer.
“No way out,” Evan whispered, in his replay-of-a-memory voice.
There was no need to whisper. He couldn’t be seen or heard.
“Have to escape,” Evan said, as if to himself.
A skip, because he couldn’t tap into a part of himself that referred to a ‘you’. He’d been too isolated. He’d learned ‘you’ since, or he could tap into his memories when he was close enough to his body, but not like this.
I couldn’t reply without the cop hearing me talk to myself.
Instead, I scratched at one of the scabs on my arm until blood welled out. I sat down on the cot and bent down, making it look like I was adjusting my sock. I drew the thin line of blood on the ground, between myself and the cop.