“Yes.”
“Cool.”
More silence.
Hmm. An idea.
“So then, if I had a prescription, you could fill it?” Another blatantly pseudo-question.
“You’re from out of state so I’d need a paper script, but sure. Is there one you need?”
“I take these pills to help me sleep. I forgot ’em in Minneapolis.”
“Well, do you have the prescription with you?”
“Uh-uh. It’s in Denver.”
“Well,” Amber said reflectively, “I guess I could call your doctor, he could fax me your prescription, but it’s a Saturday. Maybe your regular pharmacy would have a copy on file?”
Tessa wasn’t excited about the idea of telling her that her doctor was a psychiatrist or that Patrick didn’t know about the shrink or the pills. “Yeah, um, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be okay without ’em.”
Silence again, longer this time.
Finally, Amber said, “Tessa, how are you doing since your dad’s death?”
Wow. That was a leap.
“Um…”
“I’m sorry if that’s too personal, I was just…”
“No. It’s okay,” Tessa replied. She tried to think of what to say. “It was hard, you know, but it seems like it’s getting better. With my mom it was worse. I was into this pretty intense self-inflicting stuff for a while. You know, cutting, that sort of thing.” She paused. “This friend of mine, Anisette, she started in with bulimia after her parents divorced. That was just harsh. I’m glad I never ended up going there.”
A brief pause. “I’ve been praying for you.”
Her comment about prayer and the previous exchange about meds made Tessa think of her last session with the shrink-when he’d asked her if she thought God wanted her to forgive herself.
“So you pray a lot, then?”
“Probably not as much as I should.”
“But you believe in God? Forgiveness? That sort of thing?”
“Yes.”
“So did my mom.”
Tessa remembered that after her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, even though she seemed to take the news relatively well, Tessa had been devastated. Her mom had told her more than once that she needed to learn to believe in grace as much as she did in pain, in forgiveness as much as she did in shame.
Just ask her.
“So do you ever think about what it means to forgive yourself?”
“To forgive myself?”
“Yeah.”
Amber considered the question for a long time. “Honestly, that sounds kind of arrogant to me.”
“How is it arrogant?”
“Well, that someone could claim to have the power to cancel the debt that they owe God.”
Tessa tried to let that sink in. She remembered her little object lesson with the glass coffee table in the shrink’s office and understood where Amber was coming from with the debt idea but hadn’t exactly thought of it in any kind of religious terms before.
“When you ask someone to forgive you,” Amber said, “you’re really asking the other person to sacrifice for the benefit of the relationship.”
Duh. If you would’ve shattered the doctor’s end table and he forgave you, he would’ve been the one to pay for it, the one to sacrifice.
“But what if you wrong yourself?” Tessa retorted. “I mean, can’t you-oh, I get it. We’re accountable to someone else besides ourselves. To God.”
Amber said nothing, and it looked to Tessa like she was deep in thought.
Regardless of the theological ramifications, the idea that this whole forgiving yourself deal was an act of arrogance seemed kind of weird, and Tessa wasn’t sure she bought it.
She stood. “You know, I’m gonna go to Patrick’s room. Maybe lie down.”
“You’re welcome to stay in here.”
“That’s okay, I’ll see you in a little bit. Hey, it was cool, though. Thanks for hanging out.”
“Any time.”
Patrick’s motel room looked pretty much like Tessa expected-a clutter of papers on the desk, clothes strewn across the floor, sweaty workout stuff hanging up in the bathroom. Disgusting. A couple buckets of water on the floor-no idea what those were for. A brand-new camo jacket flung on the chair. Wow. How very Wisconsin of him.
She pulled the shades shut, grabbed the extra blanket from the closet, flopped onto the bed. Closed her eyes.
And thought of arrogance.
Was it really an act of arrogance to be haunted by guilt? Or was it an act of humility, admitting that you weren’t living up to the standards you’d set for yourself?
Two ways to look at it.
Guess the plot, huh?
Yeah, well, she really didn’t have any idea where this one was heading.
61
Sheriff Tait was waiting for us outside the building when we arrived.
He looked about sixty, was a little too round, but still had a formidable appearance. His face was chiseled with creases and shadows, and as we approached he snuffed out a cigarette against the wall and flicked the butt into the snow.
An observation of Tessa’s came to mind: Smoking is suicide. It just takes longer than a gun, but I kept it to myself.
Alexei remained silent while he was processed and fingerprinted and then led to a cell. “You get one phone call,” Burlman taunted. “You better make it a good one.”
“I’ll wait on that for now.” He was looking at me.
I tried to think what to do.
How are you going to find Kayla without his help?
Once Alexei was out of earshot, I said to Tait, “I want two people watching his cell at all times. Rotate them in and out.”
“No good. We’re short on staff with this storm, with the search for Kayla, with everything.”
“This man is an escape risk, Sheriff, and we cannot let him get away.”
“We’re stretched thin here, Agent Bowers, you know that.”
“I’m not sure the cells here will hold him.”
He eyed the wall beside me. “I can give you one officer. That’s it.”
“At all times then. But not Burlman. And Chekov stays cuffed, even in the cell.”
“Sure. Okay.” He tapped the edge of his lip with his tongue. “This guy, he killed my deputy.”
“I know this is easier said than done, but you need to set that aside for right now. We just have to make sure Chekov doesn’t slip out of here.”
“Oh, he won’t.” His voice was filled with acid, and I had a feeling I knew what he was thinking.
“Sheriff Tait, two state troopers already beat him with their batons.”
“Yeah, I heard. Kicked the living-” He caught himself, perhaps concerned he shouldn’t be defending police brutality by cussing to an FBI agent. “He was resisting arrest.”
“I know you don’t buy that.” I wasn’t going to play this game. “I’ll be filing a report dealing with their actions later. For now, Alexei stays in his cell, and no one goes in there with him. Mistreating him in any way isn’t going to encourage him to give up anything on Kayla’s location-or help us get a conviction against him for Ellory’s murder.”
A pause. “You gonna interrogate him, then?”
“I am.”
Although I was planning to talk with Alexei, I honestly couldn’t see him giving anything up unless he decided it was in his best interest-and even striking some sort of deal wouldn’t make any substantial difference in the charges that were going to be brought against him.
I looked around.
In the next room over, the 911 dispatch call board was staffed by a bleary-eyed overweight man in his thirties. Some storage rooms, a few offices, two holding cells, restrooms, and a small conference room rounded out the place. The building wasn’t equipped with anything close to a secure interrogation room, and I figured Alexei would do whatever it took to escape and would likely somehow use the transfer to any other room to his advantage, so I decided to leave him in the cell when I spoke with him.
Sheriff Tait was quiet for a moment. “So did he tell you why he killed the Pickrons? What he did with Donnie?”
“I don’t believe he killed the Pickrons.”