Finally she spoke. “You want me to cover this for CNB, or let someone else?”
“It’s yours if you want it.”
“That would be, ah... extremely perilous.”
“I’m a good story. Think of it as another exclusive. Stick with me. You’ll get all the firsts.”
“Terry,” she whispered. “Terry. I can’t stick with you very far. You may be innocent, but we’ll crucify you first and cut you down later. It’s the way we do it.”
I took a deep breath and felt the walls moving closer around me, felt the acoustic ceiling — stained by years of whispered alibis and desperate lies — lowering onto my head like a lid onto a coffin.
“I love you, Donna.”
I hung up and called the law office of Loren Runnels, an old friend of mine, a deputy DA turned to private practice. Luckily, he was listed in one of the phone books.
When I explained to Loren what had happened, I got one of those surprises you should see coming but never do. I discovered that in spite of being the star of my personal, purgatorial pageant, I would have to wait.
“I’m due in court in twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll see you after lunch. Anybody wants to know anything, you tell them to talk to me. Hang in there, Terry.”
They put me in a protective cell, in a small block reserved for people so bad even other prisoners hate them. Module J, to be specific. I kept my head up and my eyes level as I looked into the other cells on the way by. The eyes that followed me were curious, resigned, amused, blank. My cell smelled faintly of urine and disinfectant, but the lice spray on my skin followed me in and cut down on the stink. It mixed with the smell of my own nervous sweat. When I heard the door slam shut behind me and echo down the long hallway, a part of my soul withered, broke off and blew away. Those echoes are the harmonics of hell.
At 1:25 P.M. I was led into a booth in the Attorney-Bonds Visiting Room and told to sit.
The deputy who led me in was four inches taller than me and probably outweighed me by forty pounds. You look at these young guys — I was one of them once — and you wonder at the predictable relish they take in their power, in the tiny cruelties that help them set the “us” apart from the “them.” You wonder at the absolute authority when one man can order another to sit, like he’d order a dog, and the man in fact sits, just like a dog would.
I shook my head, smiled and sat. Of course, he just couldn’t let it go. The same way I wouldn’t have let it go twenty years ago when I worked this loud, stinking, overcrowded jail my first two years as a Sheriff deputy.
“Is there some problem you’ve got with that?”
“None at all, Deputy.”
“You look like that Chet guy we had in here last week.”
“I arrested him, and we don’t look alike at all.”
“The kids you both screw look alike?”
“Yeah. We like them young, dumb and blond. Like you.”
“How would you like your ass kicked?”
“Whatever fries your eggs, kid.”
The booths offer a reasonable amount of privacy. There’s a glassed guard station behind where the prisoners sit, and the deputy can see everything in the room, but can’t hear much. There’s a table in front of you, separated from another table by a low partition. I watched Loren Runnels come through a door on the other side of the room. He lugged his briefcase toward me and sat. He studied me through silver wire-rimmed glasses that matched perfectly his thinning silver hair. The bald patch on the top of his head was a deeper tan than I had had in years. He had thin lips and bright white teeth he rarely showed.
“You all right?”
“I’m absolutely not fucking all right, Loren. They’ve got pictures but—”
He sat back and looked around in an exaggerated manner, shaking his head.
I looked away from him and felt the anger in my guts and the sadness and humiliation in my heart. How many times had I heard some guy say just about the same thing to me? And how many times had I assumed he was human sludge, a loser, a liar, a creep? I swallowed my pride a thousand times in that one brief moment. Then swallowed it a thousand more.
And I let my attorney lead.
“I’ve seen the complaint,” he said. “The arraignment is set for eleven tomorrow morning. It looks like Zant will be in court tomorrow. He’ll probably ask two hundred bail, as a flight risk. I’ll ask you be O-R’d as a deputy with an impeccable record. The judge can do anything in between, but unless we draw Honorable Ogden, I’d guess it’ll be more like fifty grand. Can you raise fifteen plus collateral for bond?”
I hadn’t thought about the cost of my nightmare before this. Nothing is free, not even hell. I had about eighty bucks in my wallet — which was in the possession of the county. I had four hundred in a checking account, eighteen hundred in a savings account and ten grand in an IRA I couldn’t use without penalties. I had a Ford, eight years old, worth maybe nine grand on the market. I’d put thirty thousand toward the down payment on the Canyon Edge place, to match Melinda’s thirty. It was all the savings I had at the time.
“I can get it.”
“The sooner the better, Terry. I’ll send Alex from County-Wide over — you two work it out. I’m going to need five to get us through the arraignment. After that, we can talk. I’m not cheap but I am good. If you can afford someone you think is better, hire him.”
“I called you because I want you.”
“I’m proud to represent you, then.”
“When do you want the dough?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll have it.”
He nodded and looked at me. It was a long, thoughtful gaze, his pale blue eyes trying to sap something out of me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. “We’ll get you out of here, sooner than later. With luck, and without Ogden, we’ll have you O-R’d and out before lunch. Until then, stay cool.”
I nodded but I didn’t say anything. It was strange, very strange, to have a friend. In fact, I’d never been so grateful to have a friend in all my life.
“Loren, I’m being framed.”
“That’s pretty obvious. We’re going to have to find out by whom. Listen, I don’t want you to say any names yet. Not here. Not now. But I do want you to tell me one thing: do you think you know who it is?”
I held his stare, then shook my head.
“All right.”
“When can I talk to the press?”
He looked at me quizzically. “Don’t, Terry. It’s going to be tough sledding, when they get hold of this one.”
“I want a conference.”
“No. And I’ll tell you why. The reporters will murder us whether you talk to them or not — and if you do, anything you say can be used against you by the media and, possibly, by the DA. There’s no confidentiality if you start making statements in public. Some defendants can get sympathy through the press, but it won’t work for us with these charges. I don’t have to tell you why. The more you show your face the more you make yourself a target. You think you can handle all the dirt they’ll dig?”
“I didn’t do it, Loren.” I never, never thought I’d see the day when I reminded myself of the sniveling men I’d arrested so many times. I looked at him, then down at the table in front of me. I could feel my mind begin to fog up, then to haze over into a stupor. I felt like a vessel taking on water. I tried to fight it off. I was not sure, for just a moment, that this was actually happening. Loren Runnels’s hard-eyed stare assured me that it was.