Cemetery Lake

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Driving under the influence. Reckless driving. You’re in some real trouble,” Landry says. He’s wearing the same clothes as last night. They’re all wrinkled up, which means he probably slept in them. He looks even more tired than the last time I saw him.

“How’s the girl?”

“Stable.”

Stable. Better than I ever thought she’d be. But nowhere near what I want her to be. “Is she going to make it?”

“Maybe you should have been concerned with other people’s safety before getting behind the wheel drunk.”

“Is she going to make it?” I ask again.

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“Probably? Don’t you care?”

“I care, you son of a bitch.” Landry bangs his fist down on the table. “I’m the only one in this room who does, and what you did last night proves that.”

I look away. I have no answer to that.

“What in the hell were you doing?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing nothing at that time in the morning? Come on, Tate. You were at the church again.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“In fact you were. I saw you there. Lots of people did. See, it was on TV. That reporter of yours showed it. She did a great job of it, showing you right outside the church breaking your restraining order.”

“I was getting my car.”

“You were breaking the law.”

“Come on, Landry, you could probably see me climbing into the damn thing. And I left straightaway.”

“Then what? You go back a few hours later and decide to watch Father Julian? What’s the big plan here, Tate? Are you that desperate to kill yourself?”

I wonder if Father Julian heard the crash. I wonder if he looked in his rearview mirror and decided he had more important things to take care of. “What’s going to happen now?”

“Two things. We’re going to talk to Father Julian. We’re going to ask him if you were there last night, and if he says you were, you know what happens: we’re going to take his word for it. We’re going to ask him once and let him think about it, and if he says yes we’re not even going to ask him if he’s sure about it. You get my point?”

“I get it.”

“But first you’re going to be charged with DUI. You’ll be escorted down to court later this morning. I’m going to do you a favor and let you wait here rather than back down in the cells. But it’s the last favor I’m ever going to do for you.”

He leaves me alone. I rest my head in my arms and manage to get two hours of sleep before the same two guys who brought me upstairs take me out to a patrol car and drive me to the courts. The day is wet and cold and gray. The drive is depressing. We make no conversation and the driver has the window cranked down halfway so the cold air keeps blasting me. I watch the world go by, feeling so disconnected from it I’m not sure if I’ll ever make it back.

I’m kept in the holding cells with a whole bunch of people whose futures are about to be determined by the same people about to determine mine. My headache hurts and so do the wounds. I’m given a court-appointed lawyer who doesn’t introduce himself so I don’t get his name, and he talks low and quickly to me in the two minutes we have before my arraignment.

In court I stand in the dock with my head down and listen to the charges. I know how it all works. This is the same thing that happened to Quentin James. The judge sets bail and says that if it can’t be paid they will hold me. I can’t pay the bail. I’m taken back to the cells, the plan being that sometime in the middle of the afternoon I’ll be transferred to prison. I need a drink.

The holding cells are full of people who have done shitty things too, some worse than me, others not as bad, but we’re the dregs of society. We all sit on benches and keep ourselves to ourselves. The entire place smells like urine. I don’t know how much time passes before one of the court security officers opens up the holding cell and tells me to follow him-all I know is that the next step in the chain isn’t going to be any prettier than this one.

“Your bail’s been made,” he says, surprising me.

“Made? Who by?”

“Your lawyer.”

I slow down my walking and almost come to a stop. He glances back at me and tells me to keep up.

“I don’t even know my lawyer,” I tell him.

“Yeah, well, it’s not the same guy,” the officer says, shrugging. “You got a new lawyer now. Means you might have a chance at a real legal defense.”

We go through a few doors and I’m asked to sign some forms. Before I can, a guy in an expensive-looking suit comes to greet me. The suit is so sharp it’s hard to believe he’d dare sit down for fear of it wrinkling, but it isn’t as sharp as his smile.

“Theo,” he says, stepping forward and pumping my hand so vigorously it’s suspicious. “Glad to finally meet you.”

“Glad?”

“Well, of course the circumstances are awkward,” he says. “Not dire, but with your past they shouldn’t be anything we can’t handle.”

He introduces himself as Donovan Green. He stands over my shoulder as I sign the series of forms in front of me. The officers hand me over my wallet and my watch and my phone. The phone is dead.

Green walks me outside toward a black BMW in the far corner of the parking lot between a high concrete wall and a dark blue SUV with tinted windows and mud splashed up the sides. The day is cool and the breeze makes the exposed grazes on my body sting. I pick up the pace a little to get to his car faster.

“Who hired you?” I ask.

He doesn’t slow down. Just keeps on walking like a man on a mission. “You mean you don’t know?”

“I have my suspicions,” I answer, but truthfully I don’t have any idea.

“You still have friends in the department,” he says, and the line is starting to sound all too familiar.

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” I tell him. “Listen, thanks for bailing me out, and I appreciate all you’re going to do for me, but all I want right now is to go to the hospital.”

He doesn’t pause. Just keeps walking. “The hospital? Injuries hurting, huh?”

“I want to see the woman I hurt.”

He slows down. He comes to a stop and turns toward me, his back now to his car. “I don’t understand,” he says. “You want to see her?”

“It’s not that hard to understand,” I tell him. “I want to see how she’s doing. I’m the reason she’s in there.”

“I’m well aware of why she’s in there,” he says, a little too harshly. “Look, Theo, it’s just not a good idea.”

“I need to see her.”

He shrugs, like he no longer cares, but he also keeps staring at me. Hard. “Okay,” he says. “It’s your idea. I don’t agree with it, but let’s go.”

We reach his car. It turns out it’s the dark SUV and not the BMW. He puts his briefcase down while he digs into his pocket for his keys. He checks one, then the other, and I know how the routine goes when you can never find them.

“Must be in the briefcase,” he says, and he pops it open. “Yep, here we go.” He unarms the car and the doors pop open. “Hop on in,” he says.

I climb inside. The interior is comfortable and warm. A small fantasy plays out in my mind, and in this fantasy I climb into the backseat and lie down and get a few hours of sleep. Green plays around with his briefcase before opening his door. Then he leans in. He’s pointing something at me.

“Whoa, wait a. .”

But it’s all I can say before he pulls the trigger. My body jerks back, my head cracks into the window beside me, and the world goes black.