Empire of Lies

Lauren under Glass

The door swung shut behind her. The last time I'd seen her, she'd been screaming obscenities at me. Fuck you, you coward. You hypocrite. You shit. But of course all that was beside the point now-all our little dramas were beside the point now that Serena was in real trouble.

She gave a loud, weary sigh. Leaned against the wall, her arms crossed under her breasts. She shook her head at me.

"Can you believe this shit?" she said.

It struck a jarring note with me. She didn't seem as distraught as she should've been, not even as distraught as I was. Her daughter was missing-kidnapped at gunpoint-and she seemed merely annoyed, merely put out. The look of her bothered me, too. She was wearing loose black jeans and a baggy purple sweater, artfully arranged to smooth over the bulges of her slovenly body. And she'd put on heavy makeup, much heavier than when I'd seen her before. It covered over her rough complexion. It made her eyes look larger and softer than they had. I wouldn't've thought a woman in her situation would spend so much time in front of a mirror. I tried to tell myself that, well, she had cleaned herself up overnight, the same as I had. Still, it didn't seem right.

"Is there any news about Serena?" I asked her.

"No, no. They're looking for this Jamal character of hers. I got tired of sitting around waiting for something to happen. They told me you were in here. I figured we could at least pass the time. Fight with each other or something."

I nodded and looked away and let out a long breath, frustrated.

"What the hell happened last night, Jason?" she asked me. "I mean, they just broke in, just out of the blue like that?"

"Yeah. Why? What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I mean, it just seems… bizarre, doesn't it? They just-come to your house, they just take her… With guns? I mean, it sounds like something out of a TV show or something."

I didn't like her saying that. It made me uncomfortable. I glanced nervously at the one-way mirror. I didn't want the people behind the glass to get the idea that my story sounded fictional.

"Well… I don't know how much the police told you…"

"Oh, they told me. You know how they are: They told me what they told me. I want to hear it from you, though. You were there."

"Well, I just… Look, I think Serena's gotten herself mixed up in something pretty bad. I mean, she doesn't seem to have understood what she was doing, but these guys she's with-Jamal and the others-I think they're in league with this radical professor who may have been part of this attack they were planning on Wall Street." I stammered through it. I couldn't just come out and say it. It sounded ridiculously melodramatic, even to me. Like something out of a TV show, yes.

That was how Lauren reacted to it, rolling her eyes with disbelief. "Come on, Jason. You think my daughter's a terrorist?"

I glanced at the mirror again. "I didn't say she was a terrorist."

"Yes, you did. You said-"

"I said she's gotten mixed up with these guys, and I think they're terrorists. I think they're connected to those guys who were arrested today."

This time when she rolled her eyes, she snorted, too.

"Why do you react like that?" I said.

"Like what?"

"Like you don't believe me. You think I'm making this up?"

"I didn't say that."

"You're acting like it."

"Well…"

"Well, what?"

"Well, Jason!" she said, as if my name were an argument in itself.

"Jason what? You think I broke into my own house and beat the crap out of myself? Look at me!"

This was not what I wanted, not the way I wanted to behave. Squabbling with her. Right there in front of the one-way mirror. As if we were an angry divorced couple fighting over their kid. I could just imagine the sardonic cops exchanging sardonic cop glances on the other side of the glass.

"Look, I don't know what happened…" Lauren said.

I told myself not to respond to that-not to take the bait-but I couldn't help it. "What do you mean you don't know? I just told you."

"Yeah, well."

"Yeah, well what, Lauren?"

"Serena's sixteen years old, Jason. She's this little… fucked-up sixteen-year-old adolescent like every other fucked-up adolescent in the world. I mean, okay, you want to tell me she does drugs. You want to tell me she's doing unprotected sex or whatever. But she's not a terrorist, for Christ's sake! She doesn't even watch the news. What's she gonna be a terrorist about? 'Give me more pink camis or I'll blow up The Gap?' Can I ask you something?" Her tone changed instantly, became instantly casual. That Can I ask you something -it sounded as if she were about to ask me where I'd bought my shoes. "Did you two, like… get into something together?"

"What?" It came out of me like a chicken's squawk.

She leaned in toward me confidentially. "Well… you know."

I stared at her. "No, I don't know. What are you talking about?"

"You know, Jason," she said out of one sly corner of her mouth. "I don't mean you and her were, like, doing anything together, obviously. But… well, I mean, I know you, Jason. I mean, you have to admit: You can get up to some shenanigans yourself when you're in the mood."

I opened my mouth to answer her, but I didn't answer, and I shut my mouth again.

We were close together in that small room, face to face. I could see the eyeliner around her eyes and the eyes themselves, the true feelings in them. I could see the micro-expressions at the corners of her lips, the little giveaways. It was all there, I just hadn't noticed it before. I had been too busy thinking about the cops watching me behind the mirror. I had been too worried that I might seem guilty to them, that I might somehow reveal to them my private sins and peccadilloes. I had been so fearful that they might come to suspect me of some wrongdoing in Serena's disappearance that the whole, awful truth of the situation hadn't really struck me. But now I saw it. Now I thought: Of course. This was what had been bothering me all morning, what had caused that sense of foreboding in me when I looked through the cruiser window at the roiling clouds.

The truth was: The police suspected me already. It was just as I imagined it, just as I worried, exactly as I feared. They already knew my private sins and failings-whatever Lauren could tell them, and no doubt she'd told them all with relish and malicious glee. And then she had come in here. They had sent her in here, to catch me off guard, to get me talking, to get me to confess to… what? To what? What the hell could they suspect me of?

I didn't know-I had no idea-and I was afraid. I felt cold sweat gathering on the back of my neck. I felt the fear show itself plainly in my expression, in my eyes. Lauren saw it. I could tell she did. I could tell she liked it, too. She had to fight down a smile.

"Something," she said with a horrible knowingness. "You got up to something, didn't you, Jason?"

I turned my back on her.

"What was it?" she said.

I stepped to the mirror. I glowered into my own frightened eyes, at my own battered face. Lauren's leering image was at my shoulder.

"What was it, Jason?" she said behind me.

"Get the hell in here," I said to the mirror. "This game is over."

I'd hardly finished speaking-I was still looking at the mirror-when the door to the interrogation room opened and Detective Curtis came in. He held the door ajar with his shoulder while he worked the sleeve of his jacket over his other arm. There were no apologies from him, no pretenses.

"Mr. Harrow" was all he said, slipping his jacket on. "Would you come with me, please?"

Of course, it wasn't really a question at all.