The Wrong Man

83

Tori found the nearest emergency room with her iPhone. I burst in and got someone’s attention right away. I told them my uncle had tried to move a refrigerator down to the basement by himself and he’d fallen down the stairs. I figured fractures to the wrists and hands, and a separated shoulder, told that kind of a story.

Stanley could tell a different story if he wished, but I couldn’t see him doing it. His hands were pretty dirty. Why call attention to himself?

I took the medical paperwork with me to a chair and then walked out of the place. Tori had the SUV running outside, and I jumped in.

“That… wasn’t right,” she said to me.

“I agree.” I looked right at her. “You shouldn’t have stopped me.”

“That’s not what I-”

“I’m trying to save lives, Tori. This guy’s plotting to bomb something. I don’t have time for touchy-feely ACLU bullshit. You’re feeling sorry for that asshole?”

“That’s not the point-”

“It most certainly is the fucking point. What, you think I enjoyed that?”

She didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself.

“Okay, so now I’m the sociopath,” I seethed. “I beat up a homegrown terrorist and I’m the bad guy. Lock me up, but let him plot a mass murder.”

She looked away. “Let’s just go home,” she said in a more subdued tone.

“Yeah, let’s do that. Thanks for coming along, Tori. You were a real help to the cause.”

She didn’t respond. There wasn’t much left to say. I wasn’t the least bit sorry for what I’d done. I only regretted that I didn’t get more out of him. In fact, I got basically nothing, other than confirmation that I was on the right track.

We drove awhile, back onto the main roads, and then the highway. I was exhausted from the adrenaline drain. My head was pounding, and my knee suddenly remembered how much it hurt.

“What’s in the gym bag?” I asked. “What did you get from the upstairs?”

“Anything I could sweep off his desk,” she answered. “A pile of papers that I didn’t have time to look at.”

“What about his cell phone or computer?”

“He didn’t have a laptop that I could see. Just a desktop that I couldn’t have carried if I wanted to. No cell phone that I could see. Really, I didn’t have time, Jason. It sounded like you were killing him downstairs.”

I didn’t have the energy to rekindle a civil-liberties debate. I just prayed like hell that she had found something good.