Floating Staircase(86)

Alone, Veronica looked like a wax impression of herself in the colorless lights of the interrogation room.

“Strohman’s gonna want a shot,” one of the men said behind me. The resentment in his voice was as subtle as a cannon blast.

“Won’t matter,” said someone else. “Look at her. You’ll sooner get a confession out of a telephone pole.”

“I’ll bet even she don’t know what happened.” This was McMullen, still standing by the door and edged into conspiracy by his comrades.

After a few more minutes, they all grew bored. There was some rumor about coffee cake in the lounge, which seemed to light a fire under their asses.

I watched their dark shapes get up and lumber out into the hall. Before me, Veronica sat motionless and alone at the wooden table in the interrogation room.

“What will happen to her?” I asked McMullen, who was the last to head for the door.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Come on. Follow me.”

Out in the hallway, it was like New Year’s Eve. This was probably the most action the department had seen in a very long time. Possibly the most action they’d ever seen. In the milieu, I thumped a shoulder with Adam as he passed me in the hallway.

“I called Beth and told her to call Jodie,” he said over his shoulder, continuing to walk by me with two other policemen. “Told her you were over at the station helping me with something. Said you’d give her a call.” He mimed holding a phone to one ear before disappearing into another room.

“Is there a telephone I can use?” I asked McMullen before he followed his coworkers into the lounge.

“Christ.” He paused with his hands on his hips, lapping the sweat off his upper lip with his tongue like a dog. He looked maybe eighteen years old. “All the offices are occupied.” Then his eyes lit up. “Let’s take you to Mae.”

Mae was the stout little woman who’d brought Strohman and me our coffee the day I was picked up in the cemetery. She sat at a computer in what served as a combination dispatch and secretarial office. A bank of telephones sat on an overturned bench, a numeral painted in Liquid Paper on each handset.

McMullen waved a hand over the phones, suggested any of them would be more than happy to oblige. “Dial nine to get out,” he said before he vanished.

“Hey,” I said as Jodie picked up at the house. “It’s getting late. I wanted to give you a call. You spoke to Beth?”

“She said you’re down at the station with Adam. She said they’ve made an arrest in a murder investigation?”

“I don’t know. They’re questioning some people.”

“What are you helping him with?”

“I guess I’m sort of a witness.”

“Is this about the drowned boy?”

I closed my eyes and said, “Yes.”

There was a lengthy hesitation on her end. I couldn’t imagine her expression. Was she fearful I was falling back into it again?

“Are you okay?” she said finally.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m okay if you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

“When will you be home?”

“I don’t know. I rode here with Adam. The car’s still down at the ‘Bird. I guess I’ll be home whenever Adam gets off.”

“You want Beth and me to come get you?”

“No,” I said. “Sit tight. I can’t imagine I’ll be too late.”

“Okay,” she said. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.” And I hung up.

“So nice,” Mae said, beaming at me. She had lipstick on her teeth, and her silvery hair was pulled back into a bun. “Your wife?”

“Yes. Is there a place where I can smoke around here?”

“Outside on the front steps.”

Freezing and wet, I chain-smoked cigarettes on the front steps of the Westlake Police Department like someone about to be executed. When the wind blew, it caused a whirring in the nearby trees that sounded like the ocean. The sky was a black web speckled with stars.

It was closing on eleven o’clock when Adam pushed through the front door and stood behind me. His shadow fell over me as I sat on the concrete steps, shivering in my coat and working down to the bottom of my cigarette pack. The parking lot’s lights cast an unnatural orange glow along the flagstone sidewalk that ran the length of the building.

“Can I bum one of those?”

“You don’t smoke menthols,” I said, handing him my last cigarette anyway.

He lit it and coughed as he inhaled. Leaning against the railing, he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about that summer.”

There was no need for him to explain what he meant.

“Maybe it’s you coming to live out here or maybe it’s everything that’s been going on lately. I don’t know.”

I watched him suck hard on his smoke. His head was enveloped in an aura of cold orange light.

“Christ,” Adam uttered, crushing the half-smoked cigarette beneath his boot. “Let’s get out of here.”

On the car ride to Waterview Court, I asked him what was going to happen next.

“We’re gonna hold them both overnight. The DA will want statements before he takes a step.”