Here and Gone(40)

Danny lifted the pistol, kept the short muzzle aimed at the wall, and opened the cylinder to check that the five charge chambers were empty. He gave it a spin, closed it, then cocked and dry-fired three times.

‘That’ll do,’ he said. He packed the pistol and the ammo back into the envelope.

George extended his open hand. Danny fished a roll of bills out of his pocket, counted out hundreds into George’s palm.

When he was satisfied, George asked, ‘So, you just doing some target practice while you’re here?’

‘Something like that,’ Danny said as he grabbed the envelope and stood to leave. ‘Good to see you again, George.’

As he walked to the beaded doorway, George called after him.

‘Whatever you got going on, Danny Doe Jai, just be careful, all right?’

Danny glanced back over his shoulder and said, ‘I’ll try.’

He slipped through the hanging beads, back out through the restaurant, the package under his arm. The young lady who’d greeted him gave him a nervous smile as he passed on his way to the door. As he reached the cool draft of the AC unit, a thought occurred to him. He turned back to the girl.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Is there a hardware store near here?’





20


THE SUITED MAN extended his hand across the table and said, ‘My name is Todd Hendry, I’m a public defender.’

The chain rattled as Audra lifted her hand to shake his. ‘You’re what?’

‘I’m your attorney,’ he said.

The interview room’s fluorescent light reflected off his freckled scalp. He placed a thin file, a notepad, and a pen on the table as he sat down.

‘Why are you here?’ Audra asked.

‘You can’t go to an arraignment without representation,’ he said. ‘Well, you can, but I wouldn’t advise it.’

‘Arraignment?’

‘The possession with intent charge,’ Hendry said. ‘The hearing’s in an hour. Didn’t they tell you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘All they’ve done is question me about my children.’

Another session with Mitchell last night, one first thing this morning. The same questions over and over, the same answers. No matter how often she told the FBI agent that Whiteside and Collins had taken Sean and Louise, that her husband had to be behind it, Mitchell kept turning it around, pointing the question back at her. And always that kindness in her eyes and in her voice.

At one point this morning, during a brief break in the questioning, when she was alone with the patrolman in this room, an idea crept into Audra’s addled head: What if she really had hurt her children? What if they were right? Maybe her mind couldn’t cope with the truth, so she had created another reality? None of this felt quite real, did it?

That had been the closest she’d come to breaking. She had felt herself crumble, like a wall with no foundation.

Hendry opened the file, what looked like some sort of police report, clicked his pen, and placed the tip close to the pad. ‘So, tell me exactly what happened on the morning of the fifth.’

She told him. The general store by the roadside, Whiteside’s car parked out front, driving away, the flashing lights in her mirror, the stop, the search.

‘Wait a moment,’ Hendry said. ‘Before Sheriff Whiteside opened the trunk of your car, did he seek your consent to search it?’

‘No,’ Audra said.

‘Was the bag of marijuana visible from outside the vehicle?’

‘It was never in my car in the first place. He planted it there to—’

Hendry raised a hand. ‘Listen, let’s not say anything about planting things in your car. Assuming – just assuming – the marijuana was in fact in your car, where he found it, would it have been visible from outside the vehicle?’

‘No,’ Audra said. ‘He reached under some blankets to get it, but it wasn’t—’

‘That’s all I need to know,’ Hendry said, smiling.

Judge Miller peered over the top of her glasses, her gaze somewhere over Audra’s shoulder.

‘Sheriff Whiteside, is this true?’ she asked, the lines of her face deepening, puckering around her mouth. ‘Didn’t you seek consent to search the vehicle?’

Audra turned her head, saw Whiteside stand up from his chair among the crowd of onlookers, his hat gripped in his hands, and clear his throat.

‘No, Your Honor,’ he said, ‘it’s not true. I had consent to search.’

‘The defendant says different,’ the judge said. ‘I need better than your word, Sheriff.’

Whiteside met her stare, straightened his back, raised his head. ‘My word is all I have, and if that’s not good enough for—’

‘No, it is not good enough for me, Sheriff. Let’s try applying some logic to this, shall we?’

Whiteside seemed to lose an inch in height. A twitch below his left eye.

A hush fell over the press people who occupied the rear part of the town hall’s meeting room. Tables had been arranged in an approximation of a court layout, one each for the defense and the prosecution, both facing another, where Judge Miller now sat, a weary expression on her face. She removed her spectacles and placed them on the notepad in front of her.