Shelter(84)

“Jesus. You look like hell,” Tim says.

“When’s the last time you slept?” Connie asks.

“I’m not sure.”

He wonders if his in-laws know they’re not going to be in-laws anymore. The relief, the satisfaction they must feel. It’s what they wanted all along. He expects to be told to leave, but no one says a word. They just keep staring at him, as if their silence alone will turn him back. Kyung looks at the cigarette butts on the sidewalk and grass. He tries to count them but keeps losing track. The spike of adrenaline that got him here is down to almost nothing now, and his mind is too scattered to connect one thought with the next. How does he get past them? How does he make them understand how much he needs to?

“I’m not sure if you remember me, sir. I’m Detective Smalley. We met a few days ago?”

The detective’s breath stinks of rotten eggs, but Kyung shakes his outstretched hand anyway. “Where did you find him?”

“He was holed up with a girl the entire time. Never even left town.”

“But the car—Lentz said you found it near Canada.”

“Why don’t we go upstairs and talk? You look like you could use a cup of coffee or something.”

Kyung glances at Connie and Tim, but neither of them do anything to prevent him from entering. Connie even opens the door and waves them all inside. They walk past the front desk, where the receptionist is sitting behind a wall of glass, yawning as she flips through a magazine. When she notices Connie and the detective, she pushes the magazine off to the side and covers it with an envelope. The four of them stop in front of the elevators where a large white plaque announces that visitors to the upper floors are required to sign in. Tim presses the UP button impatiently.

“Sir, do you know where your father is?” the detective asks.

“He’s not here already?”

“No. I called him after the arrest and he agreed to come by to make the ID, but he never showed up.”

Kyung responds without thinking. “He’s afraid, probably.”

“Afraid?”

“To see him again. I think most people would be.”

Detective Smalley doesn’t look like the type to be afraid of anything, actually. He’s old, but fit, with thick forearms and shoulders so broad, they almost look padded. Kyung notices a scratch above his left eye, bandaged but still bleeding through the gauze.

“Did he put up a fight?”

“They always put up a fight,” Tim says.

The elevator door opens onto a vestibule painted in a strange, medicinal shade of pink. Kyung grips the handrail as the car jerks its way up to the third floor, spitting them out into a narrow corridor. The station feels like a rabbit warren—big, but more broken up than he ever would have guessed from the street. The building is on his route to the grocery store. He never thought he’d have a reason to go inside, and a part of him still can’t believe that he is.

“Why didn’t you want Gillian to tell me you found him?” he asks Connie.

“Because it wasn’t worth bringing you in yet. The guy was out of his mind.”

“On drugs?”

“At some point, probably. But we were more worried about the booze. He said he’d been drinking for two days straight. We’ve had him in a cell sobering up ever since he came in.”

Something about this explanation doesn’t sit right with him. “So you didn’t want me to know he was here because…?”

Connie shrugs. “I thought you’d probably want to see the interview, but no one was going to get a word of sense out of him, not in the state he was in. I figured we’d spare you the wait.”

Kyung searches Connie’s face, then the detective’s and Tim’s. It doesn’t seem possible that they did this to be kind, but nothing in their expressions contradicts what he just heard.

“Meet me in number three,” Detective Smalley says. “I’ll bring him over.”

Connie, Tim, and Kyung walk single file to the end of the hall and squeeze into a small room with an oversized window. On the other side of the glass, there’s a table and chairs. On their side, there’s nothing.

“You reek,” Tim says, covering his nose. “How long’s it been since you had a shower?”

“Give him a break. You want a coffee or something?”

Kyung shakes his head. The space they’re standing in is no bigger than a closet. It’s warm—there aren’t any vents or air ducts anywhere—and Tim is actually right for a change. Kyung smells awful; the room smells awful too, like food left out in the sun to spoil. He leans against the far wall, trying to put as much distance between himself and the others.

“What kind of place is this?” he asks. “It’s like an alley in here.”

“We use it for lineups, mostly,” Connie says. “The regular interview room’s got mold in the ceiling, so we’re stuck with this. You understand how it works, right? They can’t see us through the glass, but we can see them.”

“I don’t care if he sees me.”

“Don’t be stupid, Kyung. John’s doing me a favor. I thought it might give you some peace to see this guy locked up, but you can’t go crazy in here.”

If there was ever a time for crazy, Kyung thinks it’s now. He has nothing to lose anymore. His mother is gone. His wife no longer wants him around. His child, he’ll probably only be allowed to see on weekends and holidays. His attempt to start over in California has been exposed as the fantasy it is. Before the attack, Kyung’s life was far from perfect, but now he has even less than what he started with, and that hardly seems fair. Without the Perrys, the stasis he lived in could have continued indefinitely, and he would have been glad to accept that safe place in the middle where nothing moved him too greatly or hurt him too much.