How to Disappear(75)

The interrogation room buzzes with an almost-spent fluorescent light bulb. We’ve been here for hours. They keep dragging me back through the story as if they think they’re going to trip me up. But I’ve already incriminated myself, Don, Karl Yeager, Esteban Mendes, the guys who beat me up in my apartment, the anonymous drunk guy I beat up—everyone but Nicolette and her ice pick.

By the time I get to the part with the biker bar confession, no matter how bad a picture I paint of myself, they think I’m worse. They think that without reason or provocation, I attacked a biker and dumped him somewhere. I don’t want to give them the idea that Nicolette helped me do this thing that never happened.

“Would your story change if you knew Esteban Mendes has been cooperating since he was forced to help bury the girl? We’ve been tracking those boys in the kitchen like flies on a carcass until we could secure Miss Holland—which leads us straight to you. Quite a coincidence, no?”

“No! And how do you know Mendes was forced? Are you taking his word for it? And the girl has a name: Connie Marino.”

“You seem to know a lot about that,” Agent Birdwell says, looking put out, while Agent Garrity sits there. “You were there, weren’t you?”

“I was in Nevada! Check the attendance records at my school.” I imagine how much the ladies in the front office at El Pueblo will enjoy police inquiries about me.

“Yet you know when it happened and who it happened to.” Agent Birdwell keeps spouting irrelevant truths.

“I didn’t know Connie was dead until my brother told me.”

“You’re sticking to that? Your brother told you Nicolette Holland did it? And she knew things about Karl Yeager?” This is a game of cat and mouse where the only rule is, the mouse loses.

“The way we see it, maybe you were there,” he says. “Maybe you dragged Miss Holland away with you, and maybe you came back to get rid of the witnesses.”

I can’t predict the plot of the story they’re making up. I have to keep controlling waves of anger, grabbing on to the seat of the chair, wadding my hands into fists and sitting on them as a last resort.

I say, “What witnesses was I trying to get rid of?”

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I was supposed to confess to what I actually did, and in return, they were supposed to believe me and lock me up somewhere I couldn’t do any more damage—not this.

“How did you get involved with Alexander Yeager?” Birdwell demands. “Dead at twenty-one years old. Ten degrees to the right, and you’d have had Mendes, too. Two witnesses blown away. One minute Alexander Yeager is burying Connie Marino, the next minute you shoot him.”

“Wait! The dead guy in the kitchen was a Yeager?”

Garrity presses his lips together as if he wants his mouth to disappear, a tell. Never play poker face with a guy from Las Vegas.

“Come on! I shot Karl Yeager’s kid? He buried Connie? Don’t you get this? Of course Karl Yeager wanted Nicolette dead! She saw his kid bury Connie—with Mendes. I was the guy they sent to do it.”

“You’ve had a long time to think this up, haven’t you?” Birdwell says. “Was one of those shots meant for Miss Holland?”

“No!” Jesus, this guy only believes his own stories. “Why would I drag her to Ohio to shoot her?”

The back of the chair is digging into me. I start to stretch, but Birdwell pushes me down with such relish, the fact that I’ve put myself at this *’s mercy starts eating at me.

“We’re not done here,” he says.

I try to turn to get out from under his hands, but the only way to shake him would be to come up punching. My fingernails are pressed into my palms. I’m saying to myself, Think, Jack. This would be a colossal mistake. Don’t do this.

I lace my fingers behind my neck and squash my head between my arms.

Garrity says, “Kid, do you want some water?” Birdwell looks as if he might bite him. His hands linger, but they come off me.

It’s late, and my mind is Swiss cheese, but I can still recognize his provocation for what it was. I wouldn’t give him what he wanted, so he issued an invitation to assault a cop. Thanks, but no thanks.

My ability to control myself for much longer is doubtful if I don’t get somewhere I can punch something other than Birdwell’s face. I want to land it right in his smug mouth right now, when he’s reveling in how much power he has over me.

I’m not going to prison for something a blowhard who likes pushing me around claims I did, a confabulated tall tale that ends with me trying to kill Nicolette. I didn’t. I want to be with Nicolette. I want to wash the blood off my hands and go to sleep and wake up to her—not this.

“I want a lawyer. I invoke my right to counsel.”

Birdwell doesn’t make a move out of his chair, but Garrity yawns. “He’s invoked, Bill. Let’s call it a night.”

Birdwell looks as if he’d like to make it Garrity’s last night on earth.

I say, “If you haven’t contacted my mother, I want to make my phone call. On the off chance I’m telling the truth, she needs more security.”

Garrity says, “On the off chance, yeah, we did—about three hours ago.”

“Thank you.”

Birdwell is so pissed at Garrity for giving me this, he half-throws a chair.